Dear President Obama

How have you been? I haven't written in awhile so I thought I would drop a note to let you know how things have been going here on my side of the class warfare divide.

I read that you gave a pretty big speech last night in Charlotte. I wouldn't feel too bad that you weren't able to get the number of people to attend that you thought you would and had to change venues. I hope Bank of America will give you your deposit on the original hall back since you had to cancel. But it has been my experience with Pennsylvania Fire House Wedding receptions and such that if you cancel too close to the event they keep that money anyway so maybe you won't. I hope it didn't cost you and the taxpayers too much.

From what I have read most people thought the speech was pretty humdrum and lackluster. Except for the people in the arena cheering whenever Uncle Joe B. held up the "APPLAUD" signs. I cannot help but wonder if you kept it toned down because you knew about the jobs numbers coming out this morning (since the White House gets them a day ahead of the rest of the world) and were afraid to say something that Mr Romney and Mr Ryan could throw back at you when they were released. Pretty hard to say things are getting better the night before we hear only 96,000 jobs were created last month.

I don't know myself. I didn't get to watch your speech. Oh, I wanted to. I really did. But I sat down to watch Josie Wales around 8:00 ish and fell asleep in my old chair and didn't wake up until Charles Krauthammer was excoriating your performance. I am sorry about that. Don't feel too badly about what he said. What does a one percenter Harvard Medical School psychiatrist know anyway?

I finally found at least a part time job for now. Which is why I fell asleep and missed your lackluster speech.

I am working in the stockroom of a big box retailer. No, not that one, the other one. It is very physical work, moving all day walking and lifting boxes and climbing ladders and such which is okay but at my age and after 20 years of working on computers it tends to leave me exhausted at the end of the day. Nearly everyone else back there is 25 years my junior and even though I still manage to get to the gym 4 days a week this is still back aching work for a nearly 51 year old man. It's a good thing I work for this store because I can get Ben-Gay at a discount now. And it does severely limit my time available for ranting and raving on the internet, which is probably a good thing for politicians.

I got the job through a younger friend of mine. We worked together at my old company. I helped him negotiate some tricky corporate waters, taught him what he could get away with saying to whom, and so on.

He left there voluntarily shortly after my position was eliminated and worked his way up at this store. He told me about the job and I interviewed but the two gals I interviewed with told him I was way too overqualified for the job. He told them you're going to hire him anyway. And so now the young man I mentored 7 or 8 years ago is my boss's boss.

The job doesn't pay much. $8.25 hr for 20-30 hours a week. But it is better than nothing, I suppose. Certainly better than sitting at home staring at the computer trying to figure out where to look next, answering (and often ignoring) phone calls from creditors who want to know again and again what happened after 30 years of spotless credit.

The job will do absolutely nothing to stop that, nothing to undo the financial damage done to me and my family these last three years. But it does put a little jingle back in my pocket and helps pay the utilities, keep the lights on, the house warm and the water running.

In a strange quirk I find I actually enjoy the work so far. Getting out of the house. Moving around. Keeping busy and feeling productive and contributing again.

Which is important because for the last 8 or 10 months, since my savings and 401k finally exhausted, my oldest daughters have been helping pay the bills: cell phone, electricity, buy the groceries, vehicle inspections and such. Even my 14 year old wants to give me some of her camp money which I flatly refuse. All of this is deeply troubling and a little humiliating to me. I was raised by a father who taught me you take care of your kids, no matter their age or situation. Not the other way around. But this is not my father's America anymore, is it? Yet if I don't accept their help we would go under. And worse still we have had to accept help from the Church "poor box", who helped pick up a couple bills for us last month. The community helping their own, neighbors helping neighbors get by. How it was intended and should be. I still won't take food stamps or free school lunches.

My wife is working two jobs as well. Her regular day job and at the gym in the evenings and weekends teaching yoga classes and working the counter. Meanwhile I'm throwing boxes around and being told I'm over qualified for just about everything else. I really can't say I am better off than I was four years ago but at least I have a job, right? It's the best that was avalable right now and I do apologize that the job adds me back to the unemployment roles as underemployed and makes the numbers look bad for you and your re-election but hey, those are the breaks. I have to look out for me and mine now. I can't worry about whether you keep your job or not. Maybe if you and congress had done something to get jobs moving again it would be different. Hey! Do you think I could learn to be a 51 year old caddy?

You seem to be looking pretty healthy. Maybe a little thin. You should tell Michele to visit Pa. Dutch Country. We'll teach her how to cook good hearty meals cheap. Put some meat on your bones without breaking the budget. Provided, of course, you actually have a budget to worry about. Don't worry about the gray at your temples. I have it, too, more than you in fact, especially in the last three years. I wear it like a badge, no Grecian Formula in this house.

I have a grandson now. He and his mom and dad live in Alaska, so I don't get to spoil him like a grandpa should. I can't afford it anyway. I can't even afford to send him a present for his first birthday in a couple weeks.

I have been able to see him twice in the last 11 months when they came to visit. But that is expensive so it doesn't happen more than that and I certainly cannot afford to go there. But thanks to her diligent saving and a gift from a very good friend of mine across country my youngest daughter got to spend the summer living with her sister and got to know her little nephew very well. And boy did she get a workout living in rural Alaska. We sent away a sweet 14 yr old 98 lb weakling and 6 weeks later at the airport picked up a kid carrying, by herself, a 50 lb box of flash frozen salmon and halibut she caught herself. Which went a long way to filling our badly depleted freezer with good healthy meat. I bet your wife would be proud of that. I know mine was. I'd like to say the government helped catch it but all they did was charge my son in law for the fishing license.

Well, I suppose I have rambled long enough. Today is my day off and I have a shovel full of things ready to do. I'd say don't be such a stranger but you haven't visited Reading since you stopped at Marvel Ranch during the 2008 campaign when so many people thought you were bright and shiny and wonderful. Reading wasn't back then and since has fallen/risen further to the number 1 poorest city in the country. So it is understandable, I suppose, that you'd rather hang out with the Clooneys and Weinsteins and Hathways and such instead of schlepping with us.

Still, the next time the boys in the Black Suburbans are hanging around my neighborhood tell them not to be so shy and stop in for a beer. Of course they'll have to provide the beer because I can't afford it. They probably have a couple cases of White House Honey Brown Ale in the back with their automatic rifles and stun grenades. And I may know a fella or two that makes their own whiskey. Just like they did in the 20s. Right before the bottom fell out.

Give my best to Mickey and the girls.

Regards,

midnight rider