Sanitation Santa's

Sanitation Santa’s

I remember Flip Wilson talked about his uncle getting a job on a garbage truck. It paid twenty-five bucks a week, and all he could eat. Driving behind a garbage truck is pretty awful stuff. It only takes one stop to understand that there is always garbage truck juice dripping from it. That means when the truck is moving, the wind is atomizing that juice and you can never be sure where it’s going. Driving behind one on a motorcycle is even worse. These are the rational thoughts of an adult.

The memories of a child are an entirely different affair. In the summer of 1968, my siblings and I were moved to the city of Savannah, it was a far cry from the rural area we had grown up in. There were drunks on the streets and crime on every corner. In the world, we had grown up in, one did not ride in cabs, use umbrellas and knew everyone who lived as far as a young child could wander in a day.

Trash was walked into the woods and dumped in a large pile, usually near where the old outhouses stood. The outhouses had only recently been abandoned in our corner of the world. Many adventures, injuries and a few treasures were found playing near or on old abandoned trash piles. Old cars were not traded in, but were driven as far into the woods as possible, wherever they stopped is where they died. Many became playground equipment for children, some still drivable were used to drive through the woods until they finally gave up. A toy such as this required no lights and even brakes were optional. These old cars taught many how to drive.

In Savannah, the world changed for us in many ways, most bad. My family lived in Port Wentworth and actually lived in the projects. This was a time before I knew what projects were. The houses were long rows of small brick shanties attached together, streets ran along in front of them, but between them on their backs, ran long dirt alleys. My memories include those alleys always being filled with mud holes filled with water. They were like rivers flowing for blocks and were a source of constant entertainment.

Garbage trucks parted those waters at least a couple times a week and the smell or juice that they dropped into the rivers of mosquito producing stagnant water matter little. In fact, their smell was only slightly worse than the fetid air already thick around the waters. It lasted only seconds, then the truck moved on.

I can remember the two old black gentlemen, who rode on the back of that truck, like it was yesterday. They wore black coveralls, which had started life, gray. Neither had teeth, or at least not enough to notice them as teeth. Both smiled continuously and laughed heartily. They hardly spoke anything resembling the English language and smelled worse than the truck.

None of this mattered to the kids who lived in the projects. These guys were Sanitation Santa’s. They would spend the week collecting abandoned toys and store them in side compartments on the truck. As the truck moved slowly through the projects they would pick up the garbage, all the while distributing smiles and toys to the children following them along, desperate for any good thing they could get. The truck was only slightly less exciting, but much worse smelling than the ice cream truck which cruised the same mud hole every day with its colipie of colorful music.

Not all of those kids could buy ice cream, but all of them got a toy. It was many years before I truly understood what the dozen of kids without ice creams were thinking while they watched the few who had them, eat them.

I have talked about the teachers and relatives who touch so many and left lifelong impressions without being aware of how much they changed those around them.

How about Katharine? She was an old, black nanny we had when I was young, sure we were white, but our lives were only separated by a thread, which consisted of a little money and a lot of color. She was the best cook and the sweetest person I’ve ever known. I think of her daily. She taught me much more valuable lessons than the gaggle of good ole boys who tried to keep me mired in a belief system left over from the Stone Age.

These two old unassuming garbage collectors influenced several generations of children, possibly providing the only joy they received while young. Did they understand their importance; did they have any clue what prominent examples of kindness they were? Maybe not, but I wish to believe that this was the first secret God whispered to them when they looked into his face for the first time.

Bull Poop Politics

Bull Poop Politics

Last week’s story was about every politician, not any politician in particular. I continue to scream about the political mumbo jumbo and others continue to turn it into partisan poop. I write with a non partisan pen, but others continue to destroy any slight grip on harmony we have and replace it with the ugliest division they can conjure in their smoldering, bubbling cauldrons.

The story was about political spin and those who use it and buy it. It got many comments online, in the many places it appears, but one woman seemed to have less of a clue than most. Her first comment, why do we allow democrats to vote, as all of them are on welfare? This was exactly the Kool Aid drinking attitude I was talking about. With one incredible and definitive statement, she proved she drinks the Kool Aid, the size of her glass and that her lips are red.

I have never been on welfare in my life and have no intentions of trying it. To say such a thing, is to demonstrate the depth of your ignorance or the depth of the ignorance of the person who influences you. You are still drinking Kool Aid created during the division and hatred of our past.

Her next statement shows even less intellect. Obama’s real father was Frank Marshall Davis; she even provided a link to a video which supposedly proved it. The video was removed by its poster, imagine that. I hate it that people will write and speak anything from a position of ignorance, I hate it more that others will actually believe it and sell it as truth. The real problem here, manipulative people write it, then retract it, but not before ignorant people believe it and run with it. Furthermore, the video went on to show Davis as a communist, never mind he was an intelligent, articulate, black man trying to create a better world for his children during the most prejudice and turbulent time in our history.

What if he were a communist when a teenage Barack met him? Must we be held accountable for those we knew as children? My grandfather and father were moonshiners, I dare say everyone in my family made, hauled, drank or lived off the money, moonshine provided. Not only am I, not on welfare, I don’t drink, make moonshine or haul it. Unlike the Kool Aid drinking idiots in this country, I am my own man and make my own decisions.

These seemingly intelligent adults who don’t have a clue about politics and don’t know the difference between certain parts of their anatomy and a hole in the ground would have you believe that Obama grew up as a mixed race child, in the most chaotic and racially biased times, in our history. While doing so he was busy make complex political affiliations with our enemies.

Teenagers look up to anyone who is addressing their particular concerns. Most know as much about politics as, well, someone who would say, all democrats are on welfare. It’s okay to be ignorant at fifteen, that’s why you can’t vote at fifteen. It’s dangerous to be ignorant at thirty or above because there is a twenty percent chance you actually might vote.

Before I go insane listening to the ignorance, let me make one more point. In a speech this week, Paul Ryan said, our country has moved from producing 5 million barrels of crude oil a day to producing 5.5 million a day since 2008, in 2011 our country imported less than half its daily consumption of oil, for the first time.

This should have been an indication of a resounding victory by the Obama administration. Instead, he went on to explain that Obama has fought every effort to drill and discover our own oil and natural gas resources. Further he explained that the high gas prices are entirely the fault of the Obama administration’s tax and environmental policies.

You can’t have it both ways. Either the administration increased production of crude oil by .5 million barrels a day, or they did not. If you’re going to make a generalized derogatory statement, make sure that the sentence just before it doesn’t prove it as total bull poop.

Continuing to say the same things repeatedly, does not make them true, regardless of which party says them. Obama did not create the price of gasoline, start the wars, create the deficit and did not implement the bailout fiasco. Who honestly cares who his father was?

I will go on record here and make a few predictions. In regard to the above matters, it mattered little who won in 2008, it matters little who wins in 2012. Gas prices and the deficit will continue to rise. The government will continue to grow and do stupid poop and both parties will continue to blame it on the other.

Happy Laborless Day

Happy Laborless Day

It’s called spin and the over five hundred members of congress, the senate, the president and vice president use it generously. It comes from slang used during the fifties, as in, to spin a yarn. Its most clear definition is public relations manipulation, and it has become a code word for propaganda.

Everything we are fed, is filtered through the spin machine, there is no way to determine where truth ends and where the spin begins. I guess on Labor Day, we should be glad our politicians have created a few new jobs. Including spin doctors and those on the spin control patrol.

 I’m certainly glad to have a job, but just because I continue to care about those who don’t, does not mean I must leave the country. Does it? I get so sick of those who continue to drink the partisan Kool Aid, saying, if you don’t like it leave it. I love it, I respect it, but it is my duty to change it, not buy every piece of political spin, those running for office, spit out.

Let’s talk about Labor Day. Do you know the truth behind Labor Day? Labor Day was created to appease the unionists of the late eighteen hundreds. The official decree said it recognized those workers whose efforts contributed to the nation.

The reality, the government sent in thousands of soldiers and US Marshalls, to break up a strike by Pullman workers in 1894, killing many. The national holiday was hurriedly put in place, to pacify those strikers. What were they striking against? The Pullman Company was their employer and their landlord. Wages continued to drop, and the workers could no longer pay the landlords.

Statistics can be bent and reshaped to support any view. Many are used to justify government activity or more aptly government inactivity. The national rate of unemployment is 8.3 percent. Am I wrong, there are more than 8.3 percent of those I know, out of work?

In fact, Labor Day is mostly a holiday for government employees. Today there will be cook out all across our great land; don’t let it bother you that many will be eating crackers with packets of catsup, mayo, mustard or jelly spread on them. Think of all the jobless. Do you think they understand the true meaning of this holiday? Think of those who actually keep the country running. The average American is working today. I have worked every Labor Day and have always found that ironic. The average American cannot afford to take this day off and jeopardizes his job if he dares to.

Our government continues to pass laws which give tax breaks to our largest companies, who then after taking those tax breaks, move out of the country anyway. Meanwhile, our small business owners do not get those breaks and actually create the most jobs and activity in our economy. They being strangles to death by the large corporations our government continues to support. The crazy part of this, those small business owners continue to support their Kool Aid carrying leaders because they support business. They do, just not small business, small businesses are not on the radar enough to have any effect on the policies that are destroying them.

Corporations continue to lobby successfully to erode our rights, our rights being the only pesky problems that stand in their or our government’s way. With the instituting of, At Will States, which are spreading, companies, can now treat their employees with any degree of maltreatment they see fit. The American worker now has no protection against unfair treatment. There was a time when unions were not needed, when companies treated their workers and families with respect, out of a sense of fairness. That fairness has long ago disappeared. By the way, statistics say that corporate profit margins are at an all time high.

So as you celebrate today, however you can, don’t worry. Those same statistics say that there are only ten homeless people and that most of them are homeless by choice. There are extremely few kids being abused, and most of those are running into the fists of their abusers from pure stupidity. The five children who are beaten to death each day are merely committing suicide by fist. The wars on drugs and terror are working, and the police and the prison systems are there for our protection.

Get over the Kool Aid laced presidential elections, the president makes little difference. Quit fighting about stupid, partisan politics and elect some congressmen and senators who will do their jobs, not live as royalty. If over five hundred of the most educated people in the country, with billions of dollars at their disposal, can’t balance the budget or eliminate the deficit, they don’t want to. Give them a taste of our new employment reality in America, fire them and find someone who can.

What Ya Gonna Do

I grew up in a situation where you were required to know the whereabouts of any police officer in the immediate area. By the time, I was thirteen I could steal any car on the road, by the time I was five I could smell a cop from fifteen miles away and could see one for at least a mile. If you grow up in the right or wrong situation, you learn to keep track of them.

As I became a man I followed the straight and true, but never entirely lost this old habit. I have had an unhealthy awareness of the cops all my life. I have done nothing wrong for many years, but just let a cop slip in behind me. I’m as nervous as a politician who looks in the mirror and sees a polygraph machine following too closely, or a pig who suddenly becomes Jimmy Dean aware.   

This used to be easy, remember when the citizens outnumbered the police? Okay I’m kidding, there are only about 800,000 in the country, but it’s hard to keep track of all of them. Even the Army only has a little over 500, 000 soldiers to police then entire world.  I’m certainly not picking on the police, just those who control them, the politicians and the insurance companies who pull the politicians strings.

Be that as it may, you bet I get nervous when a cop gets behind me, after all, he has a gun, and I don’t. The police are so thick in Miami Beach that when you read the newspaper, there is one standing behind you reading it too.  The citizens have circled the wagons and the Police have them surrounded. If your wife passes gas, a bush to your left might give her a ticket, more than likely they’ll give you one. Women are allowed to pass gas, but men are not allowed to be in their company when they do.

As if this isn’t bad enough, in Miami Beach you also have Tremont Towing and the reality show, South Beach Tow. Add to the cops a group of enthusiastic wrecker drivers who are backed by the cops and being filmed taking every car they can get their hands on and you are simply a little fishy in a big pond of fishes.

For some reason, others can park in the streets and totally block traffic while they eat a chicken sandwich or talk on the phone, I see it every day, but yours truly better not hesitate at a red light. I am beginning to think that Miami Beach has assigned me a personal officer and tow truck driver. If you run in to get a fourteen dollar yogurt, which is another story altogether, it might cost you an additional two hundred and seventy five bucks. After all the wrecker driver, the owner of the company, the cameraman, the rest of the film crew, the television network and millions of Americans have a vested interest in your car getting towed. What chance does an average American have in such situations?

How about the show Cops? Millions of Americans are sitting on the edge of their recliners with a beer in one hand and a bag of Doritos in the other hoping you are going to do some stupid stuff. I know the guy who is running from the cops on the intro of the show. It’s his only claim to fame, he brags about it when he is drunk, which is all the time. Of course, he has no teeth because just after the part you see, he fell off of a concrete embankment and knocked them all out. It was too graphic for television. I don’t want to be the bad boy guy, and If I were, I wouldn’t be bragging about it.

So if you get pulled over, and the cop has a film crew with him, you are in trouble. All those Americans are sitting there hanging on your every move. They do stupid stuff on a regular basis, but for some reason, it’s funnier when you do it. There is nothing more entertaining than to sit and slurp a few beers and watch people do things more stupid than the things you do. You have little chance when half of the country is rooting for you to get out of the car dressed in a pink tutu and try to explain you were on the way, to get diapers and bread.

Be careful where your wife passes gas, don’t park your car anywhere convenient, because anywhere convention is illegal and if you get pulled over by a film crew with a badge, understand you are about to do something incredibly stupid, there are just too many people rooting for and cheering you on. We Americans always seem to live up to others expectations, it’s what we do.

Well, If Sara Thinks So

After a day of silence, Sara Palin chimed in on Romney’s VP candidate, Paul Ryan. Man was I relieved, I had no idea what decision to make without her one and a half cents worth. In her statement, she mentioned Mitt and Paul three times, but mentioned Obama over twenty. She went on to point out California, as all that is wrong with America; she is probably uninvited to California, which might prove there may be hope for the state, after all.

She blamed our debt and deficit on Obama even though both have been problems since long before his questionable birth. She, in fact, contradicted herself by pointing out just how long they’ve been problems and blaming them on him in the same sentence. Sara is a perfect example of what we don’t need. She is not a Republican, but rather an anti-Democrat. What we don’t need is an anti anything. Anti’s are the reasons why we have such a stalemate now.

Fight the fight and win or lose, but if you lose, revert to being an American and help push the bus, don’t lie in front of it. As near as I can tell, she is merely mad because Americans did not vote her in as prom queen.

Being the Vice President actually comes down to one crucial thing, what happens if the President dies? The VP candidate is as important as the presidential candidate. I have spent several hours researching Paul to begin the decision process about who to vote for. No matter what any of you think, you cannot vote for R&R simply because of the party they represent. This is another big problem with DC, partisan politics continues to place people in office who don’t belong there. With enough money, anyone can become the proverbial fox in the hen house and let’s face it America is one extremely big hen house.

Paul seems to be a good ole boy and I mean that in a good sense, not as in the entrenched corrupted good ole boy system of the past. He appears to have worked hard, then paid for and received an excellent education. He takes care of himself and his family and can hunt, fish and trap anything. He is an avid outdoorsman, who might at least give the environment a fighting chance, under a Romney administration, it might not have otherwise. Places like the Kitty Kat Club and CyberDatingToRuinAMarriage. Com do not come up when you google him. Hey and there is no question he never worked at Bain.

As the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, he had already introduced two budget proposals; the first was shot down like a fighter pilot from Sara Palin’s fictional communist country of California. The second was met with better enthusiasm, proving he can take a lickin and keep on tickin. If you are going to be a politician in DC, you better be ready for disappointment, after all we the people are used to it and are preparing for more of it.

I guess the key question is. How long will it take Washington and the political meat grinder to transform the all American boy into the rubber stamp thumping self important, self serving politician we all have come to know and loath?

It seems that the only way to have a snowballs chance in politics, in America, is to have a Lawyer in the woodpile. Paul covers this essential qualification also, his father having been one and his wife currently being one. I won’t hold that against him and please, no letters; it was simply a very slight and not so good lawyer joke. Right now the lawyers in his background are the only sign of skeletons in his closet, which ain’t too bad. Of course, it is the duty of the Democrats, as it would be the Republicans if the tables were turned, to find out if he had an affair with the babysitter’s, cousin’s, mother’s, illegal maid. Or to find out if he pulled the wings off of flies or painted innocent puppies with stolen lipstick when he was young, oh crap that was me. At the moment, Paul Ryan looks like a decent pick and has already been voted as prom king once, of course he was also voted biggest brown noser.

I’m still not too sure about his running mate, as I’m of the opinion that most in Washington do not truly represent us average Americans. Regardless of what Sara thinks, it matters little who wins as far as the debt and deficit are concerned, both have and will continue to grow. Any person, who promises to stop them, is naive, a fool or simply lying. How can you tell a politician is lying? He is promising to balance the budget, decrease taxes or lessen the size of government.

  

To Chick Or, Not To Chick

To Chick Or, Not To Chick

Kennesaw

I can see a sound tar and feathering is in my immediate future.

When an idiot gets too much attention for his idiocy, he becomes famous, he then believes himself a genius.

I’ve got several friends that are openly gay. They have been the entire time I’ve known them. All are in long term monogamous relationships. Their being gay has no effect on our friendship and never will nor has it had any effect on my eating dry chicken sandwiches. Simply put, I like my friends and don’t like dry chicken. What they do is between them and God, in fact, what any of us do is between us and God, not between us and those who think they speak for God from their small minds.

All this controversy over a dry chicken sandwich seems a little stupid to me. I don’t care much for chicken and care less for a restaurant that decided that I can have chicken or chicken or of course if I don’t like chicken, I can always have chicken. Eat more what? What’s more, not being open on Sundays is a little outdated and will have little to do with who gets into the kingdom. Maybe someone wants a dry chicken sandwich after church. Am I wrong or do Christians eat on Sundays?

 In fact, all over the country many church members have one thing in common. After church, they gather to have dinner and talk about their church experience as well as everybody else in the church. Oh sorry, was that a secret? What would all those people do if every restaurant made this highly significant social decision for them? If you own a store and you don’t sell diet Coke, then you don’t care enough to have my business. If you own a restaurant and sell only one thing, like hot dogs or dry chicken sandwiches, you don’t need my business, you already have enough, and besides I can buy a dry chicken sandwich on every corner.

We Christians are no different than everyone else; we are influenced by the idiocy of others. If you need proof, look at the last two decades of presidential campaigns. As further proof look at a preacher who rose to fame in the fifties, he preached small minded messages against every atrocity to include homosexuals, abortions and pretty much anything anyone enjoys. He spent two decades on the pulpit condemning everyone and everything, spewing hate as he thumped the bible.

While sex between unmarried members of his church was forbidden, he was having sex with multiple women and men among his congregation and fathered many children inside the church. He was also arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover male police officer in Los Angeles. Finally, he convinced 909 people to kill each other or themselves. This person was Jim Jones.

I will never understand this kind of blind idiocy, but it continues on smaller scales throughout our country. I ain’t drinking Kool Aid, and no one is telling me what I can or can’t eat on Sunday or who I can or can’t love or marry. 

Most people operate from a place of fear. They have the strongest reactions about subjects they don’t understand or are scared of. In fact, most don’t understand that their fears and opinions come from their parent’s lack of understanding or fears. Most people get their small mindedness from the people who they grew up with or those who continue to influence them.  You can see their eyes glaze over as they spout bull that has been spoon fed to them. What they say has nothing to do with their own thoughts or opinions. They misquote facts and use wrong words in an attempt to sound informed and intelligent. Then they go to the polls and vote for someone for something as stupid as, does he eat dry chicken sandwiches.

I don’t eat dry chicken sandwiches, and I don’t drink Kool Aid given with quotes from preachers, philosophers or politicians.

I wonder if the people who own this company, ever eat out on Sundays. What do they believe about those who must work on Sundays, to feed their children? I’m just askin. I wonder if they’ve ever heard the verse, It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24). I’m just sayin!

How about let’s wait and let God decide who gets in and who don’t. How about we give him a little credit and believe he is compassionate and does not make such decisions based on the prejudices of man. It’s what I’ve always chose to believe, and when I arrive at my eventual resting place, I’ll drink any Kool Aid he offers.

God gave man free will, why cannot man leave it at that?