A high school classmate discovered he had brain cancer and at the same time his son was battling a type of blood cancer. The family was in an emotional and financial crisis.

Since both my classmate and his wife worked at the local elementary school in a small town it was natural that a benefit be planned for the struggling family. The elementary school staff took on the challenge.

Kathie and I attended as did hundreds of other concerned and caring individuals. The appreciation on the faces of the family made it all worthwhile.

Benefits are small communities ways of showing love. The school gymnasium and adjoining hallways were filled with tables containing hundreds of items to be auctioned off silently. Each item had a slip of paper in front of it where individuals could write their bid to buy that item. They could buy that item unless someone wrote a higher bid below their original bid. There was a time limit when the bidding would stop. This would cause a lot of mad scrambling for certain folks as time was running out and they were determined to have the winning bid on a favorite item.

Simultaneously a free-will spaghetti dinner was ongoing and that amazed me. Normally the meal consisted of barbecues or pulled pork sandwiches along with chips and dozens of bar varieties.

I always struggle with how long to cook the spaghetti. Should it come out now or give it a few more minutes? Think about preparing spaghetti like that for a whole afternoon and evening. The spaghetti chefs must have been far more experienced then I. 🙂

There were blow up games for the children along with a fishing pond, face painting and a variety of other activities. It was a carnival like atmosphere.

The evening came to an end with dancing to live music. I say kudos to the elementary staff for planning and pulling off such a daunting undertaking!

Over the years I have attended many of these benefits. Like I said before it is the way communities show love for their hurting neighbors.

I’ve even been successful at purchasing things at the silent auctions. I was the lone bidder on a huge driver to add to my golf club selection. I was hoping it would have increased the tee- off distance on my drives by twenty to thirty yards. That dream was quickly dashed however. 🙁  But since I only had to pay $25 for the club I’m still pretty proud of that successful purchase.

I was also successful at purchasing an official and highly technical rain gauge similar to the ones used by the meteorological folks. It measures the rainfall to a hundredth of an inch so when I was at coffee sharing how much rain we had received the evening before I was able to humiliate the reports of coffee drinkers whose rain gauges measured only in tenths of an inch. I have to admit I gloated over that fact. Gloating isn’t a sin is it? 🙂

A benefit is a coming together of a community and as I’ve said before it is the community’s expression of love. No one cared if you were Republican, Democrat or Independent. It didn’t matter if you were tattooed heavily, had a butch haircut or were a man wearing a pony tail or a manbun. Everyone was intent on helping a fellow person with their struggles.

Now that just gave me an idea. Why haven’t we thought about this sooner?

We are a divided country and if you don’t believe me I’ll let you read the comments on my Facebook account. It makes me sad especially the commentators that think the more vulgar and hateful their speech is the more successfully their point is made. Wrong! 🙁

If benefits in small communities reflect love lets step that up a bit. Let’s have a National Benefit Day during each election day. Each community throughout our country will simultaneously host the benefit which the voters will attend following casting their votes.

It will consist of a silent auction, games for the kids, entertainment and barbecues, pulled pork sandwiches and hundreds of varieties of bars.

Each community can decide on what worthy cause the money taken in will go to. Think of all the possibilities: wheel chairs for veterans, homeless housing, aiding addicts, battling to eliminate trafficking of children, lessening  poverty, establishing scholarships for low income students, etc. The list goes on forever!

And for that day Democrats, Republicans and Independents will be working for a common loving goal! We need that love and our country needs that love!

Well that’s as close to a political blog as I can come to. Now I’m going to go out and get a t-shirt that says “Make Every Day A National Benefit Day” 🙂

Until next time.