362. Progress

 C.W. taught me a lesson in equality yesterday. I think he had fun. I didn’t.

 It happened this way.

I woke up, made myself a cup of coffee and wandered into living room of our condo. The sun had not yet risen, but there was light enough. There, sitting on the couch, staring out at the skyline lights, was a man who resembled me in many ways: my age or older, Caucasian, blond, and nattily dressed in a sport shirt, khakis, and penny loafers. “Good morning,” he said.

I nodded and waited. He appeared to sink deep in thought for a moment before turning to me. “Do you believe in self-reliance?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said.

“Would you like to hear my story?”

“Why not?” I said. I don’t know why. I guess it was because he looked so sincere and honest. He began.

“From the earliest age I can remember,” he said, “I’ve done everything more or less as expected. I obeyed my parents, who were hard working and honest people. In grade school, I was an exemplary student. In high school, I excelled at one of the finest educational facilities in the state. I took home awards. Garnered scholarships. Gave up many of the social activities enjoyed by the other students so I could study. My parents never stopped instilling in me the value of hard work, dedication, honesty, and sacrifice.”

I nodded, and he continued.

Then I made a seamless transition to college. I graduated with honors and prepared for a career.”

“You sound like a perfect American example of self-reliance and hard work paying off,” I said.

“There was war, then, and the draft,” he said. “I volunteered, served my time and ended my career with a thankless assignment in a foreign war. When I finished, and the plane took off over the South China Sea, I saw the blue water beneath me and relaxed. I knew that I would return unscarred. I dozed as the plane ascended into the clouds.”

The most amazing thing happened next. As the first gleams of the morning’s sunrise landed on the distant buildings, a change occurred in the room. As it lightened, he darkened. All of his features changed as if electronically synced in reverse with the emerging sunrise. His hair soon turned from straight blond to a tightly curled black, His face transformed itself into ebony, and an African-American of my age sat in front of me.

“The plane landed,” he said, “and I was soon back in my home town. It was a large metropolitan area and I felt opportunities would abound. They didn’t. Employers seemed almost surprised that I would apply for executive positions. A few offered me jobs driving trucks or managing cleaning crews.

“What about public-sector jobs?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? Neither the police nor fire department would hire persons … persons like me, if you know what I mean.”

“I think I do,” I said.

“The only job I was ever offered in the public sector was as part of a road crew in the street department, and it wasn’t a supervisory job. You never enjoyed that kind of experience, did you?”

Still somewhat in shock over the identify shift, I could only shake my head, and say, “No.”

“Finally,” he said, “one of the railroad lines offered to hire me and teach me about diesel engines.”

“And?”

“I took it, what else?” he said.

“Were you interested in diesel engines?”

“Are you kidding? My degree was in accounting, with a minor in finance.” He shook his head. “Diesel engines.”

“What then?”

“I met this girl,” he said. “We dated, most often at the movies, where we had to sit in the balcony. She cooked meals for us. There were few restaurants in town that served our kind.”

 

Once a sign for resaturants.
Now a political slogan. - C.W.

I said nothing.

“Then we married.”

I said nothing.

“I was eligible to buy a house on the GI Bill,” he said. “Nothing down, and what was a reduced interest rate at the time.”

“What happened then?”

“You don’t want to know.”

We sat in silence as the light finished filling the room. After a long period of nothingness, he slapped his leg. “Well,” he said, “things got better after that. Jobs opened up, but my college classmates had years of seniority by then. At least I didn’t have to come home smelling like diesel anymore.” He smiled.

I said nothing.

“Yes,” he said. “Things got better and better, until the country elected a president who looked more like me than like you.”

“And?”

“I don’t know. It was like a long-standing resentment lay like a deep boil, unseen and forgotten. But there were plenty willing to prod that boil. It burst.”

“And now?”

“More and more, I’m thinking back to that long plane ride home.”

Also check out www.allhatnocattle.com

And buy Big Dope's book at Amazon

or  www.wattensawpress.com .

318. Sundown Reflections

“Oh man. Would you look at those curves,” I rushed in to see and found C.W. using my laptop without permission. That’s very much against the rules, since the incident with a certain website. “Holy cow, get a load of this.” He looked at me and said, “You naughty boy.” He gave me a wink, a ridiculous gesture in his present form of the teenage wonder kid.

I came around him and looked. “Get out of there,” I said. He had found some files of old photos I had taken when I fancied myself as a photographer skilled in black and white studies of the human form. Really. Just an artistic endeavor.

Honestly.

“Does she know you have these? He pushed my hand away and continued scrolling. “Man oh man,” he said.

I wrestled the laptop away and exited the folder he had been examining. “Just what,” I said, “do you think you are doing?”

“How old were you when you took those?” He offered his best impression of a conspiratorial look.

“None of your business. Now what are you doing on my laptop?”

“Writing a report.”

“To whom?”

“The Falloonian Elders.”

“About what?”

“The so-called ‘The time in the evening when the sun disappears or daylight fades-cities in America.' He paused. “How did you talk her into it?”

I ignored him as I was trying to decipher his last statement. “Do you mean “Sundown Cities?”

“That’s what I said. You need to get your ears checked.”

“Are the sunspots affecting your Galactic Universal Translator again? You need to get it checked.”

“My GUT is fine and I trust it above all as your last president used to say. It’s your conscience that you should be worried about. Ooo la la. He made that swarmy face again, sort of a cross between Joel Osteen and Eddie Haskell.”

It was my turn to practice ignoring. “Why are you interested in Sundown Cities?”

“I’m not. The elders are.”

“And why are the elders interested?”

“They saw a documentary about them.”

“A documentary?”

“Yes. They like to watch documentaries from Earth during the Tri-Moon Phase while there is much laughter and jollity going on. Hey,” he said, “maybe I could do one on young husbands who talk their wives into doing something silly and don’t destroy the evidence like they promised. I could call it ‘The Unused.’ Get it?”

“So what do you want to know about Sundown Cities?”

“Did they really post signs on the city limits saying “People of color, probably descendants of dark-skinned guest works imported from the African mainland, don’t let the sun go down on you in this town.”

“I don’t think that’s the exact terminology used, but yes, that was the basic message.”

“And if a person ignored the warning, what happened?”

“You don’t want to know.” I hit “delete,” and gave him a mock smile.

“You missed one,” he said.

“Oh.” I searched and then looked at him. “And where is it?”

“Somewhere in cyberspace speeding toward its final destination.”

“You better not have.”

“So,” he said. “Back to Sundown Cities and their signs. Do they still exist?”

“The cities do but not the signs, unless one is hanging on the wall of some aged mayor’s hunting lodge.”

“But the cities, they still exist?”

“Quite so.”

“How do they get the message across?”

Now I finally understand coded
 messages like "Good Schools." -C.W

“They have more subtle ways in modern times.”

“And I suppose the cities themselves are slowly disappearing?”

I looked up from my computer in surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“I would assume they are not highly sought-out places in these more enlightened times.”

“Are you kidding me?” I pushed the computer away.

“No. Why? You don’t mean such cities still thrive?”

“Thrive?” I said. “They are some of the fastest growing places in our state.”

He started to say something but a piercing shriek shattered the air. “Jimmieeeee,” it said. “Don’t let sundown catch you in this house again.” I heard the scuffling of a chair at my wife’s computer station. I turned to ask C.W. what this was about.

He was gone.


Click on some ads. It costs them money and makes me some.

Also check out www.wattensawpress.com and

www.allhatnocattle.com

And buy Big Dope's book It's really quite good.