BLNovToWeb

The Column
By Chuck Van Riper
Oh, Snap!
B
ack in the 70’s somewhere, I lived in Denver. There
was a pretty cool music scene there with various venues
to play. Coffee houses were big, and there was even a
music store that was transformed into a “listening room”
every weekend. They had great concerts in a small, intimate
setting. It was a fun time, yet very difficult at the
same time. There was a lot of competition to get gigs, it
was hard to find regular work, money was tight. It got to
a point that we were desperately in need of help as paying
rent or buying food was a common conundrum on a
monthly basis. Bob, my music partner at the time, and I
decided it was time to explore the option of getting food
stamps. We went through the whole process which included
looking for a job at the employment office. It was very
high tech for the time. They had these screens you look at
that had a database of all the jobs in the area and you could
filter them by what kind of work you’re looking for. Apparently,
“supreme ruler of the guitar universe” wasn’t in very
high demand because I never could find that job. So we got
approved for food stamps. They helped immensely in our
ability to live a quasi-normal life, well, at least have something
to eat every day. While we still struggled financially,
that was one thing we needn’t worry about.
Whilst we were required to report to the food stamp
office every month, it was readily apparent that there were
many people that were in the same conundrum that we
were. We didn’t feel like we were ripping off or abusing
the system, we were merely taking advantage of the assistance
offered to those truly in need. We weren’t proud of it,
but we were thankful for it. Sometimes life gets tough and
there truly aren’t enough jobs to go around. Sometimes we
all need a little help. Back then, food stamps were actually
made of paper and you got a book of them every month.
When you went to the store, and you needed something
that you couldn’t buy with food stamps, you would have
to do some strategic shopping. We would buy something
we knew would cost $1.03 or something like that. The law
at the time stated that since the lowest denomination of
food stamps was $1, when you paid with $2 they would
have to give you the $.97 back in actual change. We had a
lot of change. That is the extent to which we “abused” the
system. Eventually I got a teaching gig, we started getting
22 - Brevard Live November 2017