PASS!

[SamIam]

Yesterday morning at 4 AM I walked down to the post office to mail off my application for the PASS program. One thing about living in a small town is that I can wander around by myself at all hours without fear. The streets were completely deserted with only the occasional streetlamp to show the way. Even Highway 160 which doubles as Main Street was devoid of travelers. The words to that song from Cats, "Memory" came to my mind:

Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life
And I mustn't give in
When the dawn comes
Tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin...

For the past three days I had been trying to finish that paperwork, staying up until dawn, falling into bed for a few hours sleep and then waking up to continue my marathon. The form was a lucky 13 pages long, and when I finished it, I read the directions. Whoops! 3 more pages to go. I grimly sat back down at the computer and soldiered on, finishing up those last three pages and writing a cover letter as my final embellishment.

PASS stands for Plan to Achieve Self Support. It's a program to help people on SSI/SSDI get off disability. Since it's a federal program, it's as complicated as hell and the paperwork is enough to make strong men feel faint. The short explanation is that it's a fund matching savings program that the participent can use to pay for college or vocational school, starting up their own business, or pay for a job coach, etc. Your PASS plan has to be for something that you have a good chance of accomplishing, and the paperwork is the government's way of ensuring that you are a viable candidate for a PASS. If for some reason you don't succeed, you have to pay back the money the government has invested in you to that point, so your plan better be pretty damn good to avoid defaulting.

My plan is to become a campground host, working for one of the private outfits that the national parks are commissioning to take over visitor services. It's not a complicated job - much simpler than working at the Bates was. You collect the envelopes with the fees in them; make a little tour first thing in the morning matching license plates and envelopes to make sure everyone has paid; enforce rules like pets must be on a leash, no noise after 10 PM, no feeding your poodle to a cougar, etc. You also have to keep the campground tidy and clean the restrooms which is the ickiest part of the job. The other stuff is a piece of cake.

The pay is around $10.00/hr plus free hook-ups for your RV. In effect, you have free housing, and a reasonable supplement to any other income like social security (assuming there still is social security). In the summer you can go work up in some place like Montana and in the winter you can go bask under the saguaros in Arizona. It's also a great way of providing a needed service while maintaining your dignity as a self supporting adult. With all due modesty, I can't think of a better person for the job than me - the camping and back country fool.

The catch to this is that campground hosts have to have their own RV. As it now stands, I'll never be able to afford an RV in a million years, but a PASS would allow me to make that dream a reality. I figure I need to come up with $700.00/month which the government would then match, allowing me to put $1400/month into a special savings account. By my calculations within 2 years - 3 at the max - I'd have enough to buy a second hand camping trailor that could serve as my year round home, along with a used V8, 4wd to haul it. I'd be set for the rest of my life.

I feel like I just came through the finals week from hell back at college, but if they approve my plan it will have been well worth the effort. Now all I have to do is find some simple minded little job that I can do and which will pay at least $500.00 to $800.00 a month. Stupid recession! Stupid little middle of nowhere town! But I'm determined to make this work. I'll find a job somehow. And I'm keeping all my fingers and toes crossed that I'll be approved to at least give it a shot.