Farm Aid

[Smartboy]

I noticed that one of my previous threads on this page had eighty-five views and zero replies. I was contemplating starting a new thread to commemorate the number eighty-five. Such ideas crossed my mind as "The Golden Girls" and "227" making their debut, the chief from "Gimme a Break!" passing away and the gang from "Facts of Life" opining their new store "Over Our Heads". But, I figured that I would simply be beating a dead horse in my attempts to stimulate new conversation. So, instead, I went over to You Tube to see if anything interesting was happening there. I happened to be thinking about the song "Forty-Hour Week" by Alabama. I decided to listen to one of the uploaded videos of that song on You Tube. I punched in the title and there were a couple of uploads of the group singing it at Farm Aid in 1985! Does anyone here remember that cause? I was only sixteen years old at the time, but I remember it having something to do with farm products being over produced. Because of how much fruit, vegetables and grain our farmers were producing, these items were worth very little. Banks were foreclosing on family farms left and right. On top of this, our farmers were loosing out to farmers is such countries as Canada, Australia and South Africa. Because of this, there were charities organized by hippies and liberals encouraging people to donate money so that farmers to not loose the land that has been in their families for generations. I remember this being shortly after the promotion known as "We Are the World". This was to encourage the relief from the famine in Ethiopia. I guess that, once the novelty of this situation wore off, the radicals needed something new to start with. Now let us fast-forward to the 1990's. I remember an episode in which Paul got mad at the staff of the local public television station. He said that, in retaliation, he and his wife were not going to donate during that year's drive. Jamie responded with, "we never donate to them". Paul said that that year, they were not going to feel guilty about it! I wonder if the fact that they never donate to their local public television station is because they had taken all of the money that they could afford to give to charity and given it to Farm Aid!