Few things to preface this entry...
#1 I've got an aunt that's a little crazy about this whole immigration thing. She believes that the Statue of Liberty's inscription should be amended...
Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...unless they're Mexican.
#2 I just cut down a whole bunch of brush in my back yard, and burned it all last weekend. I used my own fire pit and I used a trash can with holes specifically made for burning. We burned so much that the trash can was trashed. Completely burned through the bottom. Not much good anymore, time to throw that thing away.
#3 Tomorrow is trash day, so I took the trash out tonight. Two cans, a box, a recycling bin and this burn can.
Set the trash out at 8:17pm (I'm not making this up)
Started to smoke a cigarette in the backyard.
Heard a vehicle pull up. Heard the door slam, heard the back door open. By this time I had moved around the side of the house so I could see what was going on. Saw a guy, obviously Hispanic, maybe Mexican but hell if I know, and hell if I care.
He grabbed the burn can, loaded it into his van, and took it away. Ostensibly to be deposited at a recycling center sometime in the near future along with whatever else he can find. For which he'll receive around 40-50 cents a pound I guess. He was done and gone by 8:24pm. Seven minutes from placement on the curb to the back of this guy's van. Maybe another day or two till that can hits the recycling center and the money hits this man's pocket and back into the economy it goes because he's gotta eat, pay rent, put gas in his hoopty...you get the idea.
Now here's where I think our giddy up is broken. Here's a guy who for whatever reason is picking up scrap metal. Maybe he can't speak English, maybe he's got a conviction, maybe he's an illegal, God only knows what this guy's story is and truth be told I don't much care about that part of it.
How many guys do I know who aren't working? Quite a few, up until a couple weeks ago, my wonderful younger brother was out of work.
How many guys are sitting on their asses drawing whatever benefits they can squeeze out of Ole' Uncle Sam or their families and not doing a damn thing?
Quite a few. They say the unemployment rate is 8.2%, however that doesn't include the probably 12% of the long term unemployed who have simply given up looking for work. Always nice how the Government can cook the books to make things look nice.
What's stopping them from getting in their truck or van, or hell you could probably do it in a car if you were motivated enough?
Remember the story I told you about the kid painting addresses on the curb in my mom's neighborhood? Kid charged $5 per house, went up, asked if you wanted your address painted on, everyone did (ambulances and what not), took him about 3 minutes to paint it on, and off he went to the next house.
That kid paid his yearly college tuition doing that every summer. And that little shit went to U of I. Look up their tuition!
The point is, what happened to people? What happened to guys especially? Where's the testosterone? Where's the attitude that says, regardless of what happens to me I am going to keep swinging until I die?
This guy is willing to drive around the neighborhood and pick up other people's trash for money...
Kinda makes all your excuses seem a bit ridiculous...
But, I've never found myself in that situation so I guess I should just keep my mouth shut...
Fuck that.
Get your giddy up back, get off your ass, and do something!
I love you Mom...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
Like I said in my last post, I joined a lodge of Freemasons. Immediately upon starting the process you start to learn things. A lot of diff... -
Friday, December 5, 2008 2330 hrs. Yeah, Cheena got shot the other day. Unfortunately for her it was probably entirely too easy for the bas...
-
Shit but only farted...and so goes the traditional poem scrawled upon the walls of port-a-john's the world over. It was what I was read...
The 24 Inch Gauge...
Like I said in my last post, I joined a lodge of Freemasons. Immediately upon starting the process you start to learn things. A lot of diff...
Nothing wrong with a Hispanic or whatever ethnicity picking your trash up to recycle it and tryin' to make some extra green.
ReplyDeleteI lived in a neighbourhood, that housed mostly illegals, it was cheap and affordable (600 a month) for a relatively clean duplex. By 4am in the morning the whole neighbourhood empited and went to work - to whatever they were doing, if it's only picking up burnt-out trash cans to make some money off it. Most of them never ever saw a check from the US Government - a lot of that is propaganda. With what little they brought home they tried to make feasts out of nothing.
The only people not going to work in this neighbourhood were white, having several kids and living of whatever social services they could get a hand on. Some foodstamps here, some other assistance program there. Whatever little money they made mostly went into drugs (mostly marijuana, sometimes coke) to just battle another day's sunset.
So in my opinion the Giddy Up's still there, but it may be with the illegal immigrants who believe in the American dream more than the disillusioned American youth (even thoough they were in their mid-twenties and fully capable of working).
Giddy Up - and do what you have to do to make a buck.
Years ago I taught at a high school on the Tex/Mex border. Mexican Nationals were great students because they wanted to be there and worked hard in school. They knew life in Mexico was hard livin' for sure. Now the American Mexicans were soft - very used to welfare and other money given to people with migrant worker status - which you only had to travel seven miles to be considered a migrant worker. Funny thing - it was the American Mexicans that saw no reason to learn English. The Mexican Nationals soaked up the education. Through the years I have known lots of "wetback" families - all hard workers. I know that there are others who give illegals a bad name, but for me, the problem of illegal immigrants is mot a black and white issue.
ReplyDelete