Coming out of the supermarket the other afternoon as I headed to my car, was a fellow standing alongside a Toyota Corolla, not the newest model but well-cared for. In front of the car, in display mode was a table with a hand-written sign that read "$40." It was a coffee table that came to my knees and was about three feet long.
I measure the heights of things in terms of my knees. I've had three operations
to replace one and half kneecaps making me nearly bionic but still moronic and
have motor skills challenges. He wasn't trying to assault me with the table but
sell it.
Meanwhile as both major political parties maneuver to stake out the best
positions for the November Election, Dave (I didn't ask if that were his real
name. Situation reversed, I wouldn't give me mine either) was doing what he had
to do to keep his family from sleeping in that Corolla.
Dave has a job, okay HAD a job, working for a car
dealership in the auto body shop. He was especially good, he told me, in frame
straightening and cold steel reconfiguration (all I know about cars is where
the gas goes. Everything he said was an English I don't speak).
You'd think as people
held on to their cars longer, because they can't afford to buy new ones,
the Daves across the country would be in decent shape, unless their
dealers get squeezed by banks whose money they use to buy the cars they sell
us. When that happens, they lower their overhead and the Daves all
hit the bricks.
He started coming to the parking lot about eight months ago he said, looking to
chat up people after they'd bought groceries to see if they needed their
sidewalks shoveled free of snow, or pathways cleared to their garages. We had a
reasonable amount of snow last winter, though I didn't get the impression he'd
made enough money to get the front tires on the Corolla replaced, as they looked
a little like the top of my head, if you follow my drift.
He seemed a bright
man, just confused as to how he wound up at the place where the road and the
sky collide in the bonfire of vanities that has become America 2024.
Dave's already sold off most of his living room. He's got two kids, ready for
middle school and no illusions they'll be going anywhere near a college or any
other post-secondary educational institution unless they win the lottery.
It's the kind of scene my mom's father, Grampy, used to tell me about when
I was small: grown men selling apples in front of skyscrapers in Manhattan and
families, like his, learning to not want so they weren't
disappointed when they didn't get.
Every generation of
American since we got started has done better than our parents before us so our
children will have it better than we did. It's the promise of that dream that
joins us as a nation, no matter our color, gender, religion or politics.
I walked back to my car. I didn't need a coffee table and couldn't persuade
Dave to take ten bucks 'just in case' somebody only had thirty. I drove off wondering
what the odds are of anyone seeking higher political office encountering Dave
and being able to help America keep its promise to him, and everyone else.
-bill kenny
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