(Note: I'm back on the road for another IT/AV install job, this time a fairly simple, though grueling, contract on a huge military base. There's no point in detailing the work or identifying the base. The issues that are bugging me this week are pretty much the same in any base town.
This brief post will not, indeed cannot address the policies behind our current wars, the size of our military or its uses. These are just a few observations about the people who shoulder the burden of service.
Not too much to say about the oil hell this week. Work's taking a lot of my brain. And, hey, it's all disappeared, right?)
In Soldier Town, they all lay down
The things they once held dear. . .
One of the first things that strikes you here is the number of pawn shops. It's a pretty poor burg, so pawns aren't that surprising. But the sheer number of pawns here is a little shocking. Among the cheap hotels near base entrances, they're practically one a block.
Sure, there are a lot of things a young man or woman might want to jettison at the transition point between high school and, say, an open-ended deployment in a war zone. But there's a lot of cool stuff they might want when they come back, too. Still, there they are in the pawns, stereos, GPS's, bikes, tools, furnishings. Whole lives, essentially dumped for a bit of cash.
There's a whole category of pawns you don't see too much elsewhere: title pawns. Turn over the pink on your rod for a fistful of dollars. If you pay back the loan, you can get your title back. If not, well, consider yourself repoed.
There are other ways to get loans. The density of payday loan shops, many with patriotic, military-themed names, is almost as great as the pawns themselves. Businesses around here seem downright eager to push cash into the hands of our service people.
And what exactly do these folks need all this dough for?
Hard to say at first glance. There are a lot of custom shops where you can mag up your wheels and pimp out the inside and out, but that can't suck up that much. There are plenty of titty bars and porn shops on the strip, though honestly, I can't see the appeal of sexual stimulation for sale when you bunk with a hundred and twenty guys, but to each his own.
There are a great deal of divorce-lawyer-in-a-box shops tucked into the strip malls ("Reasonable Rates",) which is pretty depressing. I met a newly emancipated, 20-year-old mil wife this morning, who was hot to get out of this "crummy little town" as quick as she could get. I wondered where her erstwhile husband was spending his time.
But the saddest hint of where a lot of the cash ends up can be found in the prevelence of "commando supply" stores ("Serving Our Troops Since 19..."). Almost as thick on the ground as the pawns and payday loan shops, these are superstores of survival gear, bladed weapons, specialty headlamps and map gear.
And that, friends, brings me down. My last gig for this crew involved installing hundreds of brand new, ginormous big screen televisions in a couple of the locked-down office buildings around DC of which Dana Priest wrote not long ago.
Obviously a status symbol among the corner office dwellers (none of the cube farmers got 'em), the big TVs were sure to come in handy in case a conference call with the president and Spongebob Squarepants were needed in a national emergency. A reasonable outlay when you stack it up against the nation's security.
But not quite that reasonable when, not too far south, teenagers are pawning their stereos to buy ponchos and sleeping bags and proper footgear before deploying to a war those corner office types insist is needed.
My friend B's boy's a Marine, logistics man. Done a couple of rounds in Iraq, now down Helmand way. He really ought to be on a phone, telling people what to put on and take off airplanes, but needs must and all that, so he's out with the ground pounders, making the rounds. Every month or so, she sends him a box of tube socks and baby wipes. He's probably sharing.
I know you get a lot of pleas for efforts like Netroots for the Troops, Fisher House, AnySoldier.com here, and you're sure to get more from better people than me.
But after a few days gigging in this old Soldier Town, I just want to say, please help out these folks however you can, if you can.
I'm damned if I care whether some GS-Whatthefuckever gets a big TV in his office. Can we get some fucking socks to the people who really are securing us, as best they can?