Sounding off
I’m still a junkyard boy…
D.O.’s junk yard was the center of the universe and the more I pondered that thought the more it became a plausible reality to me.
The cars were a fine mix of Fords and Chevys and MoPars, old and all in some state of semi repair, as we lived the second half of the twentieth century American greaser dream.
The shop was a scattered and disheveled mess of old and broken and ‘new,’ recently scrounged and scavenged parts. It was the home we knew and the place we worked out the mastery of shade-tree mechanical engineering and applied physics, with shiny Craftsman wrenches and long, long cheater bars that often broke. When the bars did break it and would send one of us flying, in a direction opposite and perportinate to the applied force and length of said bar. These were times we’d find ourselves crossing from the world of applied physics to Newtons laws of motion, and more than a few times chaos theory.
Life was good at the junk yard, it was simple and grimy and everything, except the pretty girls, was well within our reach. The pretty girls were too smart to fall for offers of rides in loud cars with sketchy and dangerous boys.
It is a good and a very bad thing to have lived the bulk of your life within only a few miles of where you were born. The good is a deep and profound sense of home, the bad is the wither, like corn dying in a field in October, and a very real sense of the passage of the years. Standing next to my cousin the other day pondering the age of an oak tree and somehow adding or subtracting sixty some years to its age and imagining it’s height when we were boys. And seeing it now as a old and dying tree, with a few branches leafless and bare of bark and threatening to come off and bust open someone’s head.
The priorities haven’t changed much since the days of D.O., the junk is still as precious and comforting and grimy. The wrenches not so shiny, but the air is still at times full of anticipation and the joys are just as sweet.
A stunning realization bitch-slaps my face standing on the same exact spot I stood as a much younger man, a boy, on the same patch of grass growing under my boots that grew green and fresh so many years ago. Still, this late in life the boots are burned through in select spots with welding spatter, and I’m holding the same wrench in my hand that turned and broke so many ancient bolts.
All the boys are gone now, save maybe one of two, the smart girls got married to doctors and such and never looked back us the greaser boys. I’m over-washed with a sense of being a stone that has never moved and never changed while the world around me spun hopelessly out of control and into more comfortable and cleaner things. A world without broken bolts and hot slag, and the comfort of grime.
I wonder did the greaser boys, now scattered like twigs to the wind and to various spots above the ground and deep in the dirt across the country, take our traditions with them. Did they find new junkyards and other boys to hot-rod and fix broken things with or did they become old men and bankers and managers and accountants.
When Fascism Comes… Maybe…
I’ve been trying to figure out if I’m more pissed that Biden’s speech last night might have been factual and we are this close to the edge, or just propaganda from the left to scare complacent Democrats to vote.
I’m leaning more toward factual. I’ve been seeing this coming since the Tea Party got Palin on the presidential ticket with McCain in 2008. The Tea Party was kind of weirdly amusing, this MAGA shit is not amusing at all. I wonder sometimes do men like McConnell quietly shit themselves some nights when the come home and break out the bourbon and turn on the news?
I’ve had a nagging sense of demise about this nation for decades. Maybe as far back as St. Ronnie of San Clemente. It’s too much dirty money and too many weak men in charge of a too powerful machine.
Last night every single talking head I heard before turning off the TV noise was picking up Biden’s ball and running full tilt for the end zone. If I heard ‘Democracy on the line’ once, I heard it a hundred times. I guess I could have salved my fears by turning on Tucker and hearing about Hunter Biden’s laptop again, I chose to not do that.
I actually turned on some Marvin, listened to Inner City Blues for the ten-millionth time and wondered who and what this alleged democracy actually works for and who it manipulates and holds down.
If old Joe is lying to stir it up, that is reprehensible, if he’s not it is terrifying, at least for old white guys like me… but not everyone. There are people living within ten miles of me for whom it don’t matter one fucking way or the other what system keeps them down and hungry and oppresses them. Hungry is hungry, don’t matter who is turning the screws.
Modern Times
We live in a time and nation where a man who stole top secret government documents, including nuclear secrets, isn’t in jail. There is actually speculation if he will or won’t even be indicted. This guy has so many charges and lawsuits pointing at him I long ago lost count, or interest, truth be told. And people wonder if he’ll again run for president. In 1953, the Rosenbergs were executed for lesser crimes than this man has been charged. Julius and Ethel didn’t run for President.
We have people in congress who actively took part in armed insurrection of the United States Capitol that came within inches of stopping the transition of power at the executive level, and these people are still uncharged and STILL in congress. Some of these people literally aren’t qualified to work a cash register at the local 7-11.
Boebert failed the GED four times. Marjorie Taylor Green ran unopposed and now spouts QANON conspiracy theories all day. Jim Jordan has been charged in a sexual abuse scandal and hasn’t passed or even proposed any legislation in fourteen years. He tweets the same crap as MGT all day. That’s just about all he does for $174,000 a year. Herschel Walker can’t name the three branches of the United States Government and these clowns are just a sampling… but these people are in Congress, or in Walkers case very well may be in a few weeks, voting on laws that impact all of our lives and wellbeing.
And people wonder why we are nosediving to third world country status. I know some guys who live in places like Guyana and Haiti who have asked me, “What the Hell is going on in your country…”
We used to be better than this. Maybe we weren’t really, but at least we pretended to be better than this…
Talking To The Boy About War
The grandboy wanted to talk about war yesterday.
He’s eight and he holds a very strong good guy vs. bad guy image in his head.
I tried to explain greed and obscene wealth to him but it was a bit more than he was ready to fathom.
He thought Russia had a right to “take its land back…” that lead to a discussion about the Bolshevik revolution and the Ukrainian Declaration of Independence in 1991. I asked him if he’d be ok with some stranger taking over his home and telling him how to live. He replied, “I’d be pretty pissed off, but don’t tell my mom I said ‘pissed!”!” So I asked him how he imagined the Ukrainian people felt. He said he figured they were pretty pissed about it.
I was surprised and strangly pleased he knew little to nothing of the American revolution. I’m pretty sure by age eight I’d had George Washington and cherry trees and fifes and drums jammed down my throut. It was until many years later I came to see the American revolution as nothing but a power and land grab for the benefit of a very wealthy handful of slavers.
I tried to explain the immense profits or war, and greed and motivations of even greater profits from taking oil rich land, productive farmlands, mineral rich lands. I said I had a very real fear that water will become the next commodity that young men and women will be sent to die for, while fat rich men drink up heartily and laugh at the rest of us.
He seemed to be very confused when I said no one wins a war, there are simply profits.
He’s got a very real fear of nukes, yet he doesn’t quite seem to grasp what they are or how radiation can hurt you. He was confused to learn that the only nation on earth to yet unleash nuclear Hell was the good ol’ USA. He said he only thought bad people would use a weapon like a nuke. My only possible reaction to that was that in war and greed and power struggles you need to carefully examine who are the good guys and the bad guys.
I asked him if he thought all the enemy soldiers everywhere were really bad people who needed to die or were they just people who’d been lied to and mislead to commit horrific deeds all in the name of corruption and greed and something called patriotism… anyone’s patriotism.
He seems to know a bit about the world wars and had a great fear of world war three. He asked my why the US wasn’t helping Ukraine and I said they were, but with money and weapons, and I hoped it stayed that way. We discussed NATO. He asked me if the US was giving away the weapons for free and I told him as far as I know yes, but we are all paying for them here in taxes and someone some where was getting rich. He was shocked to learn one missle fired at an enemy target could cost about a million dollars…
He asked me if Hitler was a crazy man and I asked him if a guy who wanted to rule the world and kill people simply because of thier religion was a crazy man… He said yes.
He asked if the war against Hitler was a just war and I said it was probably as just a war as I’d ever heard of.
He asked if Putin was as bad as Hitler… I asked if he thought a man who attacked another country just because he could was as bad as Hitler. He said he thought was a bad man too.
Somedays it ain’t easy talking to the boy. Dinosaurs and cars are better subjects and more fun.