I think that was the opening line from a Mickey Spilane movie, but my memory is not so good now. I’m just writing to be heard. You can take it for what it is worth, perhaps nothing.
We live in such a jaundiced age. I’m not sure if there is a “right” and a “left” to it anymore. I write to tell a story about one man who feels like whatever we label the sides, some of us will be left out of, excommunicated from both of them. Even in our own home.
Before you get that thought in your head that I’m a troll, let me lay out some facts:
- when I say facts, what I am about to say is true. It’s a story, but it’s my story. If I were to embellish it, or fabricate it, it would completely destroy the purpose of its’ existence as one story of our time. I am an honest man, and if the first reaction is that I am not, then what I will conclude with at the end of this will be validated.
I live in what can arguably be called a small town. One that is about to get bigger in a hurry, because the times, they are a changin’. A century ago it was a town made of immigrants — from Europe. My grandmother said that her mother was probably an orphan; she told a story on a cassette tape back in 1975 that suggested perhaps her own mother was someone’s (white) slave. There are many Catholic churches here, some of them built a century or more ago, now “consolidated” (closed) — beautiful buildings, now derelict, empty.
I have a picture in my house that my dad had enlarged to a size of three by four feet. It shows my grandfather in1904, standing next to his siblings and his mother and father, on the front porch of a house that is only about two miles from where I live now. He is surrounded by eight brothers, three sisters. He was the second youngest. He died in 1974. Nine boys with my last name — and in two generations, I am the only one left. I have no children, I am approaching 60. My family name, as it appears in the phone book, ends with me. (Let’s ignore that phone books will also be extinct soon enough, I get it.)
Of those nine boys, one was killed in the First World War, one never married. Of those who did, they fathered all girls. The lone exception, of course, was my grandfather who had four children; three girls and one boy. That boy was my father. He grew up to contract polio in 1946, and yet his case was mild enough that he suffered no lifelong consequences. Although his physical frame was tall and broad in the shoulders, he had ankles the size of my wrists. I'm built like my grandfather — short and stocky; people always used to ask me when I was a young boy, “I bet you play football” — I am the kid with no neck.
I never saw what they saw, but I do have a neck. I say it was my body’s defense after I was diagnosed with congenital hydrocephalus in 1968. I had an exceptional pediatrician who spotted the signs early, and he sent me to a young — very young — neurosurgeon who placed a “shunt” into my brain and heart, which lasted three years. During those three years, having developed septicemia, my mother tearfully recounted those agonizing nights they left me in the hospital and came home to soothe their anxiety by listening to Beethoven’s third symphony: The “Eroica”. In due time, I emerged with a second shunt, while along the way advances in medicine introduced the miracle of a new antibiotic called Tetracylene. My teeth showed the stains, but it saved my life. I am sort of a miracle.
My father worked for that same company for 32 years. He retired at fifty-three, having been fortunate to be able to stay with the same corporation which (at that time) had a reputation of having never had an involuntary layoff. That reputation is no longer, and that corporation doesn’t even do many of the things that would have made my father a desirable candidate; their business model has changed drastically. As it is, this is the story: My father graduated valedictorian of his high school class — sharing the title with another student, who my father said he tutored through calculus. He was then hired by the large corporation on the very day that the founder of the great company died. The company had a one-word slogan in the 1950’s, and I am told that the framed/glass copy of that slogan which hangs now at the bottom of my stairs once hung on the wall of the company founder, and was snagged by a friend of my father on that fateful day.
I have no idea if that story is apocryphal, but I still have the sign hanging here in my house.
That house — this house was built by my grandfather in 1933; built by his hand and that of his father-in-law, who lived two doors down in another house that still stands. I still have the original bill of lading for the timbers, it totals a little more than $3,000. You can see the first floor joists from the basement are coated in concrete, because those two-by-eights that form the floor now were once the same boards that formed the concrete walls of the basement. It used to have no heat; then it had a coal stove, now it has an oil burner with cast-iron radiators. Odd that I don't’ use coal any longer, because there’s a strip mine right behind the house, because… well, times change.
The house between us was built to house the daughter of the father-in-law in the 1950’s. That woman, my cousin, lived in that house until she died several years ago in her 90’s. What I’m saying is that I now live in a town, in a house, that is as sacred to me personally as any holy land is to the faithful. This house is everything to me. I can stand in the same spot where my grandfather first held me in his arms as a newborn baby; I can stand in the same place where I found my father dead almost 20 years ago now. All of the memories that define my family, everything that I could ever consider sacred in my life, happened on this three-quarters of an acre.
The town around me, however, is now unrecognizable.
The area is now an economic boomtown; construction will soon place a warehouse — several of them, in a collection of over thirty of them within five miles of here — one of them about 400 feet off my back porch. The same back porch where my grandmother sat until she was 94, and my father sat until he was almost 70, feeding birds and squirrels, watching hawks circle overhead while hoping to snatch up a slow rabbit (saw that once; rabbit got away!) — is soon to be surrounded not by trees, but by blacktop. The glorious economy of just-in-time delivery. Its’ all going to go away. My father said he saw the Aurora Borealis when he was a kid in the 1940’s on this spot; the newest warehouse that was just completed about a half-mile to the North, now makes that direction look like perpetual dawn or dusk — the lights from the warehouse on a cloudy night reflect so much ambient light that I can read the major headlines of a newspaper while standing in my yard. In due time, I expect the five houses here will be consumed by eminent domain before I die. I would like to die in this house, but it may not be up to me.
The reason the town is unrecognizable is that the “new” immigrants have come here in such numbers that the four or five generations of “old” immigrants left remaining are now on opposite sides of the culture wars, and the political divide. Rifles fired from private land — legal here, on private property, with minimal restrictions — is now something one can expect to shatter the calm of any afternoon. Sitting in the same two chairs that my grandmother and father once sat, watching birds and squirrels, out of the blue — with no warning — a burst of semi-automatic gunfire is now not unusual. It’s not a good feeling to hear the sound of the gun and know whoever fired it is close enough to hit you if they were aiming, but they can’t see you through the trees at that distance.
Ten years of this has given rise to what many say is my paranoia that I’ll be shot; either by accident or on purpose. You see, there is also a confederate flag flying from that house where this neighborhood began a century ago. A house that lies well within the borders of a state which fought for the Union which defeated the Confederacy, and that house has been the location from where some of that rifle fire originates. In this state, shooting on private property is legal, with few restrictions. Punctuated rifle fire; ostensibly it will be described as just a few random shots of a person who was indulging their “Constitutional right” to keep and bear arms. But the longer story tells a terrifying reality that it was a deliberate act of intimidation — which worked very well.
So here I sit, in a priceless house — to me — perhaps only to me. Whether the corporations buy it all up and drive me out for pennies on the dollar, or I concede that the culture and demographics have changed so much that my heart is broken completely, It is a town I no longer recognize. When I go downtown, or to the smaller town in the other direction where, as a boy, my grandmother used to take me to get scrapple and eggs, or cabbage for Haluski, I don’t see people that look and talk and act like my grandmother anymore. The new immigrants speak a new language, and ride ATV/Four-wheelers up the main streets like it’s the next Mad Max sequel; they drive BMW’s and Mercedes and Lexus and Infinity and Subaru cars, tricked out with the latest accessories, and sound systems that thump the ground to a Latin beat from a quarter-mile away. On one occasion, someone had brought one of those $40,000 sound systems to the local park, and delivered a Latin music concert that had people calling the State Police from a statute mile away.
And the rifle fire — has shaken my soul.
I notice you have an “RKBA” group. Again — I have no reason to embellish this; the event is seared into my soul, and I cannot forget it. The first time I heard a sudden burst of rifle fire, I ran over the property from where it came from, wondering what was wrong. I will not do that again. I — well, this is a quote:
”The messican’s got ‘em, now I got one, too.”
I don’t know what will happen. Half the town wants Trump to win for the culture wars; but the other half thinks coal was — still should be — our future, and hates Biden somehow because he is a greenie environmentalist who took away their coal. The coal … (I don’t get this)… how deep can a strip mine go? The land that was mined a hundred years ago right behind my house is now where the warehouses are being built — — they’re not building warehouses because Democrats hate coal, or even because the International bodies on climate change have mandated the mining to stop — they’re building warehouses because after 150 years of tunnel and surface mining, the coal is largely already gone. Every now and then a house will fall into a pit opened up by “subsidence”, but those are rare. Centrailia — an underground mine fire burning since the 1950’s — is not far from here.
This is a disjointed story. I”m old, and my brain doesn’t work that well, if it ever did. I only wrote it to say that my personal story — my sacred land, my sacred buildings don’t seem to be sacred to anyone but me. They don’t mean anything to anyone but me, and although my house is paid for free and clear, my bills are paid, in due time, I am certain I will be driven out if I don’t get to die here. When I complained to the State Police about the gunfire, and my fear of getting killed while I’m out mowing the lawn, they offered — very politely, with a smile, but succinctly, this bit of advice —
”Move.”
So, when you think about it: I am being told in no uncertain terms, even in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, that if things are that bad — leave behind everything that is sacred to you, everything your family worked for to achieve the American Dream — hey, if it’s that bad, just move. Because contract law, industrial commerce, and demographic shifts are inexorable, and one man’s castle is still just an obstacle easy to overwhelm by any of those forces.
So it goes.
I thought that was how the immigrants of 100 years ago, and the new immigrants of today — I thought that was how they arrived here; they miss their homeland, but they left. Seems quite surreal to hear the same law enforcement that once had the motto “to protect, and to serve”, tell me that — hey, if it’s that bad, sure it’s your homeland, sure it’s your family’s castle — but in any case, cut your losses and go.
This is a true story. When I go to Wal-Mart now, no one around me speaks the language that I was told was a reason to go to school and learn to speak; I went to college, and still wound up working in warehouses — where they told me that to use the word “erudite” in conversation was condescending to the other workers, and I was admonished to stop. I probably can’t use “admonish”, either. All those SAT prep courses for what? Those who speak the new language, they look at me like I’m in their way, and speak among themselves to laugh at the angry old white guy. I guess that’s who I am now. One young man, who was conversing with six young women and blocking the entire aisle at the store, when I had the temerity to say nothing more than “Excuse me” so that I could pass, he steps back just enough to let me by, and brushes me back as I do:
”You better watch yourself.”
Whether you believe these are true stories, they are the stories I will tell — am telling — have told, for going on twenty years now. I am now the angry old man who doesn’t think he’s that old. George Carlin said that old is a state of mind. I may have arrived. Being told to give up what is sacred to me because someone with more money will do with it what the contract law says they can; and the new immigrants who work in their employ all hope that the last of us get out in any case, because the town, the culture, the language, the food — — it’s theirs now, our time has passed. That is how I feel, in my soul. It is crushing — if to no one but me, at least to me. This is the story I tell, because it’s who I am now.
The comedian Jeanine Garafalo used to tell a story about what it was like at the bar when they announced last call,
”You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
Anything and everything that ‘home’ could ever mean is right here in this house; this town.
But the house is surrounded by an environment that will be unrecognizable very soon. Trees and empty, stripped land will be re-purposed to become brightly-lit pavement and flat roofs, the sound of diesels downshifting night and day, its’ all going to change. It all IS changing. The noisiest time of the day is when the trucks come in off the interstate, downshifting with their straight chrome exhaust which cost the extra $10,000 to modify — the intersection is almost a quarter mile from my house. It registers 60 dB in my yard. I think those guys don’t want electric vehicles because they can’t announce to the world that they’re coming and going for 1000 feet in any direction if they don’t have a combustion engine and straight pipes. The people who will work there — on the whole — have made it clear to me that the old is being pushed aside to make room for the new in more ways than one.
About a decade ago, when I worked at one of those warehouses, I stopped at a convenience store to get gas at the end of my shift. I am walking into the store to pay, and this convoy of ten identical vans, with satellite domes on top, all of them standard colors, all of them fairly new, some with box trailers, also with satellite domes on top (like the RV’s have) — pulls in. Forty people get out wearing tactical gear, with INS patches on them, carrying sidearms and rifles. Later that afternoon, it was this convoy that arrived at the warehouse that I had worked at a few years before. But that’s not the most surreal part of this story.
There’s a guy — the kind with a big beard and who is so portly he can’t run too fast — the other stereotype of the angry old white guy who has lived here his whole life — he’s behind the wheel of his own truck, and he’s pulling out of the parking lot, passing the convoy if feds on the right, just as they are rolling in to stage and prepare before they go to the warehouse. The guy is leaning out the van up to his shoulder, with his fist in the air, and he says,
”ROUND ‘EM ALL UP, AND SEND ‘EM ALL BACK!”
As whatever god you believe in is my witness, this is a true story.
Its’ ugly here. There is tension — not just between the “old” and the “new” — but politically, Joe Biden is seen as the dastardly man who is destroying the country; Donald Trump is the Rambo hero. The immigrant crowd — the new immigrant crowd — well, I can’t speak for them. I don’t even dare to finish that thought, because it will be interpreted by some as meaning just the opposite of what someone else will interpret it to mean, and they’ll both blame me.
I have no idea what happens next.
My nightmares wake me up regularly now. My safe haven is still sacred to me, but I don’t leave the house too often. I drive 20 miles out of town for groceries and supplies, just to feel normal again. I am not certain of anything any longer. I still have all the emotions for the house itself; I see my family members — now long gone — I still see them in every room; I still see where we all once sat together on holidays for most of my life. They’re all gone but me; the few cousins left nearby don’t talk to me because… well, politics.
The most surreal irony that I want to convey to you is that this conflict is so politicized; because it has to be enthusiastically misunderstood to make it about politics. What do I mean?
Of these 20 warehouses — not one union shop among them, that I know of. 100 years ago there was a notorious massacre here on coal-company land; (actually there were a few, but one is fairly well known) — it was out of those riots that this country experienced the labor movement which brought many of the benefits we have today. This state is an “at will” state; what that means is that in the days of the coal barrons, it was illegal to quit your job. After the massacres, one of the “bargains” was to concede that a worker can quit his job, but — just to be fair- that means your employer can fire you without cause, too. It’s only fair.
That’s the kind of weirdness that I feel; this place was largely made what it is by the labor movement of the last hundred years, and now…. now lobbyists and money from billionaires have written the laws to unwind many of those … agreements. The turnover rate among these warehouses is surreal — its’ an unfunny joke that when one of us gets fired and gets hired by another one just a mile down the road, we’ll all meet the same people we worked with at the old place. We’re interchangeable cogs in a big machine. The joke used to be “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” — now the wheel is removed and replaced with one that knows not to make any noise, whether it’s given grease or not.
I have no reason to embellish this story.
I just wanted to tell it, because the timeline of how fast it all happened is barely 25 years. I moved here because this town was the only home I had ever known. I know it is rare for a man to have the same house for three generations; maybe the antagonism toward me is jealousy; that other want me to lose what is sacred to me, to be forced to leave it behind just as they have had to, on some cosmic scale of justice or karma, or “it is what it is.” All I know is that this house is the only thing that has been constant in my life for fifty-seven years.
When I go into town, when I sit on my back porch, I feel I am a stranger in my own land, beset on all all sides by forces who may be antagonistic to each other — — but who all see me as the one guy who does not belong.
I don’t feel “domestic tranquility” in the wake of the new understanding of the Second Amendment.
I don’t feel any sense of unity in a country that still has the temerity to use that word as the first in it’s own name. I was admonished by a pedant once, “it’s the states that are united, not necessarily the people.”
Indeed.
The “united” states of… who are we fooling?
It’s just a story. I dare not engage in the comments. Either you believe it, or you don’t — but please — — don’t condemn me for being candid.
It’s just a story.