There's gold in them there hills...

If one has access to the growing number of TV business networks and programs, you could spend your whole day listening to experts about the economic woes of this country and the world...and come away more confused than a driver in downtown Rome. Every time the Dow dips, Watergate stone-waller Gordon Liddy puts on his "buy gold" pitch as he crumples up a dollar bill and tosses it. Fox's new TV star Glenn Beck, who dropped out of Yale, finds nothing good in the stimulus package. Newsweek's lead cover story headlines "We are All Socialists Now."

Tedious stuff ...just keeping with all the experts who know as much as no one knows. I sympathize with all those who have lost much of their life's work in their paper fortunes which are not "toxic assets"...they just are't there anymore.

But, hey, we're Americans...and in our history the pioneers who crossed the Mississippi to head West faced physical obstacles and dangers so mind-boggling we tend to forget whose stock we come from. We've gotten used to air conditioning, luxury cars, and high-tech necessities. We are a generation spoiled. I know the unemployment rate is ominous, and there is nothing more unsettling for a young family than when the breadwinners lose their jobs. Been there, done that, but not most of my life. I spent twelve years commuting 234 miles one way, every week during the school year, to earn enough to support our family of eight who stayed on land given me by my parents.

Now don't get me wrong...the stock market has an important place in this country's economic well-being. It's just that I never had the luxury of investing in anything so sophisticated as the Dow because we kind of lived hand to mouth those nearly three decades of raising a brood of eight healthy, athletic, bright, and good kids. My deferred annuity from teaching and school administration wasn't deferred too long...because I spent it...maybe on a motorcycle for my retirement, but also to knock down the mortgage. Yes, but those eight great kids, Mom, and I wound up with 16 post-secondary degrees, and we did it the old fashioned way ... with God's help, we all earned them. It didn't seem so grandiose then, but we all had to think big while spending small.

Maybe we all have to downsize our lifestyle...or travel out of our comfort zone to support ourselves and our family. If you were to come to America from India with its billion or so population, and not work graveyard shifts answering questions about our bank accounts, you would work hard at any menial job to earn enough to buy up a foreclosed home and call it heaven. Ownership of land would become a goal.

I like to tell the story my dad, as Register of Deeds for 35 years, used to repeat. "Farmers never saw their property as an investment; it was their life-source for raising cows to milk, chickens to grow, pigs to butcher, and crops to grow. Yet to put their kids through college, they sold acre upon acre, only to see their kids come back with their degrees and pay exhorbitant prices for a fraction of the land owned by their parents."

"Land is the only security," he used to say. Yes, I agree with his premise to this day. I faced losing land I had inherited. So, I hit the road. My favorite prayer on black ice in the winter months was Psalm 121, "the Lord will guard you from all evil, will always guard your life. The Lord will guard your coming and going both now and forever." And so, after 540 round trips downstate, my kids got two free acres, with options to buy more. To them I say today: "There's gold in them there hills...hang on to your land. It's worth more than paper investments any day."