ArcaMax

The kid behind the counter, a kid with strong black dreads fountaining out of the top of his visor, says "That'll be $6.42."

I give him my debit card.

I went to bed last night with $0.65 in my checking account, but this column pays by the quarter, and it's the end of the month. Social Security, pension and investment income are on the way.

Almost all of my income goes into joint checking, along with my wife's paycheck. My anorexic newspaper pension goes into my personal account and I waste almost all of it on cheap breakfast out, pipe tobacco and beer. Sometimes, I buy a book.

What I don't waste I spend on gas for a six-year-old car that's missing some of the exterior decorative accents.

I buy gas like I'm in high school again. That's means I buy gas $10 at a time. I never speak that reckless "Fill 'er up" that my father said to gas station attendants maybe 10 years before we lost the war in Vietnam.

This month, I had to borrow $6.42 from the money I make writing this column because the pension isn't in yet. Not until tomorrow.

And the gas station across the street from the Dunkin Donuts where I'm eating has a sign up telling the world that regular unleaded gasoline is $4.39 a gallon.

"Eleven Cent Cotton and Forty Cent Meat" is a Depression era song asking how you can survive when the cotton you grow brings 11 cents a pound, and the meat you eat costs 40 cents a pound.

It's a tough question to answer.

Gas at $4.39 a gallon. The Epstein files. Coffee nudging $10 a pound in the grocery store.

The $6.42 breakfast gets you bacon, egg and cheese on a smashed croissant that would cause rioting if served in France. In addition, you get four badly seasoned hash brown pucks the size of a half dollar and a medium cup of coffee. You can eat inside the Dunkin Donuts for free, and you can look at the $4.39 a gallon gas sign for free.

"How in the world can a poor man eat?" the song asks.

And there are people worse off than I am. The nation is spotted with the pus-filled abscesses of homeless encampments, track marks on the arms of the nation.

The Epstein files. Gas at $4.39 a gallon. Coffee nudging $10 a pound at the grocery store. Blue tents and sound sleepers by where the carpet factory used to be.

And none of it's a problem. It's temporary. It's a lack of discipline. It's a tragic lack of trad wives.

You just have to wait until the tariffs eliminate your income tax, and gas drops to the promised $1.99 a gallon.

In Iran, the world's best, biggest, strongest military uses $4 million missiles to shoot down $35,000 drones.

Gas at $4.39 a gallon. Coffee at nearly $10 a pound. The Epstein files. Blue tents and shopping carts in some scabby patch of woods.

You have Trump Derangement Disorder. You're a snowflake. Hand the money over. Quit complaining. Fly the damn flag. Your guns are safe until the end of his term.

Sometimes that old song is sung as "7 Cent Cotton and Forty Cent Meat," depending on how much of a Communist the singer is.

$4.39 a gallon. $10 a pound. Blue tents and open sores. The airports don't work anymore, not if you want to go somewhere. $4 million missiles. The Epstein files and the Epstein files and the Epstein files. King Charles makes Revolutionary War jokes and never mentions the Epstein files. It's bad form.

Eat your shoes. Eat your garbage. The food pantry has tortillas this week. Eat your union. Smoke some legal weed. Forget.

11 Cent Cotton, 40 Cent Meat. The auctioneer's steady voce in Iowa. Blue tents like big, sick mushrooms in the woods. $4.39 gas. $10 coffee and the $6.42 breakfast, soon to be $7.42, $9.42, $20 even.

For God's sake, impeach him and make it stick.

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www. creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.