The 3:10 to Yuma and those god damned Flemish

grantcart

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu Apr-10-08 03:42 PM
Original message

The 3:10 to Yuma and those god damned Flemish

LONG RIDE FROM YUMA

Yesterday I was driving back from Yuma - in the middle of the desert - and passed a guy on the freeway who didn't look completely psychopathic but had been under the sun for a couple of days and looked down at the clock and it was 3:09 and realizing that if I took the next ramp up to go back and pick him up I would become the 3:10 to Yuma and that cinematic reference was all that was needed to tip the balance on whether I should take a chance on picking him up.

It wasn't completely selfless as I knew that in about 20 miles all the NPR stations would fade away and the only English language station left to listen to was a syrupy evangelical station that made me rue my addiction to listen to people talk while I drive. The rider in place and the backpack in the back seat we were off. I made a reference to the Gadsden Purchase and we talked about the Texas war and the Alamo and I knew that my bet had paid off and I could turn the radio off.

He noticed the Obama yard sign I have fixed to my car and made a comment and said that he found Obama very Lincolnesque. I mentioned the debates with Stevens. Then he quoted Lincoln's statement that he was against citizenship and intermarrying for and with 'negroes'. I responded with yes but he was trying to respond to his earlier more progressive statements that made him appear to be an abolitionist radical and then he quoted Lincoln "If you accept the proposition that negroes are slaves because they aren't as smart then you have to assume that any person who is smarter can make any person a slave and then you have to watch out for anybody who is smarter than you."

IT WAS LIKE A COLLEGE SEMINAR

Having established our interest in history we quickly established why he was homeless. Born in a liberal southern family when he go to High School age in the 70s his parents had him go to a progressive predominately black school and he learned about the Tulsa Race Riots, the lynching of blacks by Irish mobs in the draft riots. He was one of the few people I have talked with who has also ever read anything about the strange case of freed black men in the south who also owned slaves.

He lived on the streets and eventually got settled down and married after 10 years of marriage his wife died and while he was living on the edge of this personal disaster Katrina came by and kicked him of the ledge and he lost everything he had and just had no more hope. He didn't mind the streets. He would be happy to stand in the end of the line at the mission and just try and survive the day.

He has a fantastic sense of humor. I asked him about what happened the first time the police hassled him and he said it was his own fault he just thought of a funny joke and couldn't help himself. He was stranded in a 'Mayberry' type of town and when he was walking through just trying to get to the next exit the local cop kept buzzing him. At 5 in the morning the cop wakes him and takes down his information and unable to help himself he asks the cop the following questions: "Are you the only cop in the town?", "Yes" the cop answered and then he asked "Well I noticed that you are a sergeant and I was just curious if your the only one here why don't you make yourself a general?"

MAKING MONEY RIFFING AGAINST HATE

It turns out that he has been a part of a number of street performers who drifted for money. He told me of some of the routines and how they worked on them at night to get just the perfect number of stutters or whatever. The greatest was some guy who plays a guitar and pretends the string breaks and then starts ranting against some obscure group. It would use all the hate speech that was in currency that day but instead of using it against blacks, gays or the Mexican immigrants the guitar player would aim it some obscure group so people could see how stupid the hate speech really was.

Midgets worked well for some reason. Canadians were great but it worked better if they were ‘Canadias’ for some reason.

“Hate those Canadias for coming here and stealing my job. Those Canadias lust after our women and look down on us.”

“Those god damn Canadias keep bringing us those god damn cold fronts – event he communists don’t do that”.

But for reason, never understood, everything worked better if you ranted against the Flemish.

We came back to the election and how our society gets itself all wound up to hate some group and start some war. In a pause he looked at me and asked if I knew who was responsible for stirring up all that hate, I said no and he said “Those god damn Flemish”. And the absurdity of so much funny wisdom from this stranger in the desert caused me to laugh like I was in college again and we spent the next two hours trying to have a normal conversation and a little contest erupts on who can snark in the obligatory “Those god damn Flemish” in.

It seemed to us that the society had just about given up hating the blacks, it wasn’t fashionable anymore and the next generation was not taking that bait. Hatred of gays was still a big thing but it too seems to be losing its power. Who will they hate after the gays? It’s hard to see.

Is it possible to ever break the cycle? Could something happen that would be so substantively and symbolically jarring that it would cause us to stop looking for people to hate? Is there some way to get us out of a blood lust where we hunt down a new group of people to hate?

He didn’t think so but he said the homeless were not known for their optimism on such things.

BACK HOME

Our time was up and I showed him where Brother Benito would be serving breakfast for him tomorrow and dropped him off at the beach as the sun was setting.

Got home hooked up to DU and looked at some (and it seemed fewer) replies on who laid out the rationale for hating the Clintonistas and hating the Obamatrons.

Found a thread for the link to Obama in Indiana and his speech was disappointingly familiar, until he got to the very end (paraphrased from memory) and then I heard his voice rise up and hear him say’

“I just want to say something about some of my supporters . . . a lot of them have gotten really excited about being involved in the campaign and for some they tell me they have been waiting for a long time for this kind of campaign to come by. Sometimes they get overly enthusiastic and I would like them to be careful how they talk about those that we are running against. I respect Senator Clinton and I respect Senator McCain. The issues that we are going to face and the big fight that lays ahead of us mean that we are going to have to be clear thinking and cannot be sidetracked by letting our passions get ahead of us.”

I guess no one has told him about the god damn Flemish.