It's funny how the past rares back once in a while and slaps you upside the head about the things you know and the things you've forgotten you know. I was half-raised by my dad's family after he died, good ranch people who never voted Republican in their life. North Dakota stock by way of Ireland, transplanted to the Oregon high desert by the Great Depression. The kind of people you can trust with only the formality of a handshake. The kind of people who look you in the eye.
I was just at the Safeway store I worked the night crew at for the years before I wised up and used my GI Bill money to get out of retail and into government work. As I strolled through, always uncomfortably aware of all my old customers who still ask me to find things for them, a face out of that dim past rose up in my path. Scott was one of the kids I worked with back then, almost 13 years ago, when my son was very small and the girl hadn't come yet. He caught me up on his life, let me know that the other kid I worked with, Shane, was doing really well, and I was glad. I hadn't seen him in many years, and didn't see him under his mountain man beard, but his wife got used to it, I guess so can I. One thing that hadn't changed, he still looks you in the eye when he shakes your hand.
Scott's the most genuine person I've ever met. The kind of guy who tells you exactly what he thinks, even if he has to say sorry after. Even if it raises up bad feelings and makes the conversation hard. He says the true thing first, and because of that, I trust him even after all these years. He may bruise my ego, but he'd never hurt me. I miss people like Scott and like my dad's kin. I miss what they represent. A man who looks you in the eye is not to be trifled with.
I grew up on Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash, but I'm sitting here writing this while Sam Cooke promises a change is gonna come. I know it will, but the when of it all is so damnably glacial that it's often hard to locate the difference between the ages. Sometimes it seems like too much ebb, not enough flow. Weber had it wrong, he didn't go big enough to fit America. He who would seek out political power in this country must not be a leader or a hero. Politcs is more like emptying the ocean with a bucket than the slow boring of hard boards. Sure you're making progress, but....
I've been thinking a lot about change, lately. Seems to me it's going the wrong way. Things are changing that everyone wants to keep the same, and stuff that's always bugged Americans just keeps on trucking, no matter what we say. Republicans still have an agenda that almost every single person in this country hates, corporations still want to rape and pillage the country so they can move on to the next market and do it again, and nobody who doesn't have money to spare for election campaigns gets any say in anything of consequence. That's something libtards and teabaggers have in common, we're all iced out of the game, no seat at the table for us. Besides, the vig's too steep, anyways.
Anyways, this was a dreary little diary, and I'm sorry 'bout that. Not enough hope or enough change going around these days. I put a little of what passes for a bright spot in today's less than sunny times below the fold. Billionaires who finally realized their entire workforce is likely to revolt and use their guts for garters, come the Revolution. Shared sacrifice. Fuck'n A.
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