California Dreaming
(from a long time TMF poster earlier today)
I worked construction in California for ten years and during that time I dealt with people from the ends of the Earth. Every example of Central America from Mexicans to El Salvadorians to a Panamanian who corrected every Spanish word that came out of my mouth. (derecho for right was a snap but izquierda for left, try as I may I never could get it right.)
I worked on a Synagogue in Foster City California. (directly south of San Francisco) It was what we call a floating slab, I still have the “blue” prints for it. The site is on top of a landfill dating back to times when dumping trash and garbage into the bay was sadly standard practice. My fellow workforce sported the most diverse human DNA I ever encountered,
Members of the Pacific basin from South Koreans to Philippines, from Fijians to Samoans, from Australians to Tasmanians. From dissident Russian Jews to a Frenchman, to a Yugoslavian who learned English in Australia. “Move it wards to me.” I got it, but “When do we get a pie pocket?” Resulted in him having to write it down and a pie pocket came out ‘pay packet.’
The company owner was high energy and preferred to take part in the work rather than sit in his office. He had a great name; Les Moore. The site manager was a Texan named Dave with a splay of feathers on his Stetson, he would stand where a Rabbi would eventually stand and line us out every morning. “I want y’all to carry on doing what y’all were doing yesterday.” I would hear his words echo down in languages so diverse that I couldn’t even tell what languages they were.
Pino (no tilde, He would say, “I’m Italian not Spanish”) would start in on Les with, “You got any kind of medical care Les?” And Les would come back with, “I’ll bury you.” And after a pause Les would add, “And my dental policy is, if you don’t complain about my medical plan, you get to keep your teeth.”
Later I worked on a mid-rise, metal studs and drywall. The union agreed to work for half scale on projects under $300,000 in order to get a dead economy moving during Reagan’s “trickle down” BS era. So to avoid having to pay ($22 per hour and $6 in benefits) the general contractor allowed each floor to be bid separately in order to remain under 300k. There were 26 of us carpenters and they hired two new men every morning and fired two men every day at 5:00 PM. Guess what political party the general contractor belonged to?
In 1983 rents were so steep I rented a small building across from the Oakland West Bart Station for $350.00 a month. In the year I lived there I never saw another Caucasian in my neighborhood. There was a half Cuban- half Black who at first thought I was a narc, but when I shared my pot with some of my neighbors that fear vanished.
When Patty Hearst was kidnaped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974 (a cult founded by Bill and Emily Harris from Carmel, IN) she flipped due to a phenomena known as the Stockholm Syndrome and joined the SLA and helped rob a bank under her new name, Tanya. BTW Jim Jones (“Drink the Kool-aid and die with dignity”) of the Jonestown tragedy, founded his death cult in Beech Grove, IN. Patty (granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst) demanded that her father give $5,000,000 worth of food to the poor. My next door neighbor Kenny showed me where the trucks backed up and dispersed the food. And I could hit the house where the Black Panthers was founded with a nine iron.
In that year I never heard one disparaging word. In California you can drink in parks and there is a park at the end of the Matson shipping complex. One Saturday we were sitting directly under a Russian freighter having a few beers. Some of the officers were at the rail and they could hear us beckoning them to jump ship and join our little party. They would give us a little hidden wave.
I pride myself for being able to get along with any kind of people and when I see Republicans racist redneck clod kicking morons so afraid of the “them” that they feel obliged to carry assault rifles in public, it makes me want to puke at their ingrained cowardice. When I see politicians pass bathroom bills and other anti-gay legislation, when I see a political party claim to be the party of Jesus yet do any and everything they can to disenfranchise any non-white American, I realize that I as an atheist I am more Christian than Christians.
In nearly 77 years on this planet, I have learned that there are three kinds of people that you have to watch out for… liars, thieves and the willfully ignorant.
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