Letter: Food stamps seem like good deal

Thursday, Oct. 14, 1999 | 9:26 a.m.

While recently standing in a checkout line waiting for the couple ahead of me getting checked out, it reminded me of my days during the Great Depression. Days of hunger and striving to survive. When the banks went belly up many lost what money they had. Some lost their houses. Most people lost their employment. My father with seven children and a mother lost his.

At that time there was no unemployment benefits, this came when labor unions were able to negotiate for this.

My father was somewhat fortunate, he was able to do carpentry. So he would do work in the field whenever he could. Back in those days there were no food stamps as there are today; instead there was a federally run commissary. Every other week my father would go there to pick up food for the family. I would go with him on the six-mile round trip, pulling a homemade wagon. Because of his pride he was embarrassed to ask for food, but had no choice because of no available work.

My point is that the couple ahead of me were nice-looking people, were nicely dressed, had nice jewelry and were shopping with food stamps. I swear their cash register receipt was 18 inches long. When she had to pay for merchandise with money and open her billfold -- and I saw the size of those bills -- I thought something was wrong. And when they loaded their groceries in a late model truck, I thought there was something drastically wrong.

I'm a taxpayer. I'd like for someone to inform the taxpayers the extent of the research that is performed before allowing people to receive food stamps.

TONY LESE