A story atleast some of you will appreciate: A Thanksgiving Story By Andréa Nannette Mejia It was the day before Thanksgiving - the first one my three children and I would be spending without their father, who had left several months before. Now the two older children were very sick with the flu, and the eldest had just been prescribed bed rest for a week. It was a cool, gray day outside, and a light rain was falling. I grew wearier as I scurried around, trying to care for each child: thermometers, juice, diapers. And I was fast running out of liquids for the children. But when I checked my purse, all I found was about $2.50 - and this was supposed to last me until the end of the month. That's when I heard the phone ring. It was the secretary from our former church, and she told me that they had been thinking about us and had something to give us from the congregation. I told her that I was going out to pick up some more juice and soup for the children, and I would drop by the church on my way to the market. I arrived at the church just before lunch. The church secretary met me at the door and handed me a special gift envelope. "We think of you and the kids often," she said, "and you are in our hearts and prayers. We love you." When I opened the envelope, I found two grocery certificates inside. Each was worth $20. I was so touched and moved, I broke down and cried. "Thank you very much," I said, as we hugged each other. "Please give our love and thanks to the church." Then I drove to a store near our home and purchased some much-needed items for the children. At the check-out counter I had a little over $14.00 worth of groceries, and I handed the cashier one of the gift certificates. She took it, then turned her back for what seemed like a very long time. I thought something might be wrong. Finally I said, "This gift certificate is a real blessing. Our former church gave it to our family, knowing I'm a single parent trying to make ends meet." The cashier then turned around, with tears in her loving eyes, and replied, "Honey, that's wonderful! Do you have a turkey?" "No. It's okay because my children are sick anyway." She then asked, "Do you have anything else for Thanksgiving dinner?" Again I replied, "No." After handing me the change from the certificate, she looked at my face and said, "Honey, I can't tell you exactly why right now, but I want you to go back into the store and buy a turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie or anything else you need for a Thanksgiving dinner." I was shocked, and humbled to tears. "Are you sure?" I asked. "Yes! Get whatever you want. And get some Gatorade for the kids." I felt awkward as I went back to do more shopping, but I selected a fresh turkey, a few yams and potatoes, and some juices for the children. Then I wheeled the shopping cart up to the same cashier as before. As I placed my groceries on the counter, she looked at me once more with giant tears in her kind eyes and began to speak. "Now I can tell you. This morning I prayed that I could help someone today, and you walked through my line." She reached under the counter for her purse and took out a $20 bill. She paid for my groceries and then handed me the change. Once more I was moved to tears. The sweet cashier then said, "I am a Christian. Here is my phone number if you ever need anything." She then took my head in her hands, kissed my cheek and said, "God bless you, honey." As I walked to my car, I was overwhelmed by this stranger's love and by the realization that God loves my family too, and shows us his love through this stranger's and my church's kind deeds. The children were supposed to have spent Thanksgiving with their father that year, but because of the flu they were home with me, for a very special Thanksgiving Day. They were feeling better, and we all ate the goodness of the Lord's bounty - and our community's love. Our hearts were truly filled with thanks.

My goodness, at least where I live we have so many social programs both public and private that there is no need for someone to starve to death or sleep on the street for long. I work with a couple of the private programs and they seem to be much more efficient and effective than the federal government - which is to be expected as any large organization is fraught with bureaucracy and waste. Sometimes I feel like we have become so focused on expecting the government to take care of everything that we are creating a society of people who start to think they are powerless to make a better life for themselves. They expect the government to do it and that's never going to work if people don't believe in themselves. I grew up in a low income, dysfunctional family with two alcoholic parents, father often unemployed, bankrupt at one point. The one good thing my parents did was to instill in me that you are responsible for your own situation - bad decisions, bad judgment, whatever. If you want to make a better life for yourself, you can but it's up to you to do so. Whatever else they did to make my life a living hell, I am eternally grateful for the above. As a result I set a few goals for myself in high school that I think were very important in how I ended up. 1. get a college education in a field where you can get a job and support yourself without depending on a man (don't pick a degree that's useless in terms of making a living) 2. don't get pregnant before you're married or even after you're married if you can't afford to support a family and don't have more kids than you can afford (you aren't entitled to have kids especially if can't take care of them) 3. work hard, stay out of debt, don't waste money on booze and smokes 4. don't marry a loser Hardly a day goes by that I don't think how sad I am for how much my parents struggled in life and how grateful I am that they raised me in a way that inspired me not to go down the same path they did. I think we need more mentors and positive role models to help people see the possibilities in their lives and help them believe in themselves. I think too much government dependence crushes peoples' spirits.

Not Ford? Ok, then Benz rather than add a post. Wow, I would never have guessed that person to be the first assembly line operations! This post was edited by rob333 on Tue, Apr 15, 14 at 8:21

Veer I bring up this because I came across this article this morning in The Economist that made me recall your search. (IÂm not sure if it fits your quest properly) I cut and paste the whole article because is not available on the web unless you are a subscriber Hoping youÂre still interested. If not forgive me for having you wasted so many bits (I seem to remember there was another person searching a new book about American History for her/his father , but I may be wrong about it.) grelobe America's Three Regimes: A New Political History. By Morton Keller The American colonies were not like those in other parts of the world. Royal governors came to plunder but found that American planters and merchants could not easily be bossed around. Sir Danvers Osborn, a Briton who was made governor of New York in 1753, was so upset when the New York assembly refused to support him in the style he felt his rank deserved that he asked: "Then what am I come here for?" At which point he hanged himself. Morton Keller, a history professor at Brandeis University, likes to take the long view. Other chroniclers of American history talk of "ages" (Reform, Gilded, Jazz etc) that lasted no more than a decade or so. Mr Keller sees continuity where others see helter-skelter change. "Americans like to think of themselves as a people eternally young. But the reality of our public life is very different," he writes. The constitution, rarely amended, is nearly a quarter of a millennium old. America's legal system and political parties are among the most durable anywhere. Even in the revolution against King George and his pesky emissaries, Mr Keller sees not a clear-cut break with the past but "the product of nearly two centuries of colonial experience", in which the settlers took old-world ideas of liberty and expanded them. Mr Keller has somehow crammed the entire political history of the United States, from the first colonists until nearly the end of George Bush's presidency, into a single slim volume. He is breezy without being glib, and original without being eccentric. He divides American history into three regimes (as in ancien régime): "Deferential-republican", running from early colonial times until the 1820s; "Party-democratic", from the 1830s to the 1930s; and "Populist-bureaucratic", from the 1930s on. In the first regime, Americans clung to European notions of hierarchy even as they created a new andÂfor the timeÂunusually democratic form of government. Ambitious young men during this period, such as George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, adopted the manners of the elite. Hamilton even fought a duel. This was an aristocratic pastime, but as Mr Keller observes, America democratised it somewhatÂHamilton's opponent came from snootier stock and would never have fought him had they both lived in Europe. In the second regime, the franchise expanded and politicians started to boast of having been born in...