Seffner, Florida.
The trucker was sitting in his driver's seat, playing computer solitaire. A scruffy man approached, with a very dramatic story about his car breaking down, while at his mother-in law's funeral. There were details about how he had come from Mobile, and the price of the repair.
Instead of gaining the driver's empathy, he found the driver's ire.
"You're from Mobile? Let's see your driver's license. Your hat says Tampa."
The scruffy man answered, "you know, I left it on the dashboard of my car."
"Uh-huh," The trucker replied. "What's your tag number?"
"Ah, well, I don't remember all of it, but I know it starts with W."
"So you have a personalized plate."
"Noooo-ooo?"
The driver recognized that the beggar was full of pulp waste from the beginning, but now the driver was having fun. All plates in Alabama begin with a number, which is also the county code.
"Did your beloved mother-in-law live in Honduras?"
"Naw."
"Because the poverty there would have explained the lack of access to a washing machine or razor blades."
The beggar was trying to get away, but the driver was not done querying the beggar.
"So I take it that your mother-in-law had no friends who could refer you to a competent mechanic?"
"Oh, ah, I never wanted them to be bothered during their time of grief."
The driver raised an eyebrow. "But it's okay to have your wife stranded, what, 500 miles from home without a way back?"
"Oh, no, no..."
"You don't have any co-workers back in Mobile who could get you a bus ticket back and you could pay them back?"
"Well, ah, I was laid off. The plant moved to Mexico."
"Really?" The driver asked. "What kind of plant was it?"
At this point, the only response that could have been acceptable would have been "philodendron." Unfortunately, what came out was, "...the Dodge factory."
"Oh, yeah? What kind of Dodge did you make?"
"Darts."
"The last Dodge Dart was built in 1976! Have you been laid off for 31 years?" The trucker also remembered that Chrysler's nearest plant to Mobile was either St. Louis or Indianapolis... in Chrysler's good years.
"I mean Dusters."
"The Duster was a Plymouth." The trucker was done playing with the beggar. "Your story is full of holes. It's one thing to have a need, but dang it, if you're going to tell me a story, get your facts right!"
"But I'm telling you the truth."
"You're not, but you know, I'm willing to give you all of the help you deserve."
The shiny nickel the trucker pulled from his pocket bounced from the bill of the beggar's "Tampa" hat.
"You know the difference between you and an illegal alien? The illegal alien is actually good for more than the production of greenhose gases! And I never had a Mexican come up to me in a truck stop and beg for money. Because he's willing to get up in the morning and go to work."
"Well, they're taking all the jobs!"
"Because you didn't apply for them, or didn't do the work when you had them."
"You amnesty types are killing the middle class!"
"Not as fast as Americans who think they're entitled because of where they were born. You have papers, access to education, and all the assistance of a nation of 300 million, and you're whining and begging in a truck stop. It's because of people like you who give the impression that my nation is petty, and weak, and incapable of competing. Do America a favor, and get your happy butt out."
The trucker rolled up his window, put the air conditioner on high, and went back to work in the morning.
16 September 2007
31 August 2007
The Senator In The Tea Room
There are days when one would think that the cast of Weekend Update had gotten loose in the halls of CNN in Atlanta. Hearing that a Republican US Senator was busted for attempting to procure gay sex in the men's room at Minneapolis airport was one of those days.
Oh yes, even better is the idea that he was from Idaho, a state which fears that Montana would change its name to "Idapimp."
(Your Wandering Gentile has been waiting for several years to find an appropriate mien for using that particular joke.)
Now, let it be stated that this is a blog tolerant of whatever individuals choose to do in private, providing that the behavior is between adults, and free of fraud, force or duress. Mr. Jefferson once said that the government that governs least governs best. Amen.
Government has no place in sanctioning marriage. That decision is between the Communicants and their Creator. Should there be a choice for polygamy, as long as the participants are happy and willing, it is not society's business. Should the participants be of the same sex, so what? The contract is the only thing which government should sanction.
Marriage cannot be defined by government. That is strictly the role of faith and defined by the participants faith traditions and communities.
If my marriage is threatened by two people I don't know choosing to participate in a contract that I have no interest in, then by God, it was already in serious trouble.
Which brings us back to the tearoom Senator. If he wants to participate in homosexual trysts, that's his business. Have fun.
But he's selling his moral position as a "defender of family values." The Senator convinced the citizenry of the state of Idaho to vote for him, in part, by supporting the "Defense of Marriage" amendment...one man, one woman only as eligible participants.
Does anyone else see the conflict here?
Oh yes, even better is the idea that he was from Idaho, a state which fears that Montana would change its name to "Idapimp."
(Your Wandering Gentile has been waiting for several years to find an appropriate mien for using that particular joke.)
Now, let it be stated that this is a blog tolerant of whatever individuals choose to do in private, providing that the behavior is between adults, and free of fraud, force or duress. Mr. Jefferson once said that the government that governs least governs best. Amen.
Government has no place in sanctioning marriage. That decision is between the Communicants and their Creator. Should there be a choice for polygamy, as long as the participants are happy and willing, it is not society's business. Should the participants be of the same sex, so what? The contract is the only thing which government should sanction.
Marriage cannot be defined by government. That is strictly the role of faith and defined by the participants faith traditions and communities.
If my marriage is threatened by two people I don't know choosing to participate in a contract that I have no interest in, then by God, it was already in serious trouble.
Which brings us back to the tearoom Senator. If he wants to participate in homosexual trysts, that's his business. Have fun.
But he's selling his moral position as a "defender of family values." The Senator convinced the citizenry of the state of Idaho to vote for him, in part, by supporting the "Defense of Marriage" amendment...one man, one woman only as eligible participants.
Does anyone else see the conflict here?
20 May 2007
Comprehensive Means Comprehensive
First of all, it isn't amnesty.
As reports of the Senate compromise on immigration reform came across the news on Thursday, the usual group of anti-immigrant yodelers hit the airwaves within hours. From Tancredo to Dobbs to the right-wing ranters on AM radio, their one note screamed "AMNESTY!"
It isn't. By definition amnesty means a lack of penalty. There are penalties involved with the new senate bill. There are sacrifices to be made by an undocumented immigrant, and compliance will test and prove the difference between those who wish to commit to an existence in this country, and those with less honorable motives.
A better way to look at it would be to call it a mechanism for a No Contest plea to the charge of jumping the border. There has been a twenty year window where the current immigration system has shown profound flaws. It has not served the needs of this country, and the hard-line tenor of the law as written has served to stifle both assimilation and those who would have qualified under previous immigration laws for legal paths to remain in the United States.
Tough, but just and reasonable, the Senate compromise represents not the impossible- a good solution- but the least bad solution.
If the reader will imagine, as a caller to the Mark Davis radio program in Dallas did recently, the political will and repercussions after the appearance of a cell-phone video of an undocumented woman being removed, and her small child crying for her mommy. This would make Abu Ghraib look like a visit from Mother Teresa. And it would be political death for anyone who had supported the forcible removal of undocumented aliens.
The logistics of removing twelve to twenty million people; convincing the world community of how humane the United States of America is; and replacing that population in the labor force would devastate the nation. It would be suicide.
The manpower required to remove twelve million people would require at least a quarter of a million agents trained in law enforcement and logistics, plus dedicated areas and holding facilities and transportation. Figure upon the American taxpayers taking about a trillion dollar hit.
China and Mexico could call in their markers. The EU nations and Japan would. Without about seven million proven, but undocumented, participants in the labor force, and less than seven million unemployed (and a good portion of them unemployable) in the United States, productivity would fall. The economic engine of the United States would be stalled in mid-air.
With a broken economy and political instability, we could anticipate challenges to our sovereignty and our military from sources such as Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Syria, North Korea, and their satellites. What would remain to be seen is if we had any good will remaining from our traditional allies such as Israel, Canada, and Australia.
Kids, don't try this at home. Because the last trained professionals who tried to (and succeded at) removing twelve million people deemed undesirable are not around to talk about it, jawohl?
The last, best option remaining option to save the United States as the country we know and love, is to swallow a population of people, who, aside from not following bureaucratic procedures, have been beneficial to our culture and economy, and haven't really done anything else wrong.
The Senate compromise is not amnesty. It is nothing less than the survival of this nation. These are people with a strong work ethic, deep love of family, and profound Christian faith. We need to be able to identify and embrace people who share our values.
No one is in favor of letting felons run amok on our streets. If someone commits a violent crime, let's get rid of that individual quickly. But if the only crime has been the escape from the desperate conditions that exist in so many of the countries to our south, as your Wandering Gentile's Daddy used to say, that ain't a killin' offense.
As for the impotent, arrogant, anal-retentive yard nazis, who find their very existence threatened by people who have entered without a pedigree, considering the source is the best option. These yard nazis are the same people who pushed a neighborhood covenant in the Atlanta area, and fined a man US$3,500 for the infraction of FLYING THE AMERICAN FLAG!
The tone of these collectivist authoritarians has spread to city councils and county commissions throughout the country, most notably in Farmer's Branch, Texas; Oceanside, California; Cherokee County, Georgia; and Hazleton, Pennsylvania. The most amusing thing is that their rage has been directed on a local level, to a federal issue, in places that are remarkably devoid of anyone but affluent, self-absorbed, English-speaking people of predominantly European descent.
The Senate compromise will have several desirable effects upon the illegal immigration issue in the United States. When employers in Mexico are forced to compete economically for a finite labor resource, the democratization of affluence throughout Mexico will be the result. At the point where the drawbacks of emigrating outweigh the benefits, people will stay home. The streets of Missoula are not crowded with people who snuck in from Alberta, Canada.
Labor safety and health standards will also improve in both countries due to the expectation of our more stringent and effective regulations, and their applicability by people functioning within a normalized environment. Abuses that have been tacitly accepted cannot survive when both parties have a voice.
Finally, the ICE resources that have been dedicated to behaving punitively toward people jumping the border in lieu of a functional immigration process can be turned towards capturing and punishing smugglers and other malicious individuals.
The people who have patiently sought entry to the United States through the current immigration system deserve a nod for their forebearance with a confusing, complicated, and infuriatingly indifferent bureaucracy. They merit nothing less than an expedited processing of their documents and a concession of fees beyond what would be expected of someone who entered extralegally.
Privatization of the vetting process could best achieve the necessary legwork, leaving CIS agents for the approval interview process.
Someone wise, quoted frequently by Dave Ramsey and Dr. Phil McGraw, once said that repeating an ineffective behavior and expecting a different result is insanity. The immigration laws that we have on the books have not worked. The time to scrap the malfunctioning system is now. The immigration laws we have now created this situation. These laws are a total loss, and any attempt to use them would be hazardous to the health of this nation.
And watching the Yard Nazis of America melt down would be priceless.
As reports of the Senate compromise on immigration reform came across the news on Thursday, the usual group of anti-immigrant yodelers hit the airwaves within hours. From Tancredo to Dobbs to the right-wing ranters on AM radio, their one note screamed "AMNESTY!"
It isn't. By definition amnesty means a lack of penalty. There are penalties involved with the new senate bill. There are sacrifices to be made by an undocumented immigrant, and compliance will test and prove the difference between those who wish to commit to an existence in this country, and those with less honorable motives.
A better way to look at it would be to call it a mechanism for a No Contest plea to the charge of jumping the border. There has been a twenty year window where the current immigration system has shown profound flaws. It has not served the needs of this country, and the hard-line tenor of the law as written has served to stifle both assimilation and those who would have qualified under previous immigration laws for legal paths to remain in the United States.
Tough, but just and reasonable, the Senate compromise represents not the impossible- a good solution- but the least bad solution.
If the reader will imagine, as a caller to the Mark Davis radio program in Dallas did recently, the political will and repercussions after the appearance of a cell-phone video of an undocumented woman being removed, and her small child crying for her mommy. This would make Abu Ghraib look like a visit from Mother Teresa. And it would be political death for anyone who had supported the forcible removal of undocumented aliens.
The logistics of removing twelve to twenty million people; convincing the world community of how humane the United States of America is; and replacing that population in the labor force would devastate the nation. It would be suicide.
The manpower required to remove twelve million people would require at least a quarter of a million agents trained in law enforcement and logistics, plus dedicated areas and holding facilities and transportation. Figure upon the American taxpayers taking about a trillion dollar hit.
China and Mexico could call in their markers. The EU nations and Japan would. Without about seven million proven, but undocumented, participants in the labor force, and less than seven million unemployed (and a good portion of them unemployable) in the United States, productivity would fall. The economic engine of the United States would be stalled in mid-air.
With a broken economy and political instability, we could anticipate challenges to our sovereignty and our military from sources such as Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Syria, North Korea, and their satellites. What would remain to be seen is if we had any good will remaining from our traditional allies such as Israel, Canada, and Australia.
Kids, don't try this at home. Because the last trained professionals who tried to (and succeded at) removing twelve million people deemed undesirable are not around to talk about it, jawohl?
The last, best option remaining option to save the United States as the country we know and love, is to swallow a population of people, who, aside from not following bureaucratic procedures, have been beneficial to our culture and economy, and haven't really done anything else wrong.
The Senate compromise is not amnesty. It is nothing less than the survival of this nation. These are people with a strong work ethic, deep love of family, and profound Christian faith. We need to be able to identify and embrace people who share our values.
No one is in favor of letting felons run amok on our streets. If someone commits a violent crime, let's get rid of that individual quickly. But if the only crime has been the escape from the desperate conditions that exist in so many of the countries to our south, as your Wandering Gentile's Daddy used to say, that ain't a killin' offense.
As for the impotent, arrogant, anal-retentive yard nazis, who find their very existence threatened by people who have entered without a pedigree, considering the source is the best option. These yard nazis are the same people who pushed a neighborhood covenant in the Atlanta area, and fined a man US$3,500 for the infraction of FLYING THE AMERICAN FLAG!
The tone of these collectivist authoritarians has spread to city councils and county commissions throughout the country, most notably in Farmer's Branch, Texas; Oceanside, California; Cherokee County, Georgia; and Hazleton, Pennsylvania. The most amusing thing is that their rage has been directed on a local level, to a federal issue, in places that are remarkably devoid of anyone but affluent, self-absorbed, English-speaking people of predominantly European descent.
The Senate compromise will have several desirable effects upon the illegal immigration issue in the United States. When employers in Mexico are forced to compete economically for a finite labor resource, the democratization of affluence throughout Mexico will be the result. At the point where the drawbacks of emigrating outweigh the benefits, people will stay home. The streets of Missoula are not crowded with people who snuck in from Alberta, Canada.
Labor safety and health standards will also improve in both countries due to the expectation of our more stringent and effective regulations, and their applicability by people functioning within a normalized environment. Abuses that have been tacitly accepted cannot survive when both parties have a voice.
Finally, the ICE resources that have been dedicated to behaving punitively toward people jumping the border in lieu of a functional immigration process can be turned towards capturing and punishing smugglers and other malicious individuals.
The people who have patiently sought entry to the United States through the current immigration system deserve a nod for their forebearance with a confusing, complicated, and infuriatingly indifferent bureaucracy. They merit nothing less than an expedited processing of their documents and a concession of fees beyond what would be expected of someone who entered extralegally.
Privatization of the vetting process could best achieve the necessary legwork, leaving CIS agents for the approval interview process.
Someone wise, quoted frequently by Dave Ramsey and Dr. Phil McGraw, once said that repeating an ineffective behavior and expecting a different result is insanity. The immigration laws that we have on the books have not worked. The time to scrap the malfunctioning system is now. The immigration laws we have now created this situation. These laws are a total loss, and any attempt to use them would be hazardous to the health of this nation.
And watching the Yard Nazis of America melt down would be priceless.
29 April 2007
Baby, If You Ever Wondered
Please bear with a nerdy CALLOO CALLAY...WKRP in Cincinnati is out on DVD.
Nearly thirty years after the fact, Cincinnati's favorite radio station is still among the greatest television comedies ever broadcast. Part of the appeal lies in the fact that WKRP wasn't on the air long enough to get stale or become self-parodying. After 100 episodes, it was gone.
For the non-informed, it was the show Newsradio wanted to be, and more often than not approached for quality, despite the malign entity that is Andy Dick. For those who have an appreciation of the series in its original run on CBS, the only loss is the replacement of the original crappy seventies name-brand rock with generic crappy seventies-style instrumental cuts.
And Boooooger lives on in the collection. Somehow, Dr. Johnny Fever losing his gig in California for saying booger on the air seems quaint in the era of Don Imus referring to the Rutgers Women's Basketball team as "nappy-headed ho's." Indeed, Fever's second firing in California as a result of uttering a phrase commonly associated with being master of one's domain, in Seinfeld-speak, is absolutely archaic compared with Howard Stern's daily lesbian midget love fest on satellite radio.
Don Imus is no Johnny Fever. Johnny Fever had class, and style, and was not so self-absorbed as to believe himself to be a kingmaker and great wit. The voice of Johnny Fever was passionate about music, and confirmed in the faith that music and radio were an equalizer for the powerless and disenfranchised.
It was a cynicism rooted in a living memory of music pulling a humble trucker from Tupelo into the national spotlight. The trucker's fame came from combining the voices of disenfranchised people with a face that 1950s television could embrace. He empowered acceptance of a movement that no American, nowhere in America, should be deprived of any right, provided that said American lived up to the responsibilities that go with the privilege.
Fast forward thirty years to see Imus strip the dignity from the young ladies from Rutgers, upon a significant achievement in competition, and then go on the air with a bigger cretin, Reverend Al Sharpton, to seek his reconciliation.
On one hand, it was funny. Not funny in the way of WKRP but funny in an Attack of the Killer Tomatoes vein, to wit, an absurd premise with an entirely predictable script. One knew that Sharpton was not going to find pardon for Imus. Sharpton was watching Imus twist in the wind for the sheer diversion of it.
In seventies argot, they were two turkeys and it was Thanksgiving in April.
It seems a shame that no one tried to see if they could fly. Reverend Al Sharpton is not Venus Flytrap, either. He doesn't seem to share Venus' goldenly eloquent mastery of grammar and vocabulary. Venus persevered, where Sharpton requires bogus racism to achieve notoriety and justify his presence.
Suddenly, your Wandering Gentile feels waves of nostalgia for 1978. If pills won't cure it, the memory of how bad the cars were will.
There is a great feeling when reconnecting with art well made. Sometimes the art doesn't measure up- Miami Vice seems horribly stuck in its era when seen today, for example. But somtimes something endures and seems as fresh as the day it was made. Huckleberry Finn works 130 years later; Casablanca is great after 65 years; and happily, the words "as God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly," hit just as well 29 years after they came across my black-and-white television in East Point, Georgia, for the first time.
What was an "Imus," anyway?
Nearly thirty years after the fact, Cincinnati's favorite radio station is still among the greatest television comedies ever broadcast. Part of the appeal lies in the fact that WKRP wasn't on the air long enough to get stale or become self-parodying. After 100 episodes, it was gone.
For the non-informed, it was the show Newsradio wanted to be, and more often than not approached for quality, despite the malign entity that is Andy Dick. For those who have an appreciation of the series in its original run on CBS, the only loss is the replacement of the original crappy seventies name-brand rock with generic crappy seventies-style instrumental cuts.
And Boooooger lives on in the collection. Somehow, Dr. Johnny Fever losing his gig in California for saying booger on the air seems quaint in the era of Don Imus referring to the Rutgers Women's Basketball team as "nappy-headed ho's." Indeed, Fever's second firing in California as a result of uttering a phrase commonly associated with being master of one's domain, in Seinfeld-speak, is absolutely archaic compared with Howard Stern's daily lesbian midget love fest on satellite radio.
Don Imus is no Johnny Fever. Johnny Fever had class, and style, and was not so self-absorbed as to believe himself to be a kingmaker and great wit. The voice of Johnny Fever was passionate about music, and confirmed in the faith that music and radio were an equalizer for the powerless and disenfranchised.
It was a cynicism rooted in a living memory of music pulling a humble trucker from Tupelo into the national spotlight. The trucker's fame came from combining the voices of disenfranchised people with a face that 1950s television could embrace. He empowered acceptance of a movement that no American, nowhere in America, should be deprived of any right, provided that said American lived up to the responsibilities that go with the privilege.
Fast forward thirty years to see Imus strip the dignity from the young ladies from Rutgers, upon a significant achievement in competition, and then go on the air with a bigger cretin, Reverend Al Sharpton, to seek his reconciliation.
On one hand, it was funny. Not funny in the way of WKRP but funny in an Attack of the Killer Tomatoes vein, to wit, an absurd premise with an entirely predictable script. One knew that Sharpton was not going to find pardon for Imus. Sharpton was watching Imus twist in the wind for the sheer diversion of it.
In seventies argot, they were two turkeys and it was Thanksgiving in April.
It seems a shame that no one tried to see if they could fly. Reverend Al Sharpton is not Venus Flytrap, either. He doesn't seem to share Venus' goldenly eloquent mastery of grammar and vocabulary. Venus persevered, where Sharpton requires bogus racism to achieve notoriety and justify his presence.
Suddenly, your Wandering Gentile feels waves of nostalgia for 1978. If pills won't cure it, the memory of how bad the cars were will.
There is a great feeling when reconnecting with art well made. Sometimes the art doesn't measure up- Miami Vice seems horribly stuck in its era when seen today, for example. But somtimes something endures and seems as fresh as the day it was made. Huckleberry Finn works 130 years later; Casablanca is great after 65 years; and happily, the words "as God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly," hit just as well 29 years after they came across my black-and-white television in East Point, Georgia, for the first time.
What was an "Imus," anyway?
06 April 2007
Minuteman Patriot!
Forrest B. Smallwood came to the attention of the Wandering Gentile through his service as a security guard to the Lone Star Candies (Fudge Packing Division) plant in Tarado (tuh-RAY-doe), Texas. An engaging conversationalist, he shared some extremely enlightened opinions regarding American sovereignty and the threat posed by desperate, disposessed people.
I accepted a ride to Tarado's finest, and only, quick service eatery, the Dairy Duchess at exit 3 on I-36. It is possible to see the Dairy Princess from Lone Star Candies, but it is also possible to see Lubbock clearly from Midland. Texas has a lot of flat places.
Smallwood's car was a rusty blue '92 Lumina with a 2005 registration from Big Beaver County, Ohio; a Rick Case Cleveland dealer badge; and a Tancredo for President bumper sticker.
"They're coming over the border and riding straight up this road toward Wichita Falls," Smallwood said. "The Minutemen are the last, best line of defense of American freedom."
I positioned myself in such a way as to avoid a DVD case featuring the images of late '90s boy band, the Backdoor Brothers, and a some sort of foreign substance that prevented the hard plastic cover from sliding on the velour.
"They're bringing diseases, and drugs. Illegal aliens are taking jobs and driving down wages for middle class people like us. The drain they put on our social services comes out of our pockets!
"My tax dollars are paying to support people who are breaking the law!" Smallwood eased the Chevy up to 70 in the 45 zone. He was near tears.
At no point was the idea of the price of vegetables tripling mentioned, but it seemed that Mr. Smallwood, standing five-three and a robust 310 pounds, had little use for food that did not quadruple the recommended yearly allowance for Lard. There was also no room for the idea that we are near full employment with several million undocumented people in the labor stream.
"So what would you propose that we do?" I asked.
"Seal the border and send them all back. Preferably using a slingshot. You know the administration is trying to give up our sovereignty by merging the United States with Canada and Mexico? They're going to change our currency to the Amero."
He seemed to be referring to a Bush administration proposal to work with Canada and Mexico to find common ground in law to get some consistency and reciprocity between jurisdictions.
"You don't seem to have a Texas accent," I said.
"Those big corporations who want amnesty for illegal aliens packed up all of the jobs back in Cleveland and sent them to Mexico for cheap labor."
Somehow, if all of these jobs were in Mexico, it would seem that there would be no motivation to leave, at least to me. I did not share this opinion. Having visited Cleveland, I also supposed that the undesirable climate and high taxation and state regulation in Ohio might have had a little something to do with the situation as well.
Of course, I come from Atlanta, where a lot of operations moved from heavily regulated, highly taxed states with cruddy climates, so I might share some complicity as well.
"I'm going to duck into my house for just a second. I got to make a little withdrawal from the bank of Maxwell House."
His house was a Champion singlewide manufactured home. In fact, a tax sticker from Terco County, Texas, was issued in 1973, thus it was old enough to still be called a trailer. Inside was mediterranean style furniture, harvest gold appliances, and orange cut-pile carpeting. There was another boy band video with a strange substance on the cover.
"Where's your daughter?" I asked.
Smallwood pulled a ten-dollar bill out of the Maxwell House can in the freezer. Icily, he replied "I don't have a daughter."
"Oh." I had an idea what the substance on the boy band video covers might be, but the logical answer was too disgusting to be contemplated. One wall featured eight-by-ten glossies of Lou Dobbs, Michael Savage, and Congressman Brian Bilbray. They seemed to be autographed by the same pen, in the same handwriting, with the same spelling errors.
"So, you went to school in Cleveland?" I asked.
"The schools in Cleveland were filled with the same liberal agenda. Algebra, chemistry, term papers. But they won't teach Illegal Mexican Aliens to talk English! So I left them to live in the cesspool they created."
"Were there many illegals in Cleveland?"
Smallwood became vehement. "You bet! They were from Fajardo and Guayama and Aguadilla."
I smiled. Not only were the places not even in Mexico, the people he was describing were United States Citizens from Puerto Rico. "Let's get over to the Dairy Duchess and get ourselves some chili dogs. And a Moderate Snow Shower frozen dessert!"
The conversation ends there, as there was a minor electrical system meltdown in the Lumina, and he chose to wait for a friend from the Terco County, Texas, Minuteman Militia intead of returning to the plant with a moonlighting electrical engineer from Tegucigalpa.
EPILOGUE
Forrest B. Smallwood died on September 6, 2006. He had been working on a fence to prevent migrants from New Mexico from entering Texas when he encountered a trucker evading the scale in Mulehead City, and immediately accused him of being an Illegal Mexican Alien.
The driver, Raymond "Moose" Thunder Cloud, of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, took high offense to the idea that he was in some fashion less entitled to be in the United States than Mr. Smallwood.
Mr. Thunder Cloud, in a sworn statement released by Terco County Constable Diego Velasquez, defended himself from what he believed to be grave and imminent danger from what he presumed to be a highjacker on FM 13490, three miles west of Tarado. The Texas DPS Crime Scene investigator found the shards of a blue exchange pallet consistent with the severe pummelling of Mr. Smallwood, and a sudden storm washed Mr. Smallwood's remains into a nearby culvert.
There was no funeral, no body, nor were there any survivors.
I accepted a ride to Tarado's finest, and only, quick service eatery, the Dairy Duchess at exit 3 on I-36. It is possible to see the Dairy Princess from Lone Star Candies, but it is also possible to see Lubbock clearly from Midland. Texas has a lot of flat places.
Smallwood's car was a rusty blue '92 Lumina with a 2005 registration from Big Beaver County, Ohio; a Rick Case Cleveland dealer badge; and a Tancredo for President bumper sticker.
"They're coming over the border and riding straight up this road toward Wichita Falls," Smallwood said. "The Minutemen are the last, best line of defense of American freedom."
I positioned myself in such a way as to avoid a DVD case featuring the images of late '90s boy band, the Backdoor Brothers, and a some sort of foreign substance that prevented the hard plastic cover from sliding on the velour.
"They're bringing diseases, and drugs. Illegal aliens are taking jobs and driving down wages for middle class people like us. The drain they put on our social services comes out of our pockets!
"My tax dollars are paying to support people who are breaking the law!" Smallwood eased the Chevy up to 70 in the 45 zone. He was near tears.
At no point was the idea of the price of vegetables tripling mentioned, but it seemed that Mr. Smallwood, standing five-three and a robust 310 pounds, had little use for food that did not quadruple the recommended yearly allowance for Lard. There was also no room for the idea that we are near full employment with several million undocumented people in the labor stream.
"So what would you propose that we do?" I asked.
"Seal the border and send them all back. Preferably using a slingshot. You know the administration is trying to give up our sovereignty by merging the United States with Canada and Mexico? They're going to change our currency to the Amero."
He seemed to be referring to a Bush administration proposal to work with Canada and Mexico to find common ground in law to get some consistency and reciprocity between jurisdictions.
"You don't seem to have a Texas accent," I said.
"Those big corporations who want amnesty for illegal aliens packed up all of the jobs back in Cleveland and sent them to Mexico for cheap labor."
Somehow, if all of these jobs were in Mexico, it would seem that there would be no motivation to leave, at least to me. I did not share this opinion. Having visited Cleveland, I also supposed that the undesirable climate and high taxation and state regulation in Ohio might have had a little something to do with the situation as well.
Of course, I come from Atlanta, where a lot of operations moved from heavily regulated, highly taxed states with cruddy climates, so I might share some complicity as well.
"I'm going to duck into my house for just a second. I got to make a little withdrawal from the bank of Maxwell House."
His house was a Champion singlewide manufactured home. In fact, a tax sticker from Terco County, Texas, was issued in 1973, thus it was old enough to still be called a trailer. Inside was mediterranean style furniture, harvest gold appliances, and orange cut-pile carpeting. There was another boy band video with a strange substance on the cover.
"Where's your daughter?" I asked.
Smallwood pulled a ten-dollar bill out of the Maxwell House can in the freezer. Icily, he replied "I don't have a daughter."
"Oh." I had an idea what the substance on the boy band video covers might be, but the logical answer was too disgusting to be contemplated. One wall featured eight-by-ten glossies of Lou Dobbs, Michael Savage, and Congressman Brian Bilbray. They seemed to be autographed by the same pen, in the same handwriting, with the same spelling errors.
"So, you went to school in Cleveland?" I asked.
"The schools in Cleveland were filled with the same liberal agenda. Algebra, chemistry, term papers. But they won't teach Illegal Mexican Aliens to talk English! So I left them to live in the cesspool they created."
"Were there many illegals in Cleveland?"
Smallwood became vehement. "You bet! They were from Fajardo and Guayama and Aguadilla."
I smiled. Not only were the places not even in Mexico, the people he was describing were United States Citizens from Puerto Rico. "Let's get over to the Dairy Duchess and get ourselves some chili dogs. And a Moderate Snow Shower frozen dessert!"
The conversation ends there, as there was a minor electrical system meltdown in the Lumina, and he chose to wait for a friend from the Terco County, Texas, Minuteman Militia intead of returning to the plant with a moonlighting electrical engineer from Tegucigalpa.
EPILOGUE
Forrest B. Smallwood died on September 6, 2006. He had been working on a fence to prevent migrants from New Mexico from entering Texas when he encountered a trucker evading the scale in Mulehead City, and immediately accused him of being an Illegal Mexican Alien.
The driver, Raymond "Moose" Thunder Cloud, of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, took high offense to the idea that he was in some fashion less entitled to be in the United States than Mr. Smallwood.
Mr. Thunder Cloud, in a sworn statement released by Terco County Constable Diego Velasquez, defended himself from what he believed to be grave and imminent danger from what he presumed to be a highjacker on FM 13490, three miles west of Tarado. The Texas DPS Crime Scene investigator found the shards of a blue exchange pallet consistent with the severe pummelling of Mr. Smallwood, and a sudden storm washed Mr. Smallwood's remains into a nearby culvert.
There was no funeral, no body, nor were there any survivors.
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