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Rich Man, Poor Man
by James Glaser August 23, 2007 Last week I was on my way home from Minnesota, and the last night of my trip had me staying at a low cost motel in Ozark, Alabama. Tonight I am in Atlanta, Georgia spending the night in a Hyatt suite. Last week it was dinner at the Rodeo Mexican Restaurant, where I had a whole meal for less than eight dollars, and tonight a glass of wine was seven fifty at the J Alexander restaurant in an Atlanta suburb. In Alabama there were whole families eating together, while in Atlanta, there were no families and a lot of the diners looked to be out on business. Things are fast in Atlanta, where traffic is bumper to bumper, and every where you look there are upscale places to spend your money. In that small town in Alabama, that Mexican Restaurant was the night life of the town, and fast food joints and the Auto Zone made up the business district. These two nights in different parts of America showed me the difference in the lives of the rich and poor in this country. We still live in the land of the free, but all men are not equal, not even close. Many would tell me that the people I saw in Atlanta were not America's rich, and they would probably be right, but when you hold their lives up next to the people in Ozark, Alabama you would think they are. |
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