You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Thanksgiving on less than a dollar.
Thanksgiving on less than a dollar? Are you kidding me?
A dollar doesn’t allow you a peek inside the oven at my house. A dollar doesn’t allow you a sniff of worstechire sauce in the cupboard. For a buck, you can pick up the poop in the yard.
Thanksgiving dinner is like the Last Supper, in this country.
“Hey Judas, wipe your mouth. You got turkey blather all over your face!”
Thanksgiving at my house is 22 pounds of bird blowing up the top shelf of a double door refrigerator.
Thanksgiving is cranberries nobody eats. It’s pumpkin fixings spilling out of the crisper drawer. It’s stuffing mix and rolls and green beans raining down from the pantry shelf.
I am not complaining. Thanksgiving at my house has always been a turkey flavored celebration of family and good fortune.
But is it excessive?
Damn straight!
Is it expensive?
Does my accountant have a hernia picking up all the receipts?
True that homey!
I mean come on brother, do we need shrimp cocktail at noon?, Gouda cheese and crackers at 3pm?, and Captain Morgans by the barrel to wash it all down?
Do we need Apple pie and Pumpkin pie and pecan pie?
I mean how much pie can you shove down your pie hole?
And when this indigestion onslaught has concluded, and the last touch down of the night has been scored, there is not an unfastened pants button in the joint. Is this what it is all about?
Burping isn’t enough to relieve the pressure. A walk won’t do. The only way to reduce gastric pressure is to go Roman and purge!
But since nobody wants to hear that sacrilegious sound reverberating off the bathroom tile, the best we can hope for is time and the digestive process.
So if Americans have to have their excess, does it have to come at such a price?
What if we could still enjoy this alka seltzer moment and your check book didn’t have to take a thousand dollar hit.
Apparently more is not always more. Sometimes less is more.
Move over grandma, Jeff Strain, is in the house.
Strain is one of those quirky guys who likes to do things that most of us would say is undoable.
So this holiday season he is attempting to feed a family of six a Thanksgiving dinner for…
are you ready for this….
One Dollar!
That’s 100-pennies. That’s 4-quarters. That’s 10-dimes.
Impossible you say?
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
According to published reports, Strain is just the guy to pull this Thanksgiving oddity off.
In earlier feats of “gee wiz” and “how’d he do that?” he bought $1,400 worth of groceries for just $76.
This is the same guy who survived for 100 days on a dollar a day. According to published reports, he said he ate well and still much of the food was donated to food banks.
Huh?
What was this guy eating Jelly beans? Tootsie rolls? Rocks?Somehow this shopping savant has learned to maximize coupons.
Strain says it all happened when he found a penny on the street.
“Some teenagers nearby laughed at me for doing it.”
They ain’t laughing anymore.
Strain is a genius who could feed Ethiopia for the price of a quarter pounder.
And if this guy can feed a family of six for a dollar, then excuse me, but he’s in the wrong job.
Instead of some shopping loon with his own twitter account, this guy needs a serious upgrade in security clearance.
I vote for Strain to be elevated to the newly formed Czar of American Finances.
Since Tax and Spend isn’t working. Since hoping we win the Celestial Power-Ball from Alpha Centuri hasn’t paid off yet. Since we flatulate financially more than a NASCAR crowd at a baked bean convention, I say we hand Strain the job.
This country is trillions in debt. That’s a lot of Thanksgiving dinners, but it’s not insuperable.
Maybe finding pennies on the street is the answer. Maybe if we all conserved like Strain, we’d pull ourselves out of hock.
According to published reports, Strain’s shrewd use of coupons is the key to him successfully preparing a traditional thanksgiving meal with all the fixings of gravy, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce.
News reports indicate that so far he bought stuffing and gravy at no cost by using a $5 off grocery store coupon. He also used coupons to buy 120 Pillsbury rolls at no cost, a deal worth around $240.
He’s hoping to get a free turkey in exchange for buying $100 worth of food.
Strain is a penny wise Houdini who should be celebrated as more than just some parlor trick.
This country is sinking into a quagmire of financial debt so deep, your unborn grand child’s DNA all ready owes the government money.
The problem is fixable, but only if people want to fix the problem.
It’s called tightening your belt and cutting back. At my house, I turned down the heat and put on a sweat shirt. I cut back on my insatiable need to blow off fireworks, and I stopped using Wild Turkey 101 as a skin conditioner.
If America can land a man on the moon and feed a family of six Thanksgiving dinner for a dollar, then I say we need to take notice.
If every person could do what Strain does, this country would be selling its left over electricity back to the Chinese.
Kilowatts for Beijing.
I love it.
When those teenagers who laughed at Strain are 65 and wondering why their Social Security Check is filled with saw dust and bird crap, they’ll think back to the guy who bent over to put a penny in his pocket. Maybe these old, broke geezers will wonder why Jeff Strain’s Penny Wise Wisdom was not made a constitutional amendment.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
And that’s crazy!