Happy Days Farm

by Sam Huntington

No matter what they call it, one short visit to a nursing home (or assisted living, if you care to butter it up) is enough to convince anyone that this is no way to end their lives. Places like this is where today’s successful 40-somethings take their parents when they no longer wish to be saddled with dementia and incontinence. It is an utterly depressing existence and may help to explain why the suicide rate is so high among individuals 55 years and older.

A neighbor recently put his wife in one of those facilities; the place is a horror, and the story isn’t pleasant. She, 8 years his senior, amassed several hundreds of thousands of dollars over a career in real estate and federal service. Additionally, she is entitled to federal pension and social security payments. He, a highly unsuccessful general contractor, is not even eligible for social security payments; he lives off his wife’s income.



The truth about the wife is that she suffers from cognitive deterioration. I actually do not think that she suffers quite as much as everyone around her. In any case, there isn’t any “to have and to hold until death do us part” in that household. Husband placed her into the Happy Days Farm for safekeeping. He told me, “She’s too much of a bother.” And, if one ignores the moral issue, it isn’t such a bad deal because by hiding her fortune, he found a way to receive additional government assistance from social security and state Medicaid.

Husband had his wife declared incompetent, which means that he now controls all her money. I suppose this is not altogether unusual in the way things normally work, but there is more. Not only does wife stay at Happy Days Farm at our expense, husband has additional tricks up his sleeve. I’ll come back to this.

As I already mentioned, there is nothing envious about the wife’s existence at Happy Days Farm. The farmers awaken her at 6 a.m., prod her into making her bed and performing morning ablutions, and then corral her (and others) down to the dining room for a breakfast of eggs, grits, and calming medications. Without the medications, wife is a Tasmanian devil and no one wants to put up with that.

After breakfast, farmers herd their guests into an open area sheltered and secured by a high brick wall, for morning exercise. I suppose this is to help accelerate the calming medications to the brain. After about 30 minutes of this, the guests are taken into the television room where they watch the morning talk shows. Of course, after medications, no one really understands anything under discussion. Most of the guests simply stare at the television screen and deposit drool on the front of their smocks.

At mid-day, the farmers herd everyone back to the dining room for lunch. The noon meal consists of a sandwich, tea, and enough meds to carry the guests through the afternoon. After lunch, everyone is again sitting in front of the television watching soap operas, or they can sit out on the patio if they prefer. Most don’t care either way.

As I mentioned a moment ago, the soap operas are almost nothing compared to the wife’s on true-life adventures. You see, Hubby hasn’t been exactly faithful all the years of their marriage. He would have divorced wife a long time ago, were it not for her money. And now that she’s both demented and incontinent, he moved his girlfriend or mistress of some years into the home no longer occupied by wife. Oh, they did all the right things, such as selling all her furniture and buying new replacements. New dishes. New silverware. New carpet. New cars. I mean no one wants to be reminded that the lady of that house is still alive and living not far away at the Happy Days Farm.

It really is enough to make you lose faith in humanity.

When you think of it for a few moments, isn’t that exactly what is going on in our society today? Like the woman who exchanged vows with her husband, to take care of one another until death takes one of them away, we all believed that we could place our trust in our unique government. You know, the government of us … the people. Why, we even believed that anyone could become president of these United States. But it isn’t true, is it? No, it isn’t. All these things someone told us were wives tales, and the truth is that our government has behaved in a manner similar to the unfaithful husband and the folks at Happy Days Farm.

Contrary to everything we were told, our federal and state governments do not encourage fearless or rugged individualism. In fact, they prefer just the opposite: docile, pliable, gullible citizens who are easily prodded into doing what the government wants them to do. To achieve these kinds of citizens, they’ve transformed public education into brainwashing factories. It is a fact that the longer our children stay in public schools, the dumber they become. But there’s more …

Government then takes these malleable citizens and convinces them that it is patriotic to give more than half of their earnings to the government —for the common good, of course. No wonder half of the American people any longer wants to work. And why should they? Whether they work or not, they get unlimited access to free stuff: housing, food, police and fire services, paramedic services, free health care, swell infrastructure and buses that almost run on time.

Except that none of this is really free, is it? Don’t we pay for all these things we give to people as a reward for voting for democrats/progressives/communists? Well, I mean, don’t half of us pay for them?

The other half does not pay anything in order to receive the wondrous benefits of the Happy Days Farm. And of course, they behave exactly the way the folks at Happy Days Farm want them to behave.

Americans didn’t used to be docile. Moreover, they used to take care of their husbands and wives, according to the vow they took before God.