Krispies?

The store that I work in has a large front window, so large that calling it large does it no justice. It consists of about 40 yards of glass along Florida Ave and then turns the corner and there’s another 20 yards of glass fronting the driveway to the WalMart Market. I see all kinds of things looking out those windows, many of them unbelievable at first, and some of the things I thought were unbelievable a year ago, seem very normal now. Every morning a large (30-50) group of day laborers (read illegal immigrants) congregate half a block to the south, sort of between the Home Depot and the WalMart parking lots. Some days some of them get picked up to do some work, some days some of them get picked up by ICE. It’s an odd contrast, when an old E150 or a pick-up truck pull up and stop they all run to it, hoping to get chosen ... I imagine that they have mouths to feed, that they need the work. When the police cars and the ICE cars pull up they all run away from the spot, some of them run to the adjacent bus stop and pretend that they are just waiting for the bus. It doesn’t work. The bus stop is also fascinating, it drops of hundreds of people in generic blue medical worker scrubs, they parade by in small groups all day long, on their way to the school that sits just north of my corner, on the other side of Busch Blvd. Apparently there is a major shortage of x-ray technicians, because this school is turning them out by the thousands. Directly across the street from the bus stop is Chicks, a small yellow building that looks like a little house, but is the neighborhood strip club. Every afternoon a fleet of taxi cabs and boyfriends drop the dancers off in the parking lot. It’s a little far off to say for sure, but I think its safe to say that the girls are all train wrecks. In the median of Florida Ave is where the real characters are, the beggars, the homeless, the mentally ill. They have little signs, some of them sell water bottles that they bought with their EBT for a dollar, some of them just beg for money, most of them use my bathroom. Maybe I shouldn’t let them, but they don’t pee next to my dumpster any more, so I think it’s worth it. Almost every day one of them has a fresh piece of cardboard and comes in to ask to borrow a magic marker. I always tell them I do not have one. Every time they come in they all complain about each other ... they’re all lazy, they all lie on their signs, they all are ruthless and unprincipled ... according to their peers. Their fellow median workers. There’s one, a woman, who loves to talk. She tells us about her boy friend and people that we don’t know, she complains that she doesn’t make enough money, she complains about the heat, she complains when it’s not hot that it hurts water sales, she complains even when someone gives her a twenty for a bottle of luke warm water. The median used to belong to “Happy” the Clown. “Happy” is insane. The other median workers call him simply “the clown” with a sneer. The clown is a disaster, he used to dance on the median for money with full clown face paint, a sleeveless undershirt painted pink and green, white jean shorts painted pink and green, all of it stained and dirty and faded and he held a sign that said “Happy’s my name and clownin’s my game”. His real name is Craig, he’s from New York, but lived in Ohio for a long time. He gets arrested ... often. One of his part time jobs away from the median is stealing bicycles and selling them. At least once a week he rides by on a bike carrying a couple of other bikes, it looks difficult, but he just pedals on down the street. A few months ago he came in and told me he was done with the median. He had found this girlfriend and she had an EBT card and he had his EBT card and she lived with her dad who was old and sick and got social security ... Happy had been living there three days. At first he was excited about it, but as he was telling the tale he admitted that the girl and the dad drove him nuts ... he was going to go and commit himself to take a brake. He just goes to the county hospital and tells them that he wants to kill people and they check him in for a while. Then he laughs (does he want to kill people?) He tells me that he used to say that he wanted to kill himself, but then they watch you all night long and it’s hard to sleep, so he changed his story to being homicidal ... the homicidal get treated with more respect than the mere suicidal, he explains. There are some people who are extremely visible ... like Michael McKinney. Everyone has there own name for him, most people have no idea who he is ... McKinney is an ex-professional boxer who lives in the area and dances up and down the street every day, at least he used to. His dance is part shadow boxing, part praise strut ... would you like to see it? You can, just click here http://youtu.be/3sp6n83YWk8 .Most people think he’s homeless ... he’s not. Most people don’t know that he’s been arrested for DUI more times than anyone can count, that he lost his license years ago ... most people just see him out dancing and think it’s funny. The best part though is that he and the Clown hate each other and when he dances by and the Clown is on the median they scream insults at each other. They each crave the spotlight, even if it’s just being the biggest freak show around. Lately McKinney has taken to pan handling a few blocks north, he still dances, but he stays on the one corner, and what he once did for free, now he’s getting paid to do.
There are others who are invisible ... like “Cup-Cup”. “Cup-Cup” is a paranoid schizophrenic (as far as I can tell) he comes to my store every day for a cup of coffee, and he brings all of his friends ... the one’s in his mind. He’s trapped and he gets stuck on words, which is how he got his name, for a while every time he came in he just repeated the word “cup” over and over at an uncomfortably loud volume. It’s been a while since he did that though, mostly now he argues with his friends and when they get to arguing, “cup-cup” uses a string of profanity that you could not believe unless you heard it. Lately we have decided to try to get through and get him to talk to us ... it’s not working, but today when I said good morning he tried to ask if the coffee was ready. Some days when he leaves one of his friends will stay behind and then he has to  come back and open the door and shout, “Come on! We ain’t got all day.” while holding the door for the straggler to get through.
So imagine my surprise last week when I saw something that shocking out my window ... something that took me completely off guard. If you were to walk out my front door and look to the left there is a WalMart Market (which is grocery store ... WalMart without all the fun stuff), and from that direction a early 90's Buick LeSabre drove into view, it was charcoal gray, and as it came to the stop sign at Florida Ave I noticed that the trunk was open ... and someone was in it. In the trunk I mean. Now, had the vehicle just pulled out onto the street this wouldn’t have been all that unusual ... just another weird thing in a neighborhood that is filled with weird things. But as the Buick was about to pull out onto the street, the man in the trunk jumped out of the vehicle and began yelling at the driver. He was average height and slender but muscular, he was wearing jean shorts and a sleeveless undershirt (“wife beater”), he continued yelling at the driver until he came up to the passenger side front window, and then the driver lurched the car forward. Like a flash he ran to the rear of the car and in a single movement leapt into the trunk. There was a yellow rope tied to the trunk deck that he grabbed a hold of, and the vehicle lurched forward again forcing the trunk deck down on top of his head. He let out a yell and jumped out of the trunk, he stood behind the vehicle with his arms raised out to the side ... and he just stood there for a second. The vehicle jumped back towards him and he reached into the trunk, grabbed a hold of some bags and threw them on to the sidewalk, the vehicle again reversed (the driver apparently trying to flatten the man) but he simply kneeled onto the rear bumper, continued flinging bags onto the ground and when the driver brought the vehicle to a sudden halt he stepped back onto the ground, the vehicle lurched at him again and he kneeled on the bumper again. It was as if they had rehearsed it, a ballet of road rage and man. The Buick then drove forward about 5 feet and the man returned to the front passenger side window. There was no yelling, he leaned over an it looked as if he and the driver were talking, he stood back up and the Buick drove off down Florida Ave with the trunk open, its previous occupant strolled off down the sidewalk as if nothing had ever happened.
We went outside to clean up the mess. As we approached we saw that the bags were groceries from the WalMart Market, a broken milk jug poured its contents into the street, a box of rice krispies was torn apart and the wind was disbursing the krispies like dandelion fuzz, there was lunch meat and cheese, two loaves of bread, yogurt ... food for a family for an entire week was strewn all over the corner, smashed. We got a large black garbage bag and started loading up the mess to take it to the dumpster when a Ford Explorer pulled up to the corner and stopped and an older man shouted from his open window, “What cha’ got there?”
I explained what happened.
“Groceries?” he asked “what cha’ gonna do wit dem groceries.”
“Throw them out.” I explained.
“No need, no need” he leaned over and opened his passenger rear door “load ‘em up here.”
“There’s a broken jug of milk in here.” I said holding up the garbage bag. The car behind the Explorer leaned on its horn.
“They’re gonna learn to wait.” the man said laughing, “now load that bag in here.”
I shrugged and put the garbage bag into his back seat and shut the door.
The man looked past me to the guy behind me, “What cha’ doin’ wit that?” he pointed to an undamaged 2 liter bottle of fruit punch he had under his arm.
“I’m keeping it.” my guy answered.
“No ya’ ain’t.” the man told him. The car behind him honked again, prompting him to giggle again. “Give that fruit drink here,.”
My guy handed it to him. “Thank ya now.” he said. And the Explorer drove off down Florida Ave.
And we went back inside and back to work. We shook it off like we shake everything off, added it to a long list of the odd, and unusual and the down right strange. I don’t tell these stories because no one believes them, hopefully the McKinney video helps, I tried to find a picture of the Clown but I couldn’t.
Hope you enjoyed your minute on the corner of Florida and Busch.

Pioneer Spirit

It was not that long ago that people from all over the world uprooted their families, boarded crude ships, and sailed off to meet the unknown. The suffered through illness and rough seas, bad weather and a long voyage. They were going to America, the land of opportunity, a place where land could be bought, a place where there was no real-estate monopoly controlled by the nobility, a place where a person could make their own way in the world. And still more recently, the exact same phenomenon happened with a westward migration, families traded sailing ships for covered wagons and braved the unknown wilderness to make their own way in the world. In either case, when they arrived at their destination, it was not a town, or city, or established place. They built their own homes from nothing, they planted their own crops, raised their own animals, and not only did they survive, they thrived. I’m not a historical revisionist, there were problems, of course there were. Lack of medical personnel led to other wise preventable deaths from disease, drought, crop failures ... life was not ideal, things were not perfect, survival required hard work and sacrifice, but that is not the point. The point is that the spirit of this nation was founded by these people, “pioneer spirit” means seeking your own place in the world, relying upon yourself to make that place habitable, and in extreme cases, relying upon your neighbors or your church for minor assistance. You are descended from people who took chances, who relied upon themselves, who trusted in the provision of a loving God, who worked hard, who made necessary sacrifices, and who survived. Stop and think about it for a minute, think about the phenomenal determination and strength and sheer will required ... well, would you pack up your family and drag them off through the unknown to the possibility of a better opportunity? Brave the wilderness?
So ... what in the world happened?
What bizarre collection of circumstances could take an entire people group from an extreme rugged individualism to what we have today, let’s be honest with ourselves, the prevailing response to adversity is to look around and see “who is going to handle this for me”. The obvious question has to be how we got from one to the other, and how do we find our way back. We, as a nation, face the economic realities of the “nanny state” and the enviable end to the services that people have come to rely upon. (If you don’t believe this to be true, please do some global economic research ... and no, AARP and the Democratic Party are not sources for truth in this case)There are those who suggest that the journey from A to B is a grand design, a multigenerational conspiracy designed to turn the United States into the Soviet Union ... and I’m sorry, but that’s not what happened. There are and have been people who have that vision, and they surely have advocated for the nation to head that direction ... but there never have been enough of them to do anything alone. I maintain that the American people were dragged off of the frontier and into public housing through a series of short sighted decisions made by weak willed politicians hoping to bring home enough bacon to be reelected ... to then go back to the capital and have to spend their next term figuring out another way to bring home even more the next time, and on and on, right up to the edge of the financial precipice that we now find ourselves on.
Year after year, bill after bill, the government has added more and more to the list of things that they hand out and provide. You NEED them all, right? “What would people do without food stamps/ college loans/ medicaid/ medicare/ disability benefits/ subsidies/ tax credits/ WIC/ etc, etc, etc. They would all starve to death in the street.” I tried to get statistics of people dying in the street prior to the advent of social programs, but couldn’t find any. These programs allow people to disconnect from their neighbors, to stop going to church, be “independent”. They allow the American people to look to Washington DC to search to the answers to their problems instead of looking deep within themselves. Of course God had to disappear ...  Because without God there are no unalienable rights endowed to us by the Creator, there is no need to work hard, to be charitable, to help your neighbor. Government programs rob you of your liberty, of your true nature as a self reliant pioneer child of God, of the money that you could put to good charitable use, and your community of the ability to be proactive and responsible.
I’m quite sure that Social Security sounded pretty neat when they came up with it. It was simple, you pay into a trust fund your entire working life and then when you retire, you get your money back, right? Well ... no, but that is how it was proposed. In reality SSA pays out much, much more than it takes in, and then the question becomes, for how long? There is only one concrete answer ... not forever. And the rigidity of today’s weak willed politicians, their refusal to be the stewards of bad news, their concern with their own political futures, their insistence on letting the next guy deal with it, will make the transition from “nanny state” to forced individualism sudden, abrupt and it will most likely be accompanied by wide spread violence and chaos. You have been told not to worry about saving, that the SSA is going to take care of you, you have been told to buy a bigger and better house, and then a bigger and better one after that, you reinvest the equity, stay in debt, and you don’t actually own anything at all, and medicare has filled a void that the market would have filled. There is no such thing as lifetime health insurance, or retirement health insurance, every insurer assumes that they only have to deal with you until you’re old enough for a little of that “free” health care. The worrisome part in all of this is that you are not a jack of all trades, you have trained your entire life for a career that may fall woefully short of meeting your needs in the future. If it proved necessary could you build your own home, plant your own crops, raise your own animals? Are you so dependant on the modern life and the State that you cannot fend for yourself?
We do not have to wait for the United States to follow in Greece’s footsteps. We do not have to wait for forced austerity measures, we do not have to let the inevitable be a shock to our children. We can reclaim the “pioneer spirit” for ourselves, we can become the rugged individualists that live with in us. Instead of looking around for the State to step in and solve problems and come to the rescue, we can solve our own problems, we can save our own money, we can help our neighbors and family when they need it. I know everyone wants to get their benefits, but what you have to admit to yourself is that you do not NEED them. You are descendent of the great frontiersmen who tamed this land, who made this country great, the ability to look within , to depend on no one and to persevere lives within you. We can choose to make the government irrelevant, to shake them to their very core. If no one applied to receive food stamps and WIC, if no one lined up for unemployment benefits, if we turned to each other instead of Washington in our times of need, if we worked harder, if we sacrificed more ... we could right this ship, we could put the government out of business. It is within our power to choose liberty and it is within our power to restore the pioneer spirit of this great nation and these great people. Washington spends because the people clamor for more, because there is no end to the hands held out waiting for “assistance”, deprived of that it would all come to a halt. The government of a liberated, self reliant people would find little to do and even less to spend money on. We need to have insight into necessity in order to be a free people, look around and do what is required, make do with less, give more and do it cheerfully ... and when we have stood on our own two feet, when the pioneer decedents show that they are an independent and free people, then we can force Washington to change, to rescind the powers it has taken for itself, to return to protecting the life, liberty and property of it’s citizens and nothing more. We must earn the title “Free” and it is bought and paid for with sacrifice and determination. It lives within you.