Food Stamps Effects on America

  



    The Food Stamp or SNAP(Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ) program is turning this once great nation into a population of  lazy, self entitled, and just plain useless organisms. A parasitic one at that, taking everything they can but give little in return. This is a dangerous lifestyle  that we cannot afford to keep accepting. I personally have witnessed people take their food stamp cards to certain convenience stores and get half the amount of cash for their stamps. It just seems that each day I see something or someone and I just wonder how they can live with themselves. The amount of Americans applying for food stamps jumped an incredible seventy percent from  2007 but an increased of  sixty three percent happened during George W's eight year reign . A total of FORTY SIX MILLION people are on food stamps, that's one out of every seven Americans.(Crimi) The idea that someone else should feed,clothe, and shelter people has become an epidemic. I do believe that SNAP can help those who truly need  but it must be regulated and used properly. Those who support SNAP say it has boosted our economy, but the money being spent is by our bankrupt government. It is a fast and easy way to make the once mighty dollar into what it actually is, a worthless piece paper. It's an unfortunate lesson to the children who grow up learning the blueprint of how to get by with as little work as possible.You ask, why should I care, It's not my problem; That's how we ended up in this mess and  it is only going to get worse if that continues to be the attitude. It is a fact that as early as the 1920's government aided  food programs were met with stiff resistance from many people. John Q Tilson, The Majority Leader of the House in the 1930's said " It was an idea of Revolutionary Character and it would end an American tradition of self-reliance, that it would establish the dole in the U.S."( qtd. Roth) The federal government food stamp budget has grown to seventy two billion dollars a year and shows no signs of slowing down! No child or anyone should go to bed hungry but those who can provide for themselves, must.


    The year the whispers began for government aide to feed the hungry was 1932 , before that local charities and those in the community took on that responsibility.( Roth) The initial program was focused on helping the farmers who were hurt by to worldwide competition and high prices. In an eight year battle and two presidential veto's the McNary/Haugen bill was finally  passed.( Roth) The Farm Board was created and their first action was to buy all the surplus wheat. Government warehouses  filled with wheat did not sit well with the public, who were in the mists of The Great Depression . Newspapers reports of wide spread hunger led Americans to speak out for the government to help. President Herbert Hoover and congress thought Americans work ethic would be compromised and did little about the issue. Enter Franklin Delano Roosevelt who during his first years helped to create the Agricultural Adjustment Administration(AAA) and Federal Surplus Relief Corporation(FSRC). The AAA was focused again on the farming economy but FSRC would be directly involved in the public's welfare. The AAA , spent 75 million dollars to buy surplus agricultural food products to help feed the unemployed and needy during the winter's of 1933-34. The FSRC provided about $7.80 per person per year and $60  was spent or received  in groceries by it's recipients.(Roth) In 1939 the USDA began an experimental Food Stamps Program, both recipients and advocates thought a steadier flow of food and a more varied nutritious diet would be accomplished. There were two kinds of stamps blue and orange; The orange were  purchased at face value allowing people to buy anything, half that amount in blue stamps were given free but could only be used to purchase foods declared Surplus.( Roth) The illicit trafficking of stamps was a problem but the outbreak of WWII caused an economic boom for America and the program was abandoned. During John F. Kennedy's  campaign for president he witnessed poverty in West Virginia and his first executive order increased the USDA's surplus commodity distribution program. The Food Stamp Act of 1964 authorized spending for three years and started at $75 million in 1965  and was raised to $200 million by 1967. During the next decade enrollment rose steadily from 4.3 million to 9.4 million. In September of 1977 a new Food Stamp Bill was passed, giving for the first time, free food stamps to families whose income was less than $30 a month. The beginning of  Americans dependence on government aide to make sure our needs were well taken care of starts. Many have passed this tradition down generations and have become totally dependent on the government.( Roth)

    The  most recent USDA numbers are proof that our population is becoming more and more dependent on government to live. January's 2012 report of 46.5 million Americans on SNAP and an expected growth rate of 5% a year are disturbing, to say the least. During our most recent great recession more enrollment was expected but June 2009, marked an economic upturn,since then 10 million more have enrolled.  People or families receive benefits based on food insecurity, which is considered making less than 130% of the poverty line. As of September 2011, 17.2 million households were food insecure, 6.4 million were very low, and 1.4 lived on $2 or less per person per day.The last statistic has doubled over the past fifteen years and has showed no signs of slowing or leveling off. The percentages of households with children on SNAP is 71%, 47% are children under the age of eighteen. The elderly, who many think would make up a significant percent are shocked to find it is only 8%. People who enrolled in the early and mid 2000's, stayed on the program on average seven years. Half  of that number is back on the program within two years of leaving the program. The average benefit amount for households is $277 a month and $132 for individuals. These numbers are calculated with the assumption that SNAP participants spend 30% of their income on food but the national average is 8% according to the consumer price index(CPI). The CPI determines the amount people spend on everything from food to the amount of men's polo shirts bought in San Francisco.Why it is 22% higher then the average is a question with no answer. Keith Hennessey, economic adviser to George W. Bush said "We have a very large share of the American population getting checks from the government, and an increasingly smaller portion of the population paying for it"(qtd. in Miller). Ronald Regan dubbed the term "Welfare Queen" while on the campaign trail in 1976. Regan said" There's a woman in Chicago, she has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 social security cards . ... She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income alone is over $150,000."( qtd. in Blake.) This was a fictitious person but there are people close to this description! Two women, both from Los Angeles, did their best to  play the part of the Welfare Queen. One collected $377,458 in welfare benefits in seven years and lived in a house with a swimming pool. She did drive a Cadillac, along with a Rolls Royce and Mercedes Benz, Gustafson, author of Cheating Welfare discovered.( Blake). Those who say every $5 in  food stamps generates about $9.27, have you think well that seems good. The fact is, it's a recipe to bankrupt our nation and hand to our future generations a problem with no solution!


    The reality is some of us need help and I am fine with that. It becomes a problem when the helping hand becomes a handout and the one receiving the handouts is a glutton with 46.5 million hands. The feeling of entitlement has got to stop, we cannot continue to teach our children that it's okay not to work and lounge around the house all day. The U.S., once a super charged Chevy other countries wanted to emulate. Today, that same Chevy is on blocks sitting in the front lawn and is serious need of repair. In 2007 the USDA investigated fraud among SNAP participants and retailers who except them. The results, 1.365 indictments, 944 convictions, and 792 sanctions against businesses and individuals, who cheated the program for more than $200 million. A 2011 USDA report showed out of 4,600 retailers  found to be defrauding the program and were permanently banned, 1,492 still are involved with SNAP.( Crimi) I myself have received SNAP. I almost lost a foot and was unable to work but I applied for school to become part of the solution. An article, about a new character on Sesame Street from the web site called American Dream said it all "This new character comes from a family that is poverty-stricken and that struggles to get enough food.  She is going to teach the other residents of Sesame Street the facts about hunger in America."(American Dream,Sesame Street Poverty Stricken) If all the people receiving SNAP were to be considered a state, it would be the largest one in the union. ( Durden) It isn't the lack of jobs or the economy, it is people are content to let the smaller and smaller amount of us pick up the tab.It's not a racial thing either, one person, and we are all people, must do their part to make our nation become great again. The only person holding each one of us back, is you and who doesn't want to help fix up that Chevy and take her for a spin!

  

                                                  Works Cited

 Blake, John.  "Return of the Welfare Queen."  CNN.com.

   Cable News Network.   23 Jan. 2012. Web.  04 May. 2012.

United States. Dept. of Agriculture.  " FOOD STAMPS: 1932-1977: From Provisional and Pilot Programs to Permanent Policy." Economic Research Service. 2005. Web.

 Durden, Tyler. "FoodStamp Nation." ZEROHEDGE.com.

   ABC Media.  20 Apr. 2012.  Web. 04 May. 2012.

 "Muppets Are Poverty Stricken and Hungry." ENDOFTHEAMERICANDREAM.com.

  American Dream. 24 Oct. 2011.  Web.  04 May. 2012.

 Crimi, Frank.  "Food Stamp Nation." FRONTPAGEMAG.com

  FrontPageMag.  20 Apr. 2012.  Web.   01 May. 2012.

    

Food Stamps the cause of our decline or a necessary aid for people

 I hope to show that the way our government is giving away benefits,the country will soon collapse. I think our welfare system needs a full overhaul. Food stamps are used to buy drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and they are sold for cash at half the price. People deserve a helping hand if needed but some want hand outs and feel entitled to them.
 
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First Paragraph

         The idea of the T.V. dinner and how it was and is advertised has not changed much until recently. In 1953  two brothers Gilbert and Clark Swanson were in trouble. They had 520,000  pounds of leftover turkey from their  Omaha, Neb frozen food company. Sales of the thanksgiving day turkeys had been very slow this year. The turkeys were loaded onto ten refrigerated rail cars and sent from Nebraska to the east coast. The cars had to stay moving to keep cold so they went back and forth. The brothers asked for help from employee's and Gerry Thomas came up with a three compartment aluminum. He had gotten the idea while visiting Pan Am and noticed they used aluminum trays to keep food hot. The genius in the advertising was to link the dinners with the latest craze of the day, TELEVISION! The package would resemble a T.V. right down to the knobs.The individual compartments would have the greatest effect on people. Betty Fussell an author said "The segmented plate was enormously powerful and the fact that everything was separate was a form of comfort and reminded of us of when we were kids" The first run of meals of five thousand was way to little and the next year twenty five million dinners were sold. To be eaten in front of the thirty three million televisions sold. Swanson's signature tray was given a spot and Mann's Chinese Theater in 1997 and in 1999 it received a star on the Hollywood walk of fame. By the time of the next century sales had dramatically decreased and Swanson was bought by Pinnacle Food Corporation in 2001. With the company bankrupt a new ad campaign was put together to get the attention of the aging baby boomers and their kids. The ten million dollar ad campaign was hoping to boost . The idea of making the taste of the food was high on the list of things that were to be advertised. New dinners like Mesquite Chicken with Santa Fe rice and beans were introduced. They also started using brand names like Tyson . The initial commercial has a well dressed beautiful rich women. She is walking around her mansion and ends up leaning over the railing of her grand staircase. The next scene shows her open the T.V. dinner and breathing in the new delicious food and to top it all off at the end she likes her tray clean. The voice over says even though Swanson is now chic , T.V. dinner etiquette still applies. This advertising method is not being well received by critics, consulting groups, or professor's of business. The seventy percent of dinners are being  prepared by women and Pinnacle is hoping by making dinner a little more simple they can lure them back to the T.V. dinner side.

By: Eric Schlosser

                                                      Order the Fish

    This article written by Eric Schlosser a best selling author for Fast Food Nation. IT explains in great detail how the government has given the meat packing companies more control over food safety. During Ronald Regan's presidency the ability of inspectors to keep our food supply safe was dismantled. Richard Lyng removed almost half the meat inspectors from the plants. George Bush followed suit due to the huge influence of donations from the meat packing companies to the republican cause. Bill Clinton battled for reform but had to settle with the creation of HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points). They would outline how potential risks would be addressed. The USDA then granted them limited authority to test for bacterial contamination. In 1997 a Jack in the Box located in the Pacific Northwest was found to have meat contaminated with EColi bacteria and 700 people were reported sick.

  Con Agra foods has a meat packing plant in Greeley, Colorado that everyday 200,000 cattle are turned into two million pounds of boxed beef and 800,000 pounds of trim is turned into ground beef. They have nearby feedlots with 200,000 cattle that produce more waste than Denver, Boston, Atlanta, and St. Louis combined. This plant was responsible for the largest meat recall in U.S. history. Out of 19 million pounds of tainted meat only 3 million pounds were returned. Barbara Kowalcyk had her two year old son die from EColi poison and has led many efforts to reform the U.S. meat packing industry standards for testing and what is ultimately considered  safe for us to eat.

   The largest of the meat packing and fast food companies have lobbied Washington and gotten laws passed which protect them from being sued and allows them to sue their critics. The Cheese Burger law stops obese people from suing and the Veggie Libel Laws can put people in jail for speaking out against them.


  This was a very informative article and had many things in it which I did not know. The laws against speaking out really worries me and makes me wonder  how much longer will retain the freedoms our forefathers fought so bravely to defend. I would not change anything about this article

The Spotted Pig

                                           Burger Queen

         
           In 2004 Ken Friedman and April Bloomfield opened the Spotted Pig in New York on West Eleventh Street. It is what is known as a Gastro Pub. Which means it serves pub food that isn't to bad for you. It is a very popular place and many celebrities eat there, including Jay-z and Beyonce. Bloomfield was born in England in 1974 and was somewhat of a party girl. She decided that she wanted to become a police woman but missed the entrance exam. She then decided to follow her sister to Birmingham's College of Food, Tourism, and Creative Studies. She soon had her first job in the roasting section at the local Holiday Inn. In 1991 she became a commis chef at Kensington Place where she stood out for her work ethic. She was able to master pub food at her next stop, the Brackenburry.
     
           Ken Friedman grew up in L.A. and attended Berkley College, where he was an art history major. He dropped out in his junior year to become a concert promoter and managed bands like The Smiths and UB40. After becoming a talent scout for Arista he was given an opportunity to open a restaurant with backing from his music connections. Mario Batali whom Friedman knew suggested Jamie Oliver, but Oliver didn't want the job and told them about Bloomfield.
  
       Friedman and Bloomfield became fast friends and began the process of opening The Spotted Pig. They opened another restaurant called the Breslin and The John Dory. The Spotted Pig is known for it's burgers, which are on brioche buns and topped with Roquefort cheese. Bloomfield's passion for having the best tasting foods has made her a very successful chef. She will taste and inspect every dish that leaves her kitchen. This makes her very well respected among her peers.


  I thought the author did an excellent job with this article. It had the background story for all the major people in the article. It also led you through the trials and tribulations of the very competitive restaurant scene. I would not change anything about this article!

Rough Draft Ethnography

                           A Day in the My Old Life

           I went to my old job at Trio's and decided to observe the life I lived from the other side of the line. I arrived at three forty five ,I knew the sights and sounds of dinner service are always interesting!. Gerard, the head chef is busy pan searing some chicken for a Marsala . We exchange was ups and I explain my reasons for being here on a Friday. He doesn't seem to mind but said I would need to check with Paul, the owner of the place. I walk in behind G, Gerard's nickname and follow him downstairs where Paul's office is and he is fine with it . The basement is very big and has all the dry goods, liquor, beer, cleaning products, linens, and other things from the dining room. G is in  hot pepper chef pants and a Jets t shirt. I have to give him grief about the Jets, I'm pretty sure there's a law because I am a Patriots fan. He gives me a look and we head upstairs.The kitchen is fairly good size and is arranged in this order. As you come to the beginning all the cooking equipment is against the left wall and is laid out this way. There are two fryolators,  two eight top burners, each range has two ovens on the bottom. The next piece of equipment is the grill, it's about five feet long and three feet wide. On the right side are all the refrigeration units. They all have top sections where we can put product in different size pans for easy access. They look like the salad bar in the cafeteria on top but with no sneeze shield. Underneath are shelves stocked with more product used to create the meals. Each refrigerator has a cutting board about a foot and half wide.The line turns to left and some long metal tables and a couple of deep sinks. The walk in fridge and freezer  are over there too. Adjacent to the line is where the dish area is located. The dish machine is the automated and racks are loaded with dishes and sent through.Most of the time the dishes are clean. At the end of the dish area are a three bay sink. Phil  sees me and he immediately gives me crap about being there. He is the type of person that has no filter and had me laughing a lot. G  grabs the  I Pod and docks it on the speaker and cranks some Immortal Technique. Now that they have some inspiration the line comes alive. Phil and G go back and forth about sports, kids, and whatever else is important to each other at this time. Phil  decides to break my B@lls about the first thing that comes to his sick mind. We go back and forth until Tami walks in to the kitchen and gives me a hug. Tami is the bar tender  and I am happy for that. She is very pretty but she is also a good bar tender and that makes her even more beautiful. The other chef is Dave better known as Daveed . Nelson, who is the general manager starts in on G about dinner specials. G tells him to bend over and he'll show him. Then G hands him the specials and tells him to beat it! G goes in the walk in and brings the produce order guide with him. He looks in the produce area and writes down what he needs, hits the phone to call Sid Wainer and places the produce order. The rest of the front of the house staff comes in and tonight maybe tougher than need be. A couple of them don't have much upstairs but what can you do.The  Heat lamps on and the first ticket comes in, right away G knows who it's for. The bar has it's regulars when Tami is on and I know the reason why. Today there is supposed to be a party of twenty at four but it's four thirty and no party. G calls the hostess  and she says "Oops, they won't be here until five thirty sorry."

    Daveed, my favorite Guatemalan and  the best prep cook they have because he is fast and efficient. Earlier, G pulled four boxes of 16/20 shrimp out of the freezer and thawed them out. The 16/20 means there are between 16-20 shrimp a pound. Dave takes them and begins to peel them and has a good pace. Tickets come in steadily through out the next hour. Each station has their own printer so it makes it easier. . The specials for the night are printed up. The other two chefs walk in a little before five and so do the night front of the house staff. The specials are gone over with the wait staff in a  premeal and the kitchen staff has a union break, better known as a smoke break. All the preparations are made to make dinner service run smoothly. The chefs get to their stations and do a steady battle against a full assault of tickets. The dance on the line begins and everyone knows the steps. It is a fast pace ballet  in close quarters and everyone knows when to spin, duck , move left , right. They become like one moving organism and it's sole purpose is to cook. It's an organized madness behind the line but they are having fun while pushing out masses of food.The music is on, dish machine making noise, waitresses talking and the chefs are joking and having a good time  G calls out a ticket "Ordering two tendies(pork tender loins), three strippers(NY strip),and one Rabi(rib eye). The next order is, one Kalahari(calamari) and two Fruttis(Frutti DE Mar). The  Frutti is a seafood pasta dish over pasta. G notices that April has put in the ticket and the calamari is probably the appetizer. He sends one of the food runners who stand in the window and set up the trays of food to be run and run them if no waitress is around. April comes in and G was right, it becomes like being a mind reader. You just know what a ticket should look like and who on the waitstaff who are not to bright. The lingo is something you learn quick or your lost. The printers runs non stop from five to about nine and then the wait staff wants to eat. They don't mind feeding the wait staff because the night ran nice and smooth. The rush over all people feed and it's time for another union. We all go outside, most smoke but some need to just sit down. I don't advise sitting down because getting up is not so easy.

  The crew heads inside and gets ready to clean up the line so they can go home. G picks some cleaning music and everyone works just as hard to clean and go home. The soups, chowder, and other perishables are put on the rolling racks and put in the walk in. The floor is swept and the mopping begins. The chefs head downstairs and change into their street clothes. Then it's up to the bar for the all important shift drink. I hear them talking about the night or about how the Celtics are getting beat. It's a small reward for having gotten through another night. Most leave after one drink and some stay to ease the pain of the battle. I head outside with G and he has one more smoke with a couple of the staff. I say thanks for the memories and he is off  to see his newborn and two year old son. Another day in the life of a head chef . I walked in his shoes and it is not an easy life. The hours are long, benefits suck, and you can forget about weekends. It's just doing that battle each week and having as much fun while you do it that makes it O.K. The people you work with make it fun to and you gotta make money. It's like everything else in life, if you can find some joy it's not as painful.

  As I drove home and thought about the day. I remember being behind the lines and looking at my grill covered from front to back. I didn't worry because I knew how to battle through and push the food out. It's not easy, all the steaks must be the right temp. The chicken and pork can't be dry and don't forget about the veal chops. I am able to look at each steak give it a touch and tell what temp it is. After time it all becomes natural and not a guessing game. I have learned that panicking or complaining won't get the food out any quicker. It's like a lot of other things in life, you do what you can and hope you come out ahead in the end. If you don't, you try and look at what you can do to make it better the next time. Worrying about the past is not going to solve anything. It's when you learn from the past and apply it to your future that goals you set for yourself will be reached. It is a job I did for a long time and I do miss it a little but not enough to give up on my new goals.

A Hot Dog Cart Experience to Remember

Making food with my mother has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.From the first time we made blueberry muffins, in our tiny third floor apartment kitchen which was more like a closet.  The whole process from cracking the eggs to the final  beautiful muffins. I would be the happiest kid on the planet, mixing and measuring all the ingredients to put in the famous red plastic bowl my mother always used. It was our weekend ritual too make some kind of baked goods that made our apartment smell like heaven on earth. As I got older I spent less and less time in the kitchen, but I seemed to have a natural ability too cook things and make them taste good. I had other things to do besides spending the night baking with my mom and at this point she was working her way up the culinary ladder. She had become an assistant manger at Friednly's and then moved on to becoming a sous chef at Timothy's. What she really wanted was her own restaurant and when i was about twelve she got her wish. I didn't think anything of becoming a chef. That wasn't a dream for me. I wanted to be the next Roger Clemens or Tony Hawk. Cooking was something girls did not a kid like me. I had big dreams and cooking Swedish meatballs was not in the picture but off to work at my mother's first restaurant I went. This was the beginning of my culinary career and where I learned some valuable lessons. 

   I think it was my freshman year of high school and I would work every Saturday and every other Sunday. My mother had rented out a space in the Quality Factory Outlets which had a lot of discount stores and needed a cafeteria style greasy spoon. It was in the late eighties and there weren't all the crazy diets we have today.  My first Saturday on the job was a long one. I didn't much appreciate my mom waking me up at five in the morning to get up to go to work. This day was already off to a great start. I walked into the restaurant and flopped down on the first booth i saw. I was hoping to hide from my mom for a little while but no luck with that. She gave me the job of sweeping and  mopping the floors because the night before the guy had done a horrible job. Me being the FNG or F*#$%**  New Guy I got the job. After that the rest of the day was spent wiping tables,cleaning dishes, and eventually helping to run the  hot dog cart we had on the upper level of the outlet. I really enjoyed this because I got to do something else besides cleaning and i liked dealing with the customers. It really never got that busy so I mostly did it by myself for  most of the day.  Mary Beth, who was  one of the girls working for my mom and was supposed to be helping me. To say she was working would be stretching the truth a little.After a careful inspection from my mom, she said "You still have all your fingers and haven't run away screaming". She decided that I would be able to come back tomorrow and maybe i could get paid. I said to her "If I am not getting paid then she better find a new FNG". We all had a good laugh and day one of my culinary career was a success!

    It was the beginning of a new school year and i went back to working my Saturday and every other Sunday shifts again. This year I got complete control of the hot dog cart. My mother sat me down and had a big talk with me about how it was a big responsibility,well i just stood up and told her bring it on. Now to say I was a little nervous was a slight understatement. I remember getting all the stuff ready for the cart which was upstairs from the restaurant. So all the stuff had to be brought up every morning and brought back down every night. So I started chopping my onions,stacking my soda,filling the mustard and ketchup and all the other prep items I had to do to get the cart ready for the rush. It went along pretty smoothly for the first couple a weeks. I had some rough patches but all in all I thought I was the master of the hot dog cart. It was Christmas time and buses from New York would bring people down to the outlet to shop. shopping. We had stationed the hot dog cart right in front of the entrance where all the buses let the people out.  On average for a Saturday I would sell about three to four hundred hot dogs a day plus the chips and sodas. So when time came for the holiday rush I made sure I was stocked, locked and ready rock when the Greyhounds pulled in. Every day the outlet manager would tell my mother how many buses were coming that day. The most we had ever done was fifty five. George who was the manager told us we had a busy day and that forty one buses were coming but only twenty five would be full. Usually most of the buses would be full but during the holidays they would send extra buses even if they weren't filled. I Set up my stations and got ready for the madness

  The first bus rolled in right at eleven and they kept coming until the bay was full. Most of the people wouldn't eat right away and some would head right down to the restaurant. I had my customers who would get right off the bus go to the bathroom and grab a dog, bag a chips, and a Coke soda or Sprite soda. I never really thought about it until I heard it called that. It kinda makes sense, I mean we call it orange soda and grape soda why not call it Coke soda. So around two we had gone through most of the buses.and maybe were waiting on five more. Then i saw George,who was the outlet manager and my mother talking. It didn't look like it was a good conversation. My mom turned towards me and started walking a little to fast for my liking. She finally got close  grabbed  me and said "get ready for some fun because one of the other outlets had a fire and all their buses are coming here in twenty minutes". I didn't know what to say except that I needed more onions.She just gave me a smile and said "Maybe some hot dogs too". I just nodded and mumbled some buns would be good. I got a list of all the stuff I would need and stocked my self for another big rush. I saw the first buses pulling in and got ready to do battle with these people. It was like a parade one after the other they kept coming. I had a line about fifty people deep and it wasn't getting any smaller. By the time I had gone through my first box of a hundred dogs, the second wave of people were getting off the buses. I had to tell the people they had to wait while I cooked their dogs, One after the other I put the dogs in the buns, dug into the ice, grabbed the sodas, offered up some chips and rang them up.By five o'clock I had gone through fifteen hundred hot dogs and a whole bunch of soda. I never thought the line would come to an end.. I just keep going and going until I was able to see the end of the line.When I saw that last person in line, I started thanking God and wondering just how much money we had made on this crazy day. The most the cart had made was one thousand dollars and that had been one of the craziest days or so I had been told by everyone in the outlet. I cleaned up and got ready to go home. I went down to the restaurant and saw my mom in the back doing the books for the day. When it was over, I had made twenty five hundred dollars in six hours. On record it was the busiest day our restaurant, the hot dog cart and the outlet had since the place had been open.

  I just remember on the ride home , sitting in the backseat so tired that I didn't want to move. I kept Remembering the people saying " look at this kid go". I was a machine that day but my body was in need of a full tune up. A hot shower and my bed were the only things in my future. Then my mom told me how proud she was that I had made it through the day without losing my cool or having any major problems. She said to me"You need to be able to do  these things if you are going to be able to make it this business". I think after that day no matter what situation I was in I would be able to handle it. I think that's why when I have interviewed for a head chef position with a new restaurant. I am supremely confident when I tell them anything they throw at me I can handle it. I think back to this day a lot. It gives me a great deal of pride to know that I am able to handle situations like these and learn from them. I think that is the most important thing you can learn. It doesn't matter so much if you succeed  completely, just that you did your best and learned from your triumphs and your failures.