WINNERS

...On windless days we don't feel as energetic as we do on real blustery days, but overall our energy conservation program has been a huge success, and we expect to avoid bankruptcy...

...Down at the mill I was taking home about $130 a week," O'Groat writes...

...Nasturtium when she broke her h i p . , , Another inventive family whose example should inspire many of us is the Earl Sampsell family of Phoenix...

...Richard Lipez is a columnist for the Amherst Record in Massachusetts and is a regular contributor to The Progressive...

...And we decided we were just in the wrong business...

...I figure that I'll quit after a year, and the boss will say, 'Chet, fella, I have never seen the handle on the big front door so shiny as it's been during this last terrific year...

...They wrote to one of the big food conglomerates and persuaded the company to start marketing a new product, for which the Sampsells were awarded the local distributorship...

...Ed and Emily write, "We stopped running the dishwasher and the air conditioner, and we turned off all the lights and just stayed in one room, but the electric bill still kept getting higher every month...

...W e ' r e all wearing beanies with little propellers, and the things are hooked up to our central nervous systems...

...The whole family is running on wind power now...

...They tried out several methods on Grandmother Ponibender, but they have not yet found a temperature lowering device that doesn't produce some uncomfortable side effects...

...So we did the only sensible thing—we got a windmill and a generator and started running everything on wind power...

...All we have to do now to be a real oil company is sign up an ad agency to write up some ads about how we took some of the profits and bought five dollars worth of tickets for the Elks Club raffle and sent a basket of fruit to old Mrs...

...Dean Swing writes, "We had been running our little Mom and Pop grocery store down on Main Street since 1935, but the profit margin had shrunk down to about 1 per cent...

...Pearl and Dean Swing of Farrandsville, Pennsylvania, for example, suggest setting up your own oil company...

...And after the food and rent and whatnot I couldn't even squeeze but a dime out of the budget to place in a savings account so as to help the bank do the patriotic duty it wanted so badly to do—I mean, lend money to home builders...

...The Ponibenders are also experimenting with ways to turn their body temperatures down to 68 degrees...

...But then the price of food started going up even faster than the price of electricity, so we decided to eliminate the middle man entirely and we gave up food too...

...Contracts are already pouring in from state and local governments, which know they can cut costs and maybe balance the local budget by avoiding the time consuming traditional methods for making soup...

...Government agencies which use it can simply dump a forty-pound sack of Instant Soup Line into a big pot of warm water on any street corner and feed up to 100 unemployed persons within half an hour...

...Perhaps as many as a thousand Americans did this last month...

...Another good suggestion for battling the economic slump was provided by Chet O'Groat of Tarrytown, New York, who did his bit by getting a job with Nelson Rockefeller...

...President Ford himself wrote the Sampsells congratulating them on their contribution to the fight to whip inflation now...

...Of course, the single most surefire way to help the country survive the economic slump—short of emigrating to Saudi Arabia, where it is very hot and the food is too spicy—is to take President Ford's advice and vote Republican...

...And in gratitude I wish to present you with this little tiny Vermeer and this teeny weeny.check for $500,000...

...We had to pay cash on the line, but the investment paid off real well...

...The product is called Instant Soup Line...

...Then we read how the oil companies were doing a little better than Pearl and me, with profits anywheres from 37 per cent on up to 400 per cent...

...So, Pearl and I wrote to King Faisal and ordered thirty-three barrels of grade A at $11 per...

...So I just gave it all up for lost and went to work over at Pocantico Hills, where my job is to polish up the handle on the big front door...

...WINners RICHARD LIPEZ A great citizens' mobilization is under way around the country to get the economy back on its feet, and I have personally received thousands of letters from patriotic Americans who have devised ingenious new ways for ordinary families to battle the high cost of living...

...Out in La Jolla, California, the Ed and Emily Ponibenders are doing what they can to conserve our precious energy resources...

...Don't spend it all in one place.' Then I'll just stick that in the bank, and the interest rate should drop to 11 per cent overnight...

...Our kids, Donnie and Consuela, refined the oil in the chem lab over at the jointure high school, and we sold the stuff out behind the store for forty-five cents a gallon and still racked up a 150 per cent profit...