This Carbon Based Life

Photo: Courtesy of Arnold Klein

Stories From the Road

By David Glenn Cox

 I Ain’t Got No Home
   Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

I ain’t got no home, I’m just a-roamin’ ’round,
Just a wandrin’ worker, I go from town to town.
And the police make it hard wherever I may go
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.

My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road,
A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod;
Rich man took my home and drove me from my door
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.

Was a-farmin’ on the shares, and always I was poor;
My crops I lay into the banker’s store.
My wife took down and died upon the cabin floor,
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.

I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn
I been working, mister, since the day I was born
Now I worry all the time like I never did before
‘Cause I ain’t got no home in this world anymore

Now as I look around, it’s mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
Oh, the gamblin’ man is rich an’ the workin’ man is poor,
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.

© Copyright 1961 (renewed) and 1963 (renewed) by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. & TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)

Cooking in a Coffee Pot

Stories from the Road

                                                  Chapter One

                                                                     “In the hole”

I guess it all sorta depends on what you want to believe. We’re so quick with judgments in this country, aren’t we? But it’s like this, either I’m a regular guy who got caught up in the currents of his times or I’m a guy who broke bad, who willingly abandoned work and a middle-class lifestyle in trade for grinding poverty. I’ve made my mistakes; of that I freely admit. As Mark Twain once explained, “Adam was but human—this explains it all,” I too am human and equally—this explains it all. 

This isn’t the type of book I could sit down and decide to write. It is a book of experiences, a book which has written itself, it’s a record of where my mind wandered to on any given day. It isn’t a book about homelessness per se or some reporter going undercover to investigate homelessness. Oh no, I’m no Morgan Spurlock, trying to write about the experience of what it is like to be homeless. I am homeless and what’s more to the point here, so might you be someday! I know, I can see the heads shaking from here, swearing no, never, not me; it could never happen to me. Yet, I have known of former millionaire’s homeless, athletes, TV personalities and people with great talents, all backed by blue chip educations.

 It’s the first lesson you must learn about homelessness in this America of ours. The homeless are not defective people; they’re merely people who’ve been shunted to the margins. This is the United States of America, there are no exemptions offered in this wicked country. I recently met a former computer systems analyst, for a large corporation in New York. He’d held the position for nearly twenty years before a doctor’s misdiagnosis, left him bedridden for two years. His savings gone, his credit ruined, he must now account for a two-year absence from the workforce, seven hundred thousand dollars in debt. Dare he tell a prospective employer the truth? Dare he admit to health problems, don’t you see? You might have a fine home and money in the bank, but it can all be gone faster than you can say, “turn your head and cough.”

Health problems, down-sizing, divorce and outsourcing, have left tens of millions of Americans pushed to the margins. The GM bankruptcy alone cost ten thousand middle managers their jobs. These people lost their pensions, their health care and at forty-five or fifty years of age, with say, eighteen years in with the company, they’ve found themselves out of work, how do they start over? They’re legal secretaries, Real Estate agents, contractors and salesmen. Maybe it’s just me, but I recently overheard this conversation. “Well, no, I don’t have to get paid everyday, but just for the first few.” I’m one little man, watching the world imploding all around me and sometimes, I feel as if, I’ve been placed here as a witness to these things, my eyes pinned open and unable to look away.

There are hundreds of ways you can find yourself on this road, but they all lead to the same place. The strings which attach you to the reality of the American workforce are fine and finite. Gaps in your employment history for any reason and you’re viewed with suspicion, a risk. Credit problems added to those gaps, now throw in poverty; a dress shirt well past its prime or worn shoes. Suddenly, you no longer have a bank account and must ask others to cash checks for you or paying stiff banking fees. More than twenty percent of American adults no longer have checking accounts, without these things; try getting an apartment or a car, let alone a job.

These events have a devastating effect on your psyche. You can neither accept nor believe these things are really happening. This life of plenty which you once knew is gone and you’re lost, drifting in an empty new environment. It is an environment which you can neither fathom nor control as your social support structure is gone. Try calling your friends from the Home- Owner’s Association once you’ve become homeless. What would you talk about, what could you answer to the question, “what’s new?” It is the uneasiness, the merciless discovery at forty- five or fifty years of age, to have become an excess and unnecessary American human resource.

***

Stray Cats

May 4, 2009

I watch the sun go down reluctantly. This world offers little, and I have little to offer in return. I have lost everything, so as the birds sing at daylight’s demise, I hear no music. The world has lost its music for me; it is just an endless grind with a police siren in the distance.

I went to Wal-Mart. God, I hate Wal-Mart, but I needed dish soap and hand soap, and well, beer. Some days are harder than others and this one was a difficult one. I live on hope, vain hope, that maybe I can reach some of you. I know I’m reaching some of you, because you tell me I am. God bless you all.

I also bought cat food for forty-four cents a can to feed the stray kittens outside my door. My heart goes out to them because they are alone in this world, and no one gives a phuck about them. They are siblings and I’ve named them Moxie and Blackie. I watched as they ate their fill, then, just for a moment began to play on my door mat and reduced me to tears. For just a moment, they could forget their situation and played like kittens. Then a full-grown stray showed up and they remembered their place, retreating under a car. They are the unloved and unwanted, burdensome minutia, striving for a life in a world that doesn’t want them in it.

I relate, I am one of the millions who have lost homes, spouses, jobs and futures. We live on our past now, because it is all we have, like a dream or a mirage. Was it ever real? Did we ever have a happy life with happy children and a happy spouse? I understand and I want you to understand, as well, when your spouse is employed and you can’t find a job it is easier for the spouse to blame the person, rather than the situation, because it gives them an out. A free pass, so they can cast you adrift, because it is your failing and not the situation.

How can you blame the situation? You should find a job even if there are none; you should cringe and crawl and take jobs that wouldn’t pay enough to keep the wolf from the door, as a sign of your devotion. When, in fact, it is a fantasy, a make-believe dream that if you took that job that cost more in gas and laundry than it paid, that somehow it would all work out. Yet to paraphrase Mark Twain, “It’s troublesome to do right and it ain’t no trouble to do wrong and the wages are just the same.”

I have contemplated taking my life, not in some melodramatic movie scene, but instead as a patron tired of the movie melodrama. To cast down my popcorn, disgruntled by a lousy plot, and hit the bricks. Like a salmon, I have swam upstream and now I’m tired; I have done my bit and now, I’m looking for a back channel in which to rest. We are disjointed and separated, yet we are connected by what is going on and by what’s happening to us and being done to us. I am not alone; I see you out there, in fortress America. I’ve seen your homes boarded up and your cars repossessed, and I wonder, where you have gone? Just like those kittens, I wonder where will you go and what will become of you, when the thunder crashes and the rain pours down?

Why doesn’t this country give a phuck about us? If they can rescue banks, mortgage companies, automakers and insurance companies, why can’t they rescue us who have become as stray cats in this society? If they are not going to help us, why not at least offer us suicide booths or Kool-Aid stations to give us an out?

I look for jobs and it makes me angry, Tom Joad angry, job listings that don’t say what the job is or how much it pays. Like picking peaches for a nickel a basket, but my basket fills with rage, and I want to scream, “Phuck You! Phuck you and your bullshit job!” I’d rather drink the Kool-Aid. At least with the Kool-Aid, I’d control my own destiny and don’t need to snivel, hat in hand, mumbling, “Please sir?” But I can’t do it, I can’t drink the Kool-Aid, I must try again to break through. I have a computer and a brain and maybe this time I can reach you. Reach you to make you understand, you are me and I am you. I am homeless and you can become homeless, too; you are not indemnified. Your husband or wife will leave you, because you’re unemployed. They will not go down with you!

They will kick you to the curb because it is easier to blame you than to accept the situation. “Till death do you part” rings hollow when the mailman brings only threats. It is better to pluck out an eye than to corrupt the whole body. So, we are cast out, into a world which has taken everything from us and now, expects us to say please for the privilege of shoveling its crap.

But you out there, who are like me; you are all that I hold on to. I understand you and relate to you. I am inverted by you, converted by you. My life is no longer about wants; I want nothing for myself. I have no more dreams for myself, but only for you. I am liberated by a sense they can take nothing more from me, not even my life, I don’t give a phuck about that any more myself.

I want to see change, not marginal change but real change, because without it, you’re all no better off than I am, only you’re still clinging to the illusion that things will get better. The cable news channel says so, but they lie, because that’s their job. To lie and tell you it’s not so, when it is so. To tell lies that look ten-foot-tall from in the house, but out in the street where I live, you can see them for what they really are. Lies to protect those who put us here and who fear that the government will spend their precious money, trying to assist us.

Well then, leave no room in your luggage for patience and dignity, you won’t need them. You will need to find extra room for repressed rage. You will begin to realize that this government which claims to represent you, cares no more about you than stray cats; you’re just a thump in the wheel well of their limousine. When that reality hits you, the scales will fall from your eyes; you will no longer see political parties, the party’s over and you weren’t invited.

We need to stop traffic and to stand in the street, to grab this society by the testicles and shout, “This is our country, either share it with us or we’ll take it from you!

“His is a relationship to his little local bank or local loan company. It is a sad fact that even though the local lender, in many cases, does not want to evict the farmer or homeowner by foreclosure proceedings, he is forced to do so in order to keep his bank or company solvent. Here should be an objective of Government itself, to provide at least as much assistance to the little fellow as it is now giving to the large banks and corporations. That is another example of building from the bottom up.” ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

                                                                     ***

I went from living in a 3,500 square foot home in suburban Atlanta, to sleeping in the tiny office of an automotive garage. And I was grateful for it, because as much as it was a step down from my previous station, it still offered shade, drinking water and a place to sleep. To have a safe place to sleep, a place to wash yourself and to use the toilet, if only you could understand how hard these things can sometimes be to maintain. Soon, your eyes begin to adjust, to seeing these new things, to seeing these new people, in this new world. Suddenly, your eyes fixate on the men shaggy of hair or women in wrinkled, day old clothes. I met this guy at the library; he was wearing a shirt with a ship’s name on it and asked if he was in its crew?

He explained his ex had given it to him. I asked if he lived around here, he pointed over his shoulder down the road. Saying, “I live under a bridge about half a mile from here.”

This is your introduction to the brave new world, as you begin see and understand these new things. To see these things as they really are and to understand them as they really are, your eyes begin placing a burden upon your heart.

***

Cooking in a Coffee Pot
and Other Useful Tips for the Homeless

 July 15, 2009

I write this for the millions who, like myself; holed up in basements, garages, empty houses, fields, culverts and what have you. These are people guilty only of being Americans and homeless, trying to make it through just one more day in the land of Fuck You, and the home of the slave. I am at the top of the homeless pyramid; I still have internet access and a toilet.

The one thing to remember about the homeless is that they never have a day off. They are homeless every day; it’s easy to forget and difficult to understand, but the homeless face the world without a buttress. They’re toe-to-toe with the heat and the humidity, the rain, the mud, and the bugs.

They’ve lost their basic building block of society, a home, a place to lay down their heads, a humble place to lie in comfort, a simple retreat from the world. I consider myself among the lucky; I have a leaking air mattress and a roof to keep myself dry and a box fan to keep me cool. I don’t sleep in a bed, but on a floor and I eat on a table salvaged from a dumpster. But it is not a home, it is a garage. It is a refuge, and I am a refugee in modern America.

Brought up in another place, I feel myself an alien in this land. This is not the land of my birth. Where did it all go? How can we get back there? Our goals, motives and principles become polluted and reverse reclamated, blurred and obscured by the lack of a home. We live like cave men and women, targeted and dodging the monsters in squad cars or avoiding the looks of disgust, from those who believe themselves invincible.

But we know better, and we look back with “see you soon eyes,” and we dream, a dream of beds with clean linen or a hot bath or a shower, a dream of a decent job with decent wages and maybe even a front door and a window with a screen. But if I had one wish, it would be to play the movie “The Grapes of Wrath” on every TV channel for twenty-four hours, because I am living every line of it every day. “Don’t take no nerve to do something when you ain’t got no other choice.”

“It’s my dirt; it ain’t no good but its mine!”

We’re looking for our California, our promised land, and a place to start again. Because, just like Tom Joad, we’re getting angry, “They’re working away at our spirit, trying to make us crawl” feeding us promises and programs that, like the rain, sound good, but never reach us here on the ground.

I laugh myself through the want ads each day, at jobs making promises that are either sucker gambits or flat-out frauds. Come work for free! Learn Grant Writing, only $200. “I never should have come on this trip. You remember that coupon in the spicy Western Stories’ magazine? Learn to be a radio expert.” Jobs that aren’t really jobs at all, promising good work and good wages, but paying a nickel a box when they promised a dime. “An’ you fellas will have to take it, cause you’ll be hungry.”

I traded my truck for a 1987 Paseo and $1,500, but I don’t drive; it is merely a vestige of who I once was. I don’t drive, because I don’t have insurance, but it is like an escape pod. Just knowing I could go, if I had somewhere to go, it is my last redoubt. I’m down to about $250 dollars and still looking for work, foolishly, pointlessly. I applied to a popular website that was seeking in-depth journalism on the subject of homelessness, but they never replied. Typical of American media, they just want anecdotes about homelessness; they want to hear about it, but don’t really want to know about it.

I watch the body shop next door meandering towards oblivion, as their work dries up. Friday, they had six body men working on three cars and you can’t keep the doors open like that. The cabinetry shop on the other side is working four and a half days a week.

I buy groceries according to what I can keep in a mini fridge, more like an icebox really. It keeps food cool, not cold. For soup you measure a cup of water in a plastic cup and place the soup in the coffeepot. Then you let the water pour through and wait for the warmer to warm the concoction. It’s not piping hot, but it’s hot enough and beggars can’t be choosers now, can they? Because of my culinary limitations I buy the same foods each week; two months ago, it cost $45.00 and last week it was $65.00.

The money is rapidly loosing its value, which also explains why gas prices are rising, even as demand sinks. I know that more of you are coming to join us, in this time the land forgot, and you’ll have questions, just as we had questions. But there are no answers, you just do and try to make the day. You wait anxiously, for the Georgia sun to go down offering some relief from the heat. As the sky turns red, the box fan again begins to offer some, the only relief available.

The kitties, Moxie and Blackie, still visit me each night and it is peculiar, because I’ve joined their society more than they have mine. When I wrote about them before, some people, well-intentioned, I’m sure, suggested I capture them and turn them over to the humane society. You don’t understand; we are equals in this life. I don’t rat them out and they don’t rat me out. If I turned them over, maybe they’d have a better life; maybe they’d get gassed.

But, like the Joads, “We had meat tonight, not much, but we had it.” The kitties are free and for the time being, happy. I feed them and welcome them, but they are free to go as well. They are not mine, merely night visitors who befriended me without qualifications. It would be too hard on my conscience to turn them in, without knowing the outcome. Maybe you understand, maybe you don’t. Tom Joad said it like this, “Seems the government has more interest in a dead man than a live one.” Or in this case, they have more interest in picking up kitties than in finding them homes. Besides, the government has done nothing to help me; why should I expect more for cats who will never vote?

The cool and the stillness of Sunday night are a comfort to me, and I must take my pleasure where I can, because the air mattress still leaks, and the hot sun will return again tomorrow. So, I will lay my head on the floor and dream.

“Fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live – for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken … fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.” ~ John Steinbeck

                                                                    ***

       

You just can’t believe this is happening, hour after hour of wondering, how can this be? How could this be happening to me? That’s key word here, me; isn’t it? This is all about me, isn’t it? It’s only normal, I suppose, I’d see only my own downfall, before noticing all the others all around me, right? Then, as I became acclimated to this strange new altitude, living on the cusp of abject poverty, only then, do you slowly begin to understand. It isn’t about you at all, it is about everyone else, but you. Suddenly, you discover the social safety net is imaginary. All the programs which you’ve always heard about for your entire life, really don’t exist or don’t apply to you.  What’s more, you discover a whole new world. A parallel universe, co-existing beneath the one you used to believe was, oh, so real.

***

                                                     (Before the beginning)

         Jobs Continue to Migrate

             January 4, 2008

“Experts say economy will benefit long term from outsourcing and off shoring (Atlanta Journal Constitution) we are living in a global economy. If abdominal pain sends you to the emergency room in the middle of the night, it might be a radiologist in Australia or Switzerland who reads you CT scan. The medical notes on your case may be transcribed in India. The mortgage papers on your new house might be processed in China or Kenya.”

Understand, when they say WE, they don’t mean you and I, they mean Us and them. They sell you this advantage of faster medical care, but actually, the advantage is in a cost-saving for them. You see, they couldn’t have a doctor read your CT scan in the middle of the night in this country, because that would be ah, okay, expensive.

They continue, “It began with manufacturing, but off shoring spilled into service sectors. The Internet changed the way the game was played geography and time. The trends show that companies are getting more sophisticated in what they’re outsourcing and off shoring” according to Tim Mescon, Dean at Coles college of Business at Kennesaw State University. Tim explains, “The U.S. is clearly the biggest user off shoring, and Japan has become a huge user- and the numbers continue to grow dramatically.” Tim says, “The US is the biggest user,” English is a funny language, sometimes when you say something innocently, you tip your hand kind of like a Freudian slip – “user.”

But I digress, Tim says, “Work is no longer is sent just to India, China or Mexico but also to Belarus, Kenya and Canada’s Prince Edward Island, The Islanders couldn’t just fish or harvest trees anymore, so that area has a strategy to boost it’s economy by becoming a call center location,” Mescon said.

Tim, I have a question? The Islanders have a strategy to boost their economy? So, importing jobs is a good thing? So then, what is exporting jobs, Tim?

“The shift has caused plenty of short-term pain to blue-collar and white- collar Americans who have lost their jobs.” Whew, thanks Tim, I was beginning to think you didn’t care about us at all. As long as it only short-term pain, then I guess that’s all right. Tim, short-term, just how long is that the mortgage company wants to know.

Now Tim is going to give us more good news! “In the long- term there will be a positive impact in the area of economic growth for U.S. companies.”

Tim, a question? When you say impact, does that mean jobs? Or profits? “Companies like Boeing, who are succeeding in aviation manufacturing by having parts made all over the world to grow their core business domestically.”

Tim, another question, Boeing dumps American workers and that helps them domestically? Are you saying the unemployed workers are buying airliners? Or the airlines are buying more aircraft, because the unemployed are traveling? Or maybe, Boeing just makes more profits? But Tim’s not alone here, Penelope Prime, Professor of Economics at Mercer University’s school of Business and Economics says, “The recent resurgence of engineering and IT jobs supports that thinking.”

A question? When you say, “supports that thinking” does that mean you have facts? Or just supports your thinking? And so, we should just have faith in your thinking, because if so, you’re in the wrong business to be asking for faith. The Department of Labor statistics say there were only 1,500 engineering jobs created last year (2007) and it also says that IT jobs lead the way in income declines. Come on now Penelope, you’re not being completely honest with us, are you?

“American companies make the decision to off shore activities if it makes sense,” she says, “If it adds value, then it’s a smart move. Our economy has to stay competitive, retrainable and flexible.”

Pen? American, what does that mean to you? If the corporate headquarters building were to catch fire, whom do you want to come put the fire out? Or if burglars were breaking in, whom would you call? I hear the Prince Edward Islanders are looking for jobs; perhaps they could start a fire department. No, I think you’d want us to do it, wouldn’t you?

“The best thing workers today can do is learn how to learn and how to think.”

Thanks Penelope, how did we ever get along with out you? Tim advises, “Because it’s no longer easy to predict where future jobs will be.”

Tim, any idea where the jobs won’t be?

“They need to keep their eyes open and stay ahead of the game.”

You know, Tim, that might be a lot easier, if they’d quit changing the rules. Because it seems to me the game is fixed. It seems to be all about profit for the corporation and nothing for the American worker. “We need to learn how to think!” We are not as stupid as you may well suppose. I’ve been thinking, and I have a plan. Let’s outsource our college professors! Lectures could be broadcast on a satellite link from India, Ireland or Australia and our papers could be turned in and graded online, after all, you said it was a good idea didn’t you, Tim? It only makes sense, then you and Penelope could be retrained, repeat after me Timmy, “Would you like fries with that, and how about a hot apple pie? Thanks for coming to Chick-fil-A!”

You see Tim, according to you and Penelope, the country owes you nothing! Not one damn thing! You see, here in the Corporate states of America, you’re just lucky if they let you just stand around. My brother’s keeper? Not applicable to the corporate frame of mind. Let me ask you this, Timmy? If a country has no interest in the welfare of its citizens, what is the point of having a country? And if this country owes its citizens nothing, then what do we as citizens owe to it in return? You see Timmy, we are thinking and are retraining.

***

 The Gray Side of the Mirror

 February 7, 2008

           The truth lives in the gray side of the mirror. Rather than reflect the truth, it absorbs it. Rather than accept the truth, it absolves it. Rather than championing truth, it only bears it. The gray side of the mirror is the un-presented side, the side kept in the dark just as we are kept in the dark. Shoved between frame and wall, between dark and the light. Unasked, unnoticed, unrequited.

            Like the shroud of Turin, its facets and details are only made visible when viewed in the negative light. A brightness highlighted by the absence of light. Details hewn out of the darkness and illustrated by the stars in the night sky above. Light is not the enemy of the stars, as the stars are made of light. But it is that same light which blinds us to all that goes on around us in daylight; the night sky are always out there; we are just blind to it.

           We accept the image in the reflection unquestioned, but we never look at the gray side of the mirror, just to be sure. We are plied upon for our emotional response to allow millions who entered this country illegally, be allowed to stay. We must be compassionate caring and comforting, but in the gray side of the mirror, there are millions of our own people sentenced to prison until George W. Bush is a geriatric, for the crime of smoking the wrong kind of cigarette. Where is our compassion? What image does that reflect?

            We look at the poor in America as deserving of their poverty. As a just and well-earned punishment. A noble and just institution, a sanctified institution, our own peculiar institution. Just as American Southerners, once looked upon their own peculiar institution, they saw nothing wrong in the mirror. They never dared even when challenged, to look into the gray side of the mirror. They had to accept the image of the bright side. They were successful because they were smarter, wiser and more industrious. Their wealth was a self-serving justification of their own superiority. And they couldn’t possibly look then into the gray side of the mirror.

            It was too frightening, even to comprehend. Because their fortunes were built upon misery, suffering, blood, depravity and slavery. So, we admire ourselves in the mirror today, we are so much better now. Don’t we look nice, a black man running for President, a woman running for President, but what do they say that should make us admire ourselves so? A Chinese man labors in a coal mine without a breathing apparatus, an Indian man labors with a cutting torch without welding goggles. Chinese teenage girls work 18 hours a day making Barbie dolls, Doctor Barbie, Hollywood Barbie, Rock star Barbie but in the gray side of the mirror, it’s only Slave girl Barbie.

            Is it really any different? Only the size of the plantation has changed, and the names have been changed to protect the profitable. But their arguments don’t change; the industrious succeed on their own merits and because of their superiority, while the weak fail from their moral deficiency. The fallacy of saying a crop failure blighted by drought was because it didn’t try hard enough or it lacked moral training, or its genes were inferior from the start. That the one or two sprigs of grain which did grow to bear fruit are proof positive, the others must be defective.

                                                                     ***

After I’d sold my wedding ring, I would daily see the cars parked at “We Buy Gold” I understood this place as a sponge, soaking up the rings and necklaces of better days. The silver dollars your grand parents had given you on your birthdays, wiping the table clean of all of your artifacts. Your past gone, your current possibilities questionable, making your future nebulous and imaginary. Walking the other direction, less than two miles down the highway was another “We Buy Gold” operating out of a jewelry store. The irony of a jewelry store buying back the gold they’d once peddled; and you begin to see the enormity of the swindle.

A “We Buy Gold” every two miles, more common than McDonald’s restaurants, tens of thousand’s of “We Buy Gold” all across this country existing, to feed off the misery. There was a title loan place, up the street, in one of those quickie oil change businesses which had failed. A building where they once changed your car’s oil, they now changed your cars ownership, parked out front, two cars, “For Sale” of formally satisfied customers, down to their last. They traded long-term viability, for short-term expediency. These businesses feeding on the customer’s needs and desperation, profiting from it, either way. Live here, then tell me all about the nobility of Capitalism. “Capitalism is an illness, the more you’ve got, the sicker you become.”

***

Watching the Dinosaurs Fall

February 22, 2008,

The motivation for this comes from an article written by Martin Wolf of the Financial Times and he told the truth, mainly. I won’t dispute a single fact or figure in his article, “America’s Economy Risks Mother of All Meltdowns” in it, he comes to us as a prognosticator, predicting the future of the things that will be.

He’s trying to be the ghost of Christmas future, when in fact; he’s the ghost of Christmas present. Come then, touch the hem of my raiment and let me take you to the far away land of Atlanta, once, the fastest growing city in America, and then to Cobb County, once, the fastest growing county in America. Money once flowed in the streets; jobs were once plentiful. No one dared stand at the interstate exits with signs; “Will work for food?” for they’d have been picked up and put to work, almost immediately.

Look now; as the mist clears, before us, a brand-new shopping development, finished in September 2007 all 14 units stand empty. Five months and not one unit rented, maybe it was the demise of the Ford assembly plant or maybe it was the demise of the Chevrolet assembly plant. Maybe it’s the doubling of the price of fuel because government figures explain it to us, the unemployment has moved almost imperceptibly to a moderate 5%.

Like Scrooge, they ignore Tiny Tim’s limp and crutch, but the truth is they measure with a fisherman’s ruler. If they admit to 5 it’s more like 10 and probably more like 15%. They have more ways to explain away unemployment than Marley’s ghost’s has links in his chain. The Ford and Chevy workers aren’t unemployed at all; they’re just laid off from factories permanently padlocked. When their unemployment benefits run out, they become discouraged workers, dropped from the ranks of unemployment figures. Graduating to the stealth workers category. There, but not counted.

Then of course the thousands of students graduating from Georgia Tech and Georgia Southern and a host of other schools, they aren’t unemployed either. They can’t be, it’s not possible! According to government rules you must first have a job. Before you can be counted among the unemployed. Such scheming and planning warms Scrooge’s heart, more than a lump of coal in the stove.

The government figures project 4 million American homeowners will be ejected out into the street, from last year until the end of this year. Yet the pundits predict, we’ve only seen the first half of the mortgage woes. These specters will not be removed from our eyes, despite our pleas to the spirits, 200,000 in Georgia alone. Will Rogers observed during the last Great Depression, “American’s were the first people in history to drive to the poor house in a new car.” Today American’s will be the first people in history, thrown from their new homes by millions out into the street because of 5% unemployment. All while the brand-new shopping centers stand idle. While just down the road they’ve broken ground on another. Just down the road from that one, another one, catty corner from where they’d broken ground on the new shopping center completed in December, which also stands idle.

Now the fella who prints up “For Sale” signs, he must be doing quite well. Likewise, the repo- truck drivers complain of over work. Collection agencies are hiring for all shifts “Must be able to squeeze blood from a stone.” Credit card defaults rates are nearing all time highs, as are car loan defaults, but why spirit? Are these things that must be? Is there no other way? Craig’s list in Atlanta, advertises for foreclosure movers, talk about your tough jobs! I had a friend who took a job in a slaughterhouse once, “You get used to the sights, but you never get over the smell” he advised. If I were foreclosure mover, I doubt I could get used to either one.

How the world changes at 5% unemployment, derelict shopping centers both old and new, empty houses, for sale and for rent. Tell me spirit, where did all those people go? The answer drown out by the roar of the giant mechanical dinosaurs, pawing up the ground, the gnashing of mechanical teeth, the ripping of greenery from red clay. They pause, but only momentarily, to look upon the dark clouds, as they begin to obscure the sun’s rays.

They were stupid beasts which had grown fat and lazy on the luxuriant environment. It was beyond their capacity to adapt or change. They could only do the things mechanical dinosaurs can do, gnash at the trees and paw at the Earth. They couldn’t conceive of a meteor bringing their world to an end. It couldn’t, they protest acknowledging. Well, maybe 5%, maybe. They would watch the horizon just to be on the safe side. Looking for the meteor that has already struck.

It is the simple mindedness of prognosticators who simply ignore the meteor. Because it didn’t land in their back yard. But for millions of Americans who have lost good paying, insurance providing, retirement enabling jobs. They’ve felt the blast and been burnt by the heat. The foliage has fallen from the trees, and they struggle just to survive. Living on the roughage of dollar store jobs and moving along with the heard for protection.

For myself, as well, I can see only Cobb County, once the fastest growing county in America and the city of Atlanta. Once one of the fastest growing cities in America. I see the setting in of decay and the rot of empty storefronts and home foreclosure signs. Empty car lots next to glittering new empty shopping centers with signs advertising, “Space Available” But it is the hungry dinosaur’s last roar and more a plea than a threat. But today, I drove by something new. Blue and white pennants fluttering across the sky advertising a new home subdivision. Being built directly behind the empty, abandoned, glittering new shopping center.

Ignorant of its own certain demise and eventual environmental obsolescence, it lays eggs.

                                                                               ***

I’d begun working at twelve years of age, delivering ninety Homewood – Flossmoor Star newspapers, twice a week, before school. I cut lawns in summer and shoveled snow in winter. After high school, I went to work in a hot water heater factory, but my term of employment only lasted a single night. The work was grueling and physically demanding, management was sharp-tongued and authoritarian. Commands barked above the din of the machinery and if you hadn’t punched the clock at least seven minutes before your shift began, you’re late! After eight hours of unceasing, hard physical exertion, I made a career decision. I decided killing myself was no way to make a living.

But there was an even greater lesson, one which I’d missed at the time. But a lesson I now carry with me, close to my heart. We employees were assigned to move a football field sized area, filled with cast iron water tanks by hand and I wondered, “why not just use a forklift?” The reason was really quite simple, because workers are cheap and readily available, and forklifts are expensive. If a worker breaks, you can get another one. If a forklift breaks, it costs real money.

***

Too Poor for Bankruptcy

 November 12, 2008

 

 We, as a country, seem to have little problem saving the wealthy from the clutches of poverty. We’ll bail out banks, insurance companies and mortgage funds. The formerly big three automakers will meet with the new administration this week to arrange a further multi-billion-dollar bailout.

How can we say no, hundreds of thousands of jobs are dependent on these industries? So, I guess we must help them, but our society is so far out of economic whack. Most of our problems seem to evolve from the falling standard of living of America’s working class. And yet, when we call for help for the working poor we’re told, it can’t be helped. Here in Atlanta, a local food pantry advertises, 40% of all of their recipients are currently employed.

Just yesterday, I read: “Liberals are traitors, losers, punks, criminals, baby-killers, homos, and the scum of our country. They are godless, plus they costa lotta money and ya gotta burp em frequently.” How is it, we’ve come to hate our own people so? Is it to be assumed these CEOs of the banks and insurance companies are all liberals? The state of Georgia gave Hyundai motors a $100 million dollars and ten-year tax credit to build its parts distribution site here in Georgia. That’s a $25,000 per year, per employee subsidy; is that liberal or conservative?

We let the minimum wage flounder for almost a decade and despite the results, still argue about its impact. We worry instead about welfare queens, living the life of Riley while we schlep off to work each day. Here in Georgia the maximum welfare payment is $574 per month. The program formally known as food stamps, are only available to families without children for three months and only if they make less than 130% of the poverty level. Why do we call it the poverty level, if you must make less than that to qualify?

If you made $15,000 during the first six months of the year and then became unemployed, you are not eligible, period. If you’re self-employed, a contract worker or day laborer, you are not even eligible for unemployment compensation. If you’ve recently left the military, graduated from college or technical school, you’re not even considered unemployed. Like the poverty-level figure, the unemployment number becomes a fuzzy, whatever-you-want-it-to-be figure. After 16 weeks you’ve become a discouraged worker anyway, no longer unemployed at all. You’ve become a non-worker, a non-person, and ineligible for any assistance of any kind whatsoever.

We worry so about the hive and forget about the workers bees. But for the hive to prosper we must have healthy workers. We funneled $750 billion to rescue the banks and now the CEOs are contemplating, whether they should give themselves bonuses! Are you kidding me? Our economy is disintegrating before our eyes, almost a quarter of a million jobs lost in the last thirty days when the economy should be adding workers for Christmas. We have a cataclysm even more serious than failing banks, we have failing bank customers.

The new administration, to its credit, is holding its first economic meeting three days after the election. The Clinton administration held its first meeting in December; the Bush administration in January. The seriousness of the situation can’t be overstated as the economy grinds to a halt. The unemployment curve looks like a rock climber’s delight but should be factored as a misery index of underpaid workers. Who, while employed, have been falling behind and now find themselves locked out with no help from anyone, save private charities in a 1932 redux.

God, it’s great to be a free American! No Socialist fetters on me! No national healthcare system to crimp my check; I’ll pay the highest health insurance rates in the world, and when unemployed. Excuse me, when I’ve become a discouraged worker, I’ll do without. To work twenty-six years without ever missing a paycheck and when seeking assistance are told, “You don’t qualify! You must be 130% below the poverty level for assistance!”

Besides, your wife still has a job, and you still own your home. After you’ve lost all those things, come on back. We’ll talk, maybe then you’ll qualify! Why do we hate our own people so? We pour out billions of dollars in aid to third world countries, to disaster areas, even to feed stray dogs and cats. But when it’s our own people, our neighbors, our countrymen, veterans, women and children. This mean, vindictive streak in us comes out. When hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast, a Houston woman blogged on the hurricane website, “How do we know those people are entitled to the free ice and food? How do we know they are even from Texas?”

She was too oblivious to understand. That it’s highly unlikely people would drive in from out-of- state to stand in line for hours for a couple of RMEs and two free bags of ice. Were this her opinion alone, it could be easily ignored, but it was a significant minority opinion. Many of those who were better prepared or who escaped unscathed were denouncing aid to those who didn’t fare as well as themselves. One man interviewed had stayed behind with his invalid mother. He was asked if they’d stocked up on supplies. He answered, “Yes, I did, but we lost them when the water began to rise into the house.”

Are we one nation? Or just special interests’ groups? Can we rescue Wall Street and ignore Main Street? Those suffering number in the millions and already, the snows are beginning to fall. In 1932, America had no social safety net of any kind and because of that, millions suffered needlessly. Today, we have a social safety net in name only, underfunded and bureaucratic. offering hope to few and help to even fewer. Just what sort of nation are we building billion-dollar warplanes and hungry children? Telling us, when times get tough, that’s all we have to offer, tough!

To file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy will cost you $1,500, plus court costs, plus the credit counseling – just an extra $100.00 added by the credit card industry in the 2005 bankruptcy legislation. Without the cash, you’re meat on the street; God Bless America! The new President promises change, and I wish him well and I hope for the best. But I won’t hold my breath, because no one hates Americans more than other Americans.

                                                                      ***

I had begun my writing on Internet blogs a few years back. But I’ve always been a writer, having B.Ss my way through school by writing. I’d won honorable mention in Warner Brother’s American Song Festival and had written thousands of warranty reports and business letters, but as my business began to fail, I began looking seriously for freelance writing work. I wrote for Real Estate websites (Lovely 3-bedroom 1 bath, close to major crack distribution, a police sub-station conveniently located, right down the street!) automotive websites or whatever I could lay my hands on. The pay had been decent at first, but soon even that dried up. I’d begun to see my writing as something else entirely. Rather than a lifeboat it became my island. I lived with the words of the Eminem song “Lose Yourself” ringing in my ears.

”No more games, I’ma change what you call rage
Tear this motherfucking roof off like 2 dogs caged
I was playing in the beginning, the mood all changed
 I’ve been chewed up and spit out and booed off stage
But I kept rhyming and stepped right into the next cypher
Best believe somebody’s paying the pied piper
All the pain inside amplified by the fact
That I can’t get by with my 9 to 5
And I can’t provide the right type of life for my family
Cause man, these goddamn food stamps don’t buy diapers
And it’s no movie, there’s no Mekhi Phifer, this is my life
And these times are so hard, and it’s getting even harder
Trying to feed and water my seed, plus
Teeter totter caught up between being a father and a prima donna
Baby mama drama’s screaming on and
Too much for me to wanna
Stay in one spot, another day of monotony
Has gotten me to the point, I’m like a snail
I’ve got to formulate a plot or I end up in jail or shot
Success is my only motherfucking option, failure’s not” – Eminem

I began to see my circumstance as a journey, an odyssey of a sort. I would attempt to document this crisis from among the people. Telling the stories of people, I have found, as I have found them. Not just my story, but their stories, all of their stories.

***

Under the Hammer

December 17, 2008

Through serendipity, I’d received a four-page, color brochure in the mail the other day. Online Auction; Due to Plant Closure – 2 Day Auction of Over 700 Lots of Textile & Plant Support Equipment. I thought it odd I should receive this in the mail, but maybe someone thought I might be in the market to open my own textile mill or perhaps. Like outsourcing companies, have to post the jobs locally first.

Anyone out there looking to open a textile mill? I didn’t think so, but this is a worldwide auction. So someplace in the world, I bet there will be interest. In a strange twist of Orwellism, the auction is brought to you by (and I kid you not) “Go Industry,” asset sales and services worldwide. You just don’t know whether to laugh or cry, they don’t even attempt to hide it anymore. Perhaps the Army should change its name to Kill People and Wreck Stuff Inc., a division of Pentaco, the death and dying folks!

Being born in the North and moving South as a teenager, I was always fascinated by the way a field of cotton can fool the eye. It can be 90 degrees outside, but as you drive by just for an instant, your eyes see a snowy field. As the cotton’s harvested, it’s taken by cotton wagons to the gin for processing; the open-topped, wire baskets wagons are half the size of a tractor-trailer lumbering behind a straining tractor. Occasionally, a gust of wind or an overloaded wagon would drop a dry drift along the roadside, and just like its snowy, frozen counterpart. It starts out white and pristine, then becomes dirty from the road traffic, until it finally melts into the dirt.

Every county in cotton country had a cotton gin and some had two or more. From there the cotton make its way to the textile mill, just like the one being auctioned off. Every community of any acclaim had some sort of mill or plant, manufacturing products from the locally produced cotton. When America was a rural agrarian society, a hundred and fifty years ago, they shipped the raw cotton to England and England built her empire upon it.

Not far from here, is the Thread mill Complex, a picturesque, three-story brick structure adorned with Greek columns and gingerbread trim, a mill that for three-quarters of a century provided the nation with numberless varieties of thread and twine. Her trimmings speak to us of her prosperity; her prosperity had brought income to the community. Today, she’s a combination shopping mall and office complex, but she speaks to us still. Like a cannon in front of a National Guard armory, she’s become but a rusting curiosity. It has fallen from its high station as a symbol of economic strength to become a toy for children to play on.

Like any factory job, work in the thread mill was hard and monotonous. The cotton dust made the hot air almost impossible to breathe. The pay was low and when workers began trying to organize in the 1930’s, deaths were not uncommon. The mill’s owners and workers were stuck with each other, as the mill was the only job available besides farming. The mill owners couldn’t move. Being already located in the lowest-paying region of the country. The farmers feared the mill closing would make selling their crops more difficult, and the local government usually worked at the behest of the mill owners.

For generations a twilight war was fought between workers and owners, as illustrated in the film “Norma Rae.” Before its demise the sewing mill in Montgomery, Alabama, was an armed camp with steel louvers over its windows. There were armed guards at the barbed wire-topped fence gates and guards in the parking lots defending their fenced perimeters from anyone dispensing information about a union organizing. But it was more paranoia than protection; the Civil Rights Movement had left the mill owners fearful of what might happen next. The locals were, for the most part, thoroughly indoctrinated in anti-union rhetoric and were docile and dutifully humble.

But how the owners wondered, could they ever bring an end to this? The armed guards and barbed wire fences, but the solution came by opening sewing mills overseas. With 15 cent an hour wages and a few armed goons, you could more than offset the cost of transportation. So, one by one, the sewing mills shut down, becoming shopping malls, office parks, weed farms, and empty monuments to greed.

These business leaders pressured Congress to lower those ugly tariffs, which were limiting growth. “We must have free trade to aid our friends and bring them up to our standards,” they cried. But it was a lie, just a way to make a bigger buck and to lower their costs, to exploit the poor and pollute without government regulation or interference. That NFL jersey, or NBA, or MLB that you pay $175.00 only costs them $5 to $10 to manufacture, while to produce it in this country might cost double that amount. And with no sewing mills, it’s a little silly to have textile mills, now, isn’t it? So, let’s call Go Industry, and see if we can’t convert the mill to condos!

As I travel the South, I see the empty factory husks and strain to read their faded facades, trying to determine what it once was they produced. The small towns fade away; some, like the ones around the Thread mill, are close enough to a city to become bedroom communities. They prosper, never knowing how it was they came into being or what that big building was. Thread mill? Now that’s a funny name for a shopping mall.

I have become all too familiar with these auctions. They auctioned off the Hercules Engine Company in the 1990s. Clinton engines are gone; Onan has closed their plant in Huntsville, AL, choosing instead to contract out their production. Wisconsin Engines, the finest made air-cooled engine in the world, hangs on by a thread and likewise, her sister company, Continental engines. I worked around the Wisconsin and Continental people for 25 years. One man, I’d known, had started as a teenager sweeping floors and ended up as their top OEM salesperson.

The Wisconsin plant in Milwaukee was located across the street from the Briggs & Stratton factory and just down the road from the Kohler engine factory. Part of my job was dealing with the warranty department, and that’s where I met Elmer. Elmer’s job was to evaluate my warranty claims and, at first. I didn’t like Elmer very much, but as time went on. I came to respect him. He pulled no punches; he cut no deals. If you had a legitimate warranty, it would get paid. But you’d better have your story straight and your ducks in a row. He was a laconic sort of man, not prone to idle conversation and eventually. When I got to know Elmer off the job. He was very friendly and knowledgeable and highly thought of by his co-workers.

I attended a distributor conference where we were told to buy enough inventory to last for a while, because there was a strike coming. Of course, they’d told us this before, trying to goose their sales, but this time they meant it. After several months, the company announced they were moving the factory from Milwaukee to Tennessee. Then, the companies were purchased by the Teledyne Corporation, then sold, then bought, then sold again. Most of the regulars had made the move to Tennessee; some just long enough to retire. Others choosing to make Tennessee their home, Elmer had been transferred to the manufacturing end of the company, and then I heard he had been laid off. In conversation with our factory rep, I asked. “How’s old Elmer getting along?” The phone grew quiet, then after a pause, “Didn’t you hear? Elmer killed himself.”

It was the only place he’d ever worked, and in his fifties, and it was hard, if not impossible, for him to start over again as anything but a Wal-Mart greeter. You can auction off the equipment to the highest bidder and then you can convert the building to some purpose du jour. But what of the people? The building only housed the equipment, and the equipment only processed the materials. But the engines or the equipment or the tires or the cars were built by people. The people who stayed late or came in early. The people who worked on the weekends because they cared about the company and cared about doing a good job.

So, as I read the brochure about the dryer machines and balers and line blenders, I think about the people who stood at those machines for year upon year. Simply trying to feed their children. And I think about Elmer; how many Elmers worked in this plant? Only to be swept out the door like the dirt on the floor as their reward for caring. Even more, I think about a government that wants to jam a rectal thermometer the size of an oak tree up my ass, while telling me it’s good for me! A government willing to export jobs and opportunity, all in the name of the holy campaign contribution.

Angry, God Damn right, I’m angry! Angry enough to think it’s not our industrial base we should be tearing down, but a government which would so carelessly put us under the hammer.

***

I picked up $100 doing day labor from a guy who looked a lot like George Bush Sr. who ran an alternative energy business. They added the ethanol to the gasoline, and times were good, and he was generous, paying me $100. It was like that Harry Chapin song, “Taxi” I was over-paid for what I did, but I stashed the bill in my shirt.  I made $75 in a focus group, “Mock Jury” I was the only one on the jury, who knew what a Liz Pendens was or knew the difference between a promissory note and co-signing a mortgage.

A crooked small-town bank had swindled a grieving widow out of her husband’s estate by playing fast and loose with both facts and paperwork. The husband owned an onion warehouse and had made a contract for the sale. In the contract, was a promissory note her husband had signed, along with the purchaser. The note was for the husband’s profit from the sale of the warehouse. The purchaser was borrowing $200,000 from the bank; the husband did not co-sign the mortgage. He simply guaranteed the bank would get their $200,000 or any difference from him if the purchaser defaulted on the promissory note.

Two years go by; the husband dies of a sudden stroke; the purchaser of the onion warehouse goes broke. Within 30 days of the husband’s death, the bank begins foreclosure on the warehouse. The purchaser defaulted, but the bank claimed it was due a $7,000,000 warehouse, claiming the $200,000 promissory note was the same thing as her husband co-signing the mortgage. The widow hired a local attorney who agreed to take the case. But one week later was thrown from a horse and hospitalized for six months. Another attorney was hired with the clear admonition. Nothing had been done and time was of the essence.

The bank auctioned the property.

The widow was suing the attorney for malpractice. If on one of his daily trips to the courthouse, he’d filed a Liz Pendens or “a suit pending.” A written notice that a lawsuit has been filed concerning title to real property or some interest in real property. The liz pendens (or notice of pending action) is filed with the clerk of the court. To certify that it has been filed, and then recorded with the county recorder. This gives notice to anyone interested, that there is a legal claim on the property, and the recording informs the public (and particularly anyone interested in buying or financing the property) there is a potential claim against it.

Our mock jury voted unanimously to give the widow everything she asked for, based on the information supplied by the homeless guy, you know… the bum.

***

Welcome to Our World

December 17, 2008

 “Information Clearinghouse” — Welcome, good evening, one and all, find a seat and make yourselves comfortable. Take your shoes off and stay a while; a little business first. For those of you with cars, there is no valet parking. Feel free to ask to ask questions of your neighbors. Those of you, who lost your retirement in the Enron scandal please raise your hands so the newcomers can find you.

There will be no refreshments served. Get used to it. So, here we go. You are now poor, and this is the awareness group: “So you woke up and found yourself poor.” Are there any former Millionaires here? Ha, ha, ha, ha, I’m sorry, I know that’s mean-spirited, but I just can’t help myself sometimes. How about any Republicans? I didn’t think so; I knew you wouldn’t fall for that gag twice, would you?

With that, I’ll open up the floor for questions. Yes sir, go ahead.

“I am a retired businessman living in Florida. Just about all my money is invested with Madoff Securities. I have been using that money to live on. Based on what is known so far, can you tell me how badly I have been hurt and if there is anything I should be doing to possibly protect myself or preserve my assets? I appreciate any advice you can give me. Please email me or call me . . .”

That’s an easy one; you’re screwed, blued and tattooed. You were retired, now you’re just broke-ass poor. Your new hobbies are yard sales, flea markets, and, for a big day, hanging out at the public library. Yes, you in the back.

“I have just read the article regarding the Madoff investments. Could you please tell me what investors are supposed to do in the wake of this news? Or provide any details that you may have come across in your research for this story?”

Well, ma’am, in the words of the late Johnny Cash, “Cry, cry, cry,” but try to look at the bright side. Remember how concerned many of you were before the election that Obama was going to raise your taxes? You don’t have to worry about that anymore.

“Both my grandmother and parents invested funds with the firm. We are very concerned. Please advise.”

Clean out the spare room and don’t expect an inheritance.

“We are long-time investors in Madoff with millions of dollars there. We can’t get any information. Do you know anything about how much of the investor’s assets are left?”

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, I’m sorry, let’s see. Bernie had fifty billion, and he’s got around two hundred million left, so what’s that, about two cents on the dollar? Of course, that was before Bernie started passing out millions to his friends and relatives. So, if you’ve got any jars filled with spare change, you might want to start planning your retirement around them.

“I am one of the little guys who has money invested at Madoff. My father was an investor with the company for 30 years, and when he died in 2006. He left money in trust for my children and my wife, which is invested in Madoff accounts. Based on what he told me of the firm, I also invested the money he left to me. All totaled, we have about $2,800,000 in four accounts. Needless to say, I am feeling pretty sick to my stomach this evening. At this point, do you have any idea of whether there is (or will be) any money to distribute to account holders? Any information you can provide would be appreciated (that is an understatement, for sure). Thank you.”

Had, sir, you had, and then he had; now you don’t have and never will have again.

“I am an 86-year-old widow who had her total money with Madoff. I have read the Internet stories but would be interested to learn more about the prospects of getting any money out of this situation. If you have any information or can direct me to how I can get some information I would be very grateful.             

              
Ma’am, in all honesty, you have a better chance of winning the New York City marathon with a winning lottery ticket in your pocket. But never forget, you live in the greatest country in the whole, wide world. You live in a country where even a man who admits to stealing 50 billion dollars from little old ladies can post bond and be home in time for supper. Where he can return to his palace fit for the King of Saudi Arabia and hold meetings with an army of high-priced attorneys. To determine how to keep you from ever getting even a nickel and using what’s left of your money to do it with.

“I am absolutely appalled by the arrest of Bernard Madoff. My father has a very substantial investment with his firm and is, at the moment, out of the country and not reachable. Is there any word on whether my father’s account is worth anything? Is there something that he should be doing, or is it too late? What does it mean that Madoff was making distributions to select employees, friends, and family? How could this happen??????”

That is a very good question. Thank you for asking. The good news is that until you are able to reach your father, he is still affluent. So, don’t be in too much of a hurry to contact him. Your father’s account is worth a smile and a promise. This happened because you forgot that greed is eternal. You trusted in those who told you the market could be trusted and that regulations would steal away the precious pennies you sought to put in your pocket.  And that is what brought you here today. Try and understand, sir. You’re in a remedial group.

The rest of us already know we’re screwed; we’ve already lost our homes and cars and jobs. Most of us had little to lose in the first place. The workmen, the carpenters, painters and plumbers, the sheet rock men, have all seen their jobs bled away. Then it was the auto mechanics and bank tellers. But now, you dare ask in righteous indignation, how could this happen? But what you really mean sir. Is how could this happen to you?

You’re better than? Than the autoworkers trying to keep their jobs? You thought your white collar and your wealth would protect you. As you nodded in agreement that outsourcing was vital to a growing economy. You thought these things could never reach you? Well, here’s another clue for you all. The walrus is Paul. Coo, coo ka Choo!

Welcome to our world; come on in, a world where the mailman only brings bad news and where your heart jumps when city vehicles drive by your house. Where shopping isn’t a pleasure, but a nightmare; where you don’t decide what you’ll get, but what you won’t get. When the doorbell rings at 3 AM, it’s the repo man, and that red color on your utility bills means they’re delinquent and about to be turned off. But we welcome you all. You are one of us now, even if you thought you never would be.

They used to tell me
I was building a dream.
And so I followed the mob
When there was earth to plow
Or guns to bear
I was always there
Right on the job.
They used to tell me
I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead.
Why should I be standing in line
Just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad
I made it run
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad
Now it’s done
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower up to the sun
Brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower,
Now it’s done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits
Gee we looked swell
Full of that yankee doodle dee dum.
Half a million boots went sloggin’ through hell
And I was the kid with the drum!
Say don’t you remember?
They called me Al.
It was Al all the time.
Why don’t you remember?
I’m your pal.
Say buddy, can you spare a dime?

(Gorney, Harburg)

These are actual questions posed by the former investors in Madoff Securities; please make them feel welcome when you run into them today.

                                                                     ***

My own demise was pretty typical; I’d worked without missing a paycheck for over two decades. I’d gone through a divorce and started my life over. The industrial engine industry where I was employed was changing. More and more, manufacturers were operating without domestic distributors. Huge Asian mega-corporations had moved into the US market, offering equipment manufactures and implement manufacturers, easy credit and custom applications. My employer decided to change the direction of his business from industrial sales to lawn and garden sales.

 I really didn’t see a future for myself, wearing green corporate logo ’ed pullover shirts. Trying to sell lawnmowers on Saturdays against the big box retailers. I’d managed a business for fifteen years; I reasoned that with a large population of those older engines still out there, a market might exist for parts on the Internet. I had over twenty years’ worth of contacts and of product knowledge, and so, I sold my 1965 Mustang with the 289 High Output engine, and the four-speed top loader transmission and used the money to start my own parts business.

Things were slow at first with a steep learning curve, everyone gunning to take a piece out of the new guy, but then sales began to pick up. In a matter of weeks, I was fully self-employed. I was taking orders, locating parts, boxing orders and making daily runs to the Post Office and UPS shipping them.

***

Witness to an Execution

 May 5, 2009

I didn’t ask for this and you didn’t ask for this either. It would be preferable to talk of picnics and pretty things, of coins that once jingled in my pocket and women who once said they loved me. Illusions are like that; we dream it and want it so to be. So, we pretend, and we pretend. We make excuses and excuses trying to soothe ourselves. While we damn anyone who dares to speak the truth. The truth is painful, and illusions are soft and fuzzy, warm thoughts of the morning, good reviews of last night’s dreams.

But I am the iconoclast, a destroyer of comfortable dreams and grand illusions. Burning your crop dreams and killing the livestock of the tales that never really were. I’m just telling how the magician does the trick. I’m not killing the doves in his coat or the rabbit in his hat. It is he who is deceiving you, not I. I’m not crying wolf or yelling fire in a crowded theater because… you see, there really is a wolf and he’s at the door, and there really is a fire. And the movie isn’t real either, merely special effects wizardry of wars where men don’t really bleed, and children don’t really die.

I didn’t ask for this. I did not ask to drink from this chalice. I was the little boy who saw where the bullets hit the street and where the assassin fled, and I was watching as they shot him dead. So, I can’t believe the truth. No matter how many times it’s stamped official, by the officials, in their official capacity. Official truths are empty boxes shipped home to grieving parents. I’ve seen them shipped from the deepest green jungles and I’ve seen them shipped from the brown desert sands. The official truth is no better than a lie and a lie no better than the official truth. We don’t like truth; we prefer official lies to the grating, uncomfortable and fatal truths.

You’re being robbed, do you understand? Theft by government, do you understand? The banks lost all their money, so your government lent them new money. All’s fair in love and war, but banking is about pillage and forced sex. The Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air and lends it to the Treasury at interest.

Pretend that it’s doughnuts, and each doughnut costs the treasury $3.45 to make. The treasury is selling doughnuts to the banks for .25 cents and billing you, you, you, for the difference. It is a theft unrivaled in human history, while the banks brag to us of paying the government back in full.

Due to bad trade policy, bad tax policy and a bloated military, obsessed with world conquest, our economy is a leaking bucket. After we dip out fifty percent for the military and spoonfuls for social programs and our debt obligations, well, guess what, chillins? We done run out of monies and we best cut dem social programs, sho nuff! But the banks, why they can borrow all the money they want; it’s only a phone call away. Do you want some? They’ll let you borrow some too, at $3.45 plus nineteen percent or twenty-four percent interest.

But instead, the bankers would rather lend that money in the Chinese market, because their balloon is still going up, up, up. Or they can drive up interest rates and profits in countries where they smell blood in the water. They have to lend and lend fast and lend quick, because their own bad debts are chasing them like a junkie’s bad habit. Or, if they want to play at home, they invest in Wall Street, where profits are based on raw material exports and dim-witted cash imports. The old pump and dump. Oh but, Wall Street executives would never do that to save themselves, would they?

The séance continues, and the Ouija board says, “R is D and D is R.” What could that mean? What about Sarah Palin? What about the tea baggers? What about the immigrants? The pointer is moving now; it spells out “s-u-c-k-e-r-s.” Suckers? What could that mean? It answers mysteriously, “Keep the suckers occupied.” But, but the tea baggers and Sarah Palin and the immigrants. It answers, “Never let your dinner guest know they’re on the menu. Never let the lobsters know you’re going to drop them into the pot. Keep it all friendly, with smiles all around.”

Let us continue into Dante’s lowest level of hell and let us practice the black arts to divine the truth. The squeamish and sensitive among us should depart from here now, because the darkest secrets could be too much for them. Repeat this chant here only and never utter it where the uninitiated might hear you.

“If McCain had won the election, the Democrats would be screaming about the war.
If McCain had won the election, the Democrats would denounce his plans for nuclear power.”

One is all and all is one.

“If McCain had won the election, the Republicans would have praised the GM bailout.
If McCain had won the election, the Republicans would have praised health care reform.

Are Democrats denying the truth? Are Republicans denying the truth?
Do they both love the truth, or both hate the truth, or just dare not speak the truth?

One is all, and all is one
One is all, and all is one
One is all,  and all is one

I have no idea why I was chosen for this task; there’s certainly no money in it. The moneys in  infotainment, keeping the suckers busy, while they’re robbed blind. But somebody’s got to say these things, as unpleasant as they are. This government in all branches and its parties have thrown the people to the wolves. They’ve locked the doors of the burning theater with the people still inside.

These aren’t theories or conspiracies, but plain fact. We have: A jobs program based on tax cuts. A mortgage rescue program left to the very pirates who sank your boat. A war in Afghanistan spinning out of control in both blood and treasure. There’s no talk or public debate about what to do, just pour in more and more of both. On top of that, on top of all of that, we have this grand give away of national wealth, like a national going out of business sale.

Maybe it’s because both my parents lived through the Great Depression. Maybe it’s because I was in Dallas in November 1963. Maybe it’s because I was in Montgomery, in the summer of 1965 or in Chicago in 1968, I’ve always felt I was given a front-row seat to history. Now it feels as if I’m a witness to an execution, watching the greedy grab with both hands, while the victim can’t tell the prosecutor from the defense attorney. Not that it matters any, the court is fixed anyway, there is only one party and you’re invited to dinner.

                                                                    ***

Reflection and realization are just a part of the process; no one wants to hang out with a homeless person. Then, you begin encountering carnivorous predators, payday lenders, the gold buyers or title loan sharks. Like Oliver Twist, you discover yourself a lamb among the wolves and when you see teeth, you’ll know why. Each step in its turn, and then, one day, you’ll wake up and look in the mirror and a homeless person stares back at you. You’ll know them by their worn clothes and by the stern look in their eye. You’ll no longer remember what a meal on a china plate is like or a night’s sleep between clean sheets.

That’s your American freedom for you; merely a euphemism for societal irresponsibility. A comfortable stereotype, which makes the negligence of a people easier to ignore and easier still, to explain away. You pay into the system every week for thirty or forty years, but on that day Sunny Jim, when you reach your hand out to take back the first nickel, a whole host of adjectives will fall down upon your head. You’re lazy or you’re a discouraged worker, you’re just not trying hard enough, you’re riding the system or you’re a drunk, a drug addict, or maybe you’re just a bum!

***

                                               (Awakening)

Saving Tinkerbell

July 18, 2009

 

My November dreams have become restless nightmares now; I toss and turn, unable to find rest. Night figures haunt me, walking alone and in groups alone in the shadows yet, even through the darkness I can see their faces. Pale and gaunt, tight with anxiety, thin with hunger, steel eyes looking nowhere and everywhere. Looking back over their shoulders towards the future, like looking for yesterday to find tomorrow, they walk away slowly into the distance.

Why do they seek me out? Why do they haunt me so? Is it because I am also them? I am one of them, my membership card in my hand, with my dirty shoes and ragged clothes as proof true. Are these specters me? Do I run loose in my mind or does my mind run loose in my head? Am I haunting myself? Have the sinews and synapses allowed my brain to break free like a ship’s cargo in a storm?

They cohabitate with me when my eyes close to sleep. I hear their voices; I hear their labored steps. I hear their children, until I wake in a sweating, frozen in terror and I wish to scream for them to be gone from me! But it is no use because I can’t. They are the strangers who know me and the ghosts who are me, and I carry their chains as penance for my crimes like Marley.

I watch their numbers grow; I watch the world spit on them and cuss them and excoriate them and fit them for their crown of thorns. The populace put forth a shallow, false bravado to hide the fear, the fear of being next, of walking alone, of being spit upon, of being hated by the world. The fear of the hundredth job application for a job, you’re overqualified for, but under-qualified for, because you’re too old or too young too female or too male, but most of all you’re under-qualified, because you want to get paid for your work.

They hold me down in my sleep; they grab my hands and seize me as I struggle to break free, and as I do sparks fly around the room from the light sockets. I cannot sing, I can only scream, not beautiful music, but sounds which need to be heard just the same. So, don’t fault me if my words hurt your ears for, I’m not singing to you. I’m sending you a message from the other side.

The charlatans who strut the days in matinees of palisades and serpentine splendor that remain to remind us. All the world is a stage, but the play is all of fiction. Their names may change as fast as the facts, but never forget they run in packs, and sleep better knowing their money’s safely in the banks. So, don’t try to phone, don’t try to call, don’t ring the doorbell and wait on the lawn, for they don’t know you.

They have names for you, of course. And programs for you and forms to fill out and waiting periods and calculations. Stratagems and economic theories and black-tie dinner parties over food you’ve never tasted and wine you’ve never drank. Followed by dessert and champagne to celebrate their escape from the life you must daily lead. Slowly, it begins to dawn on me why these ghosts disturb my rest. It is because I hear them, and they do not. I feel them and they do not. I am one of them and they are not.

I do not rest with bloated belly, filled with fine food and wine, but with hot dogs and maybe a beer and I’m glad to get it. Oh, I get it all right, like a lover spurned. I get it. We are unneeded by you now! This assembled multitude should disperse now into the night, to tread the footpaths of the night people. The street people, the homeless people to be summoned up, when the trumpet sounds and the polls open.

I will call them out; I will call them out of their temples. Even if the star catchers and cultists object. Holy rollers steeped in party and baptized with the holy water of political furor. It’s not heads I win, tails you lose. We all lose. You play the game, but they run the game. When your man calls six, they all chant, yes, six hooray! When their man calls six, they cuss and yell, oh no, not six! So, excuse me while I laugh, because it’s all the same play for penny-stinkers and kings!

But no, they cry out from the temple pews. You’ve just got to believe! You’ve just got to! Otherwise, Tinker bell will be lost to us. Come on now, you’ve got to have hope! With hope we can do anything, so come on and join us! Let’s all hope real hard for Tinker bell. You, see? I think it’s working. I see a light shining. Sure, that’s it; everyone hope really hard!

Yes, I see the light, too, but I see it in the dark, for in the dark there is clarity. A clarity not given to those who live in the light. A thousand points of light are surrounded by a million points of darkness. And for those of us with concrete for beds, we know this unquestioningly. Hope is a four-letter word, but so is help and so is food. Hope is what you hold on to when there is no help or food. Like fairy sprites, it is all a make-believe game.

But our night is as real as is their day. Hope is not a plan; hope is a way to dodge the blame and for them to say heretic! You’re disloyal, go away! You don’t believe when I would upend, but ’tis for you to unrecommend. For that will change naught, and it will change nigh, because I will condemn all those who lie. For to silence me won’t silence the others. As they too will begin to haunt you under the covers. At night-time close in safe repose, you’ll see their shadows, you’ll wear their clothes, and you will know what they know.

Reality is stone, and fantasy whipped cream. And no, this is real and not a dream. The night men grow their numbers swell, and without saving us, there is no saving Tinker bell.

                                                                     ***

I’d started my business with five thousand dollars and after a few months, I’d paid all of my bills and had over ten thousand dollars in the bank. My stomach and my sphincter began to unclench; I began to think, maybe this was going to turn out all right. I began buying up inventories from parts dealers, looking to get out of the “old” engines. I’d converted one side of my garage into a parts warehouse. I was even considering hiring someone to help me part-time, but then the mortgages crisis hit, and the stock market crashed. My business began to stumble. A few slow days at first, and then the phone stopped ringing altogether. I checked my Internet connection and my advertising, because the slowdown was remarkable in its suddenness and in its totality.

From “This Carbon- Based Life” Cooking in a Coffee Pot True stories from four years on the road $19.95 usd

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