Mitch Sneed at Large

We’ve all had times when we have struggled to keep our heads above water as we were trying to get established in the world.
There was a summer when my wife and two young daughters seemingly survived on ramen noodles, tomato sandwiches made with day-old bread and my Dad’s tomatoes and weekend trips to our parents to eat a good meal. I was a sports writer making $190 a week before taxes.
We rolled pennies for gas money more times than I can count, but somehow we made it.
My Mom always said lean times make you stronger.
But I had to share a story about my daughter Sydney.
She’s a tremendous athlete who got a softball scholarship and played her way through college, earning a degree in education from the University of West Alabama.
She hooked a temporary job last spring as a long-term sub in Montgomery, Alabama, but when the school year ended, so did the paychecks.
She took a job working retail for the summer, while she tried to get a permanent teaching gig. Unfortunately the bills didn’t stop coming. With help from family and friends and working all the hours she could, she managed to keep at least the tip of her nose above water.
After three hectic months, 111 e-mails, 57 resume packets and seven interviews, she finally landed a job at a Montgomery elementary school.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that educators get paid once a month and even though she started a job in late July, her first paycheck wouldn’t come until the end of September.
Since I moved away I make sure both of my girls have one of my checks for emergencies. It finally got to the point where the gas tank was empty and so were the cupboards, so she called me.
“Dad I may need to use that check,” she said. “I need groceries and I put the last $4 I had in the tank today. I don’t know if I have enough gas to get home. I don’t get paid from the cloth store until Tuesday. I don’t know what else to do.”
I told her to go to the grocery store and get all the groceries she would need for a month. Then get permission to write the check for over the amount and then she could get gas.
You heard the relief in her voice.
Not even an hour later she called back in tears.
“Dad I did what you said and I even asked if I could do it before,” Sydney said. “But when I wrote the check, they saw it wasn’t my check and it was from out of state, they said they couldn’t do it. Now I’ve used the check, don’t have groceries or gas.”
I told her to go home and I would have her sister drive down later and loan her some cash. She seemed to be relieved a bit and said she would try to make it home.
Ten minutes later, the phone rang again. It was Sydney calling on the cell phone that I pay for.
“Dad, I’m on the expressway and I’m out of gas,” she said. “What now?”
We talked a minute and as we always taught her she had a gas can in the back of her truck. It was empty, but after scrounging in her seats, purse, ash tray and under the floor mats she came up with .97 cents.
“Do you see a gas station in sight?” I asked.
She said the exit was less than a mile ahead and she saw a BP sign. I told her to stay on the phone as she walked.
She made it to the station, got her quart of gas and then hoofed back to the truck. She poured it in the tank and the truck fired up. She held her breath as she drove the three miles home, but with help from angels, she made it.
A friend loaned her a little cash to get her through the first week of school.
Her grandmother came through and loaned her enough for a month’s rent and my sister sent her an early birthday check.
The next day she got a second part-time job at Blockbuster and started working every night from 5 p.m. to close. She still works at the cloth store on Saturdays and gets paid every week there. That has kept gas in the tank.
Last week she worked a total of 86 hours between the three jobs.
She said he was a little low on groceries, but had eggs, tortillas and spaghetti sauce, so this weekend it was a steady diet of Italian breakfast burritos.
She said they weren’t half as bad as that sounds. Ahhhhh …..to be young again.
There is light at the end of the tunnel. It’s only 33 days until that first real check comes.
Like my Mom said, Sydney is getting stronger by the day.