One year ago today: March 26, 2016, sidecar repairs.
Five years ago today: March 26, 2012, not counting the shoes.
Nine years ago today: March 26, 2008, six miles, five hours.
Random years ago today: March 26, 2010, checking out FireHow.
Excellent, no jet lag. That’s not to say I did any work. Good morning. Here’s a snap of the Chevy Blazer that JZ already wants to get rid of. It gobbles more gas than the Toyota, but it has a lot more power. I say he should keep it until he gets back to work and it pays for itself. There is nothing wrong with the interior or the working parts except his contention the brakes and water pump are bad. I believe this vehicle is around a 2006. They all look alike to me.
If all he wants is his own place to crash, I suspect the problem is that there is only one rule in this house. You are responsible for anything missing or damaged by yourself or anybody you bring home. Thus, it is wise not to bring anybody home, as I’ve told you before—my house is full of small valuable articles that easily fit in a purse. So what I’m planning to offer the guy is that if he buys a small camper trailer that is suitable for towing with his vehicle, he can park here and make the same payments on it.
Here’s a photo of what I have in mind. It would not even have to be this fancy. I saw this rig in the Ace Hardware parking lot in Kendall last week. I’ve never quite seen this make and model before. Do you think it might just be some newer model and I don’t recognize it?
Kowloon Walled City.
(Worst slum in the world.)
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I took a few measurements but mainly I walked the yard to see where everything was and how things are coming along. I read a chapter of Tess and see she is about to give him the news. Then I read something that would throw a few people for a loop. It was a generic background profile of men who became serial rapists. The disturbing thing is that if you were raised in any kind of poverty, the profile will fit you. Scary. It is a compilation of childhood experiences of men imprisoned for this brand of violence.
I know the pressure to take that first big chance, because if you get away with it, you are spared a lifetime of senseless toil in some factory or mineshaft, you even get to spend the few remaining years of your youth actually having a little fun. You don’t need to repeat the crime, you just need a jolt to help you get up and running. Then you can become that model citizen you hear about so much.
But it never works out that way. What the temptation does not teach these first-timers is that it is not the flash of cash that gets you out, it is the massive infrastructure that for most of us, only the preceding generations can provide. If they fail or decline to do so, you can’t duplicate it in your own lifetime. Society won’t stand for it. I feel sorry for those thousands of young men—it is always young men who get tangled up by this system.
I found my way out, but too many never do. My one brother steals his money (from his girlfriend) my other steals cars. My claim to any fairness I get from time to time is validated by the fact I have not spoken to these people in 40 years. Then I read this profile and it was like somebody walking around pointing at every poor kid as a potential felon of the worst kind. Like I said, scary.
“Last night while stargazing I wondered
where is my ceiling?”
At the Fair, a turkey leg was $10. So later this afternoon I took the red scooter to the mart and bought five for that price. The fact is turkey tastes so much like ham to me I wonder why I like it. All my older seedlings died while I was away. So much for my green thumb, although I did follow the directions to the letter. I’m actually quite good at following directions but that does not extent to following orders. In fact, I’m lousy at following orders. I don’t even like the way the movies portray people who follow orders.
So if the change worked, he could claim he was the decision maker and buck for a promotion. It if didn’t work, it was because you didn’t follow the foreman’s orders. You know the situation I mean. He’s the ass who stole my sledge hammer.
ADDENDUM
I finished reading the profile above and at least there’s a happy ending for me. For clarity, it would be all too easy for any “expert” to apply suspicion to anyone raised in poverty—and I’m certain this has happened all too often. However, that’s where it ceased being anything I could connect with. You see, although my very early youth fit the profile, I worked and thought my way out of it. So I’m also very keen on what it takes to beat the odds. And I don’t have a lot of sympathy for those who don’t at least make the effort.
The change comes around age fifteen, as youths in poverty begin to react with the environment outside the family unit. The worst maladjustment is toward sex as these youths begin to view it as something you bargain for, buy, or take by force. However, by that age, I was already considerably distanced from the profile. It was interesting to note where the departure was the greatest. Here, you go over the important points yourself.
√ I really could play music. I wasn’t just faking it long enough to hold the attention of pot-heads. It took long years of lessons and I really did start my own band. This cannot be compared, as I’ve often underlined, to joining a sports team or getting a job. Those organizations already existed, my band did not. I knew I’d never go hungry.
√ I was familiar with both making and managing money and keeping it a secret. The guys who went bad had a bent for buying bling and making asses of themselves. I never even bothered to buy a fancy car until I was in my 30s.
√ No way did I confuse sex with love, which had the benefit of keeping my entire youth and early adulthood as one big long honeymoon. Never underestimate the value of this--I have it out of my system and most men don't. I played in a band and that was more than enough to guarantee a variety of young women. Here’s the part so many people don’t believe. That I’ve never bought a Playboy magazine, paid for sex, or hung out in a stripper bar. (Mind you, I do not in any way have anything against those things because that is as close as most men ever get. And it’s better they spend their kids allowance there than on the alternatives.)
The profiling is everywhere. You can find in many forms but usually the classic single parent crime statistic so much in the news these days. The criminal tendencies are reinforced by the mid-teens and when they begin to find out the real world is no better, they act a little too much like what they’ve seen on TV. Oh, and that’s another major difference from the profile: I have no idea what is on television.
There are also a ton of minor differences that add up. I never was a foolish risk-taker. I didn’t drop out of school. I didn’t get married too young. I didn’t hang around in gangs. But most importantly, and this is according to the profile, I understood that the mere possession of money was not in itself enough to provide a secure “home base”. If I ever get around to publishing my earliest journals from my teens, you’ll see I had already developed the concept of what I then called “advancing on a broad front”.
This was the opposite of usual [in my contemporaries], where most of the other young men around me believed in brilliant and dashing local successes, the Al Bundy types. Dreaming of that winning touchdown or that poker jackpot. Not me. I somehow quickly learned not to party on payday. Anyway, I found out there is a detective novel written using these profiles and I’ll try to find a copy. I remain convinced that it is poverty that produces the majority of evils in this world. What I am not convinced of is the causes of poverty. I know too many people who just will not learn.
Last Laugh
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