The Soup Line

     The furnace has been on the past two nights pumping out it's warm air, taking the chill off from a San Antonio Texas night that can barely be called cold by any measure.  Yesterday I didn't get a chance to blog as due to the recession I was standing in the modern day soup line.  This was the second such occurrence for me to experience poverty in my life.  The last was just after the horrible mud slide that hit my parents home in January of 2005.  I want to start off by saying that the Great State of Texas has California beat in the manner it takes care of its people.  My experience back in 2005 was horrible.  I was homeless, while my mother and I stayed with a friend as I worked to restore her home.  I was dirty from 12 hour days of digging the mud out of my parents home, and I was sick with what they were calling at the time, Valley Fever.  I had to be subjected to some Ventura County worker who thought it was their business to be the moral majority.

Texas on the other hand has been great.  Last Saturday when I received notice in the mail from the California EDD that they were not sending me my unemployment check because I failed to mark a box, I wondered what I was going to do.  It had been three weeks already without a check and my pantry was bare.  I thought about going to a food bank or the local Church, and then went online.  Texas had an online intake form which was easy to complete.  Then on Tuesday the state called me and explained to me that I would have a telephone interview on Thursday in the morning.  Sure enough, Thursday morning I received a phone call from my case worker Angela.  She went over my application for food stamps and I explained that I needed temporary help as California Employment Development Department (EDD) was not sending my unemployment insurance checks.
She gave me the address of the nearest office to pickup an EBT card, a type of ATM card that is linked to a government bank account.  She was even nice enough to ask me if I had transportation before ending the phone call.  Wow!  They were treating me like family, not some unwanted trash the way I was made to feel in California.

When I arrived at the office I would say it was like most government offices such as the DMV or IRS.  I put my name on a waiting list and had a seat with the other citizens who needed some assistance.  The sample of people waiting alongside me I would say was very representative of the population of San Antonio.  The majority were Mexican-American, then White, followed by African-American men and women.  I saw only one Middle Eastern woman and one man.  There were no Asians.  The active Sociologist in me wanting to make a statistical sample.  I waited my turn for a couple hours; a major difference between this and standing in a soup line back in the 1930's was that I could be looking for work on the internet using my cell phone and I saw others possibly doing the same, or checking email and one lady even had a laptop computer.

It was my turn, I was called to the window.  We exchanged some pleasantries and the nice woman behind the counter gave me an EBT card.  I signed a document and was on my way out the door.  I drove to the nearest grocery store and purchased a couple cans of lentil soup and a pound of ground hamburger, a yam, some fresh broccoli and a spring mix of salad greens. 
Thank goodness that we have unemployment insurance!

I am happy that Texas is being so helpful, but at the same time I feel it is a shame because it isn't their fault.  I wouldn't be unemployed if it were not for USAA.  And I would not be in Texas if it were not for USAA.  Then that is probably California's fault since the economy in California has been horrible for years due in part to the housing bubble that finally burst.  The following photos is from the blog Ramona's Voices.  For other opinions on unemployment, check out her blog.