Meet the weird neighbors

My father in law passed away yesterday. He served in the military years ago, and considered a burial at the veteran's cemetery; but finally decided to be buried on his own property. He died in early in the morning, but it took awhile for some people to arrive from out of town, so the burial was much later in the day. Things got underway shortly after I arrived. People formed a circle around the casket, which was on the driveway, under the carport. We're in the hills of East Tennessee, but this isn't as redneck as it might sound. He had twelve daughters, they're careful to maintain their looks, and they were dressed sharply for the occasion. The carport was new, the gravel was new, the yard impeccably landscaped; so it was far from low class. In fact, I married one of the daughters because we had religious and political compatibility, even a similar economic strata. In spite of not having wealth, they always conducted themselves with a class that would fit anywhere. They aren't snobby, they're just far removed from white trash. One of my struggles is that I come from the biker part of town, and it can bring tensions to my relationships. The worst thing about being low class is not knowing that you're low class.

Another thing that alienated me was that it felt like everyone knew what they were doing, but me. I've only been to one funeral before. A guy in High School crashed his motorcycle on Folsom Dam. Me and some of the “hoods” rode to the funeral in the back of an old fifties pickup. Nobody said a word. We filed past the open casket and saw his too white face, then left the way we came.

This was different. I read somewhere that jazz started at black funerals, as a happy sound to celebrate the deceased passing to a better world. This was more like that. We read Bible verses and sang glad songs about being received into heaven. It felt like others had read a script that I hadn't. So I went through the motions, trying to do my part. I guess part of the alienation is that I somehow haven't processed the whole death thing. Life's been too busy and demanding till now. It's like there's a philosophical grappling I need to do. It probably is related to my fascination with the term “manifest”. In my world, I can't buy my way out of things. Not that that's a bad thing; I think it was Harvey McKay that said: “If you have a problem that you can buy your way out of, you don't have a problem, you have an expense”. As for me though, I'm the fixer guy. Most of the time, the physical parameters are just there, there's little moving them. So it's always a joy when out of the unseen realm comes a solution. An idea comes to me, or God sends the right person at the right time. Maybe that's it, death is a person being completely free from these physical parameters; manifested the other way. If you've trusted Christ to take your place in judgment, then you'll be with God the creator on the other side.

That's what people were singing about as I became one of the pallbearers. The casket had stout straps attached to the sides. It's surprising how much even an older person can weigh. We lifted and carried about fifty feet, up a slight embankment. The hole was very neatly dug by a neighbor with his heavy equipment. There were a number of tree roots about the size of you finger hanging in the opening, but they didn't interfere with anything. There were two boards laid across the opening; we put the casket on those, then put long straps through the loops we carried it with. We lifted, then had children pull the two boards out, and lowered the casket. I had the shortest strap, and had to lean pretty far over. I pulled mine out first, then stood up, one of the pallbearers was ready to throw in a symbolic shovel of dirt, other people were still singing. I looked at the sky, it was all beginning to feel a little surreal. It was getting dark, the day was fading. Thick clouds darkened the sky, and the mountain across the street formed a grey wall reaching toward those clouds, with all the hardwood trees being void of leaves. The February wind blew, there was a slight mist in it.

I thought about how much I like these hills, because of the woods, the way the Tennessee people adapted to them, and the customs they made. I moved here about twenty years ago; if it weren't for the civilizing influence of my wife, I would live in a hand made log cabin, wearing overalls, drinking Sassafras tea, while letting slightly domesticated raccoons wander into the house. Certainly many people have been buried in these hills, I can think of no better place to be buried.

I've had three memorable encounters
with local law enforcement in the last five years, two of which I
can't describe here, the timing isn't right. Those two could be very
difficult for my family; one involves an obviously wrong
determination by an officer. These people are dangerous. The
essential problem is that they can't tell the difference between the
good guys and the bad guys; or don't want to differentiate.

Here's an incident I can talk about:
I was lettering a caboose to its historic specifications. I try to
live debt free, and I've turned down frivolous work the federal
government wanted to pay for. In my case, it dictates the use of
older equipment, which I'm not too demanding of; so it works out OK.
More often than not, I get a kick out of the vintage hardware. These
historic jobs have a lot of lettering on them, so I use a laptop
computer to aid in placement of the letters and graphics. The laptop
had a low battery life, so I was running it on an inverter which was
connected to the truck battery. The truck battery probably had a dead
cell, so it too wasn't in good shape. At the end of the day, there
wasn't enough charge to start the truck. We've never had more than
one cell phone, it was probably with my wife that day.

I was at the edge of a parking lot,
on a bit of a hill; so it was pretty easy to coast down to the busy
road in front of this place. This location is no ghetto, but it's not
what most would call upscale. It's an older commercial zone, probably
surrounded by upper middle class subdivisions. I opened the hood of
my truck, and made a sign that said “Need jump, no cables”. I
showed the sign to many passers by, but no one stopped. After what
was probably a couple hours, a police car approached. He got out and
said that there were a lot of calls about this guy on the side of the
road. He let me use his phone to call for help, but I couldn't
contact anyone at that time. He said that he had to take me where
there was a phone. I was on private property, and I asked if I was
doing anything illegal. He said no, but he had to take me away. I
told him I had my work tools in the truck, along with the laptop, and
a brand new digital camera (not a base model). He didn't bother to
verify if that was true, or whether the still wet green paint in the
back of he truck matched the lettering on the caboose a couple
hundred yards away. I also have a significant web presence and
verification of my work history, but so what.

I told him that there was a
convenience store nearby; he said he didn't care if it was ten miles
away, he had to take me there. So great, never mind how much time or
effort that costs me, never mind how much of my stuff gets stolen, I
don't look upscale enough to be believed. There's too much public
and private debt in this country, I don't want to be part of it; so I
drive a 34 year old Toyota truck. That, and it just keeps going,
great truck. But OBVIOUSLY, I must be a scumbag criminal type. You
can probably trace most of the callers' incomes back to some
government funding, or some debt supported institution, like
construction or education; the latter being supported by government
loans. If by some bizarre chance the federal government actually
started living within its means,and stopped distorting markets with
subsidies, the economic shock to huge parts of the populace would be
too much.

The store wasn't too far away, I
figured I could use the phone, then do a quick hike back to my truck,
while keeping an eye out for the hospitality patrol. He said he had
to pat me down before he could put me in the cruiser. Ah, so that's
it, this is probably his training in action, he's taking control of
the situation, and making an indirect way to search the scumbag
criminal element. He drives quickly to the store, and drops me off.
Then for the crowning surreal touch, he asks if I'm alright. I wanted
to tell him how clueless he was, but one needs to be careful doing so
when he's connected to hordes of like minded (?) individuals.

I contacted help at the store, and
made it back to the truck. To the credit of that neighborhood, a guy
did stop and give me a jump, I went back to the store and told the
help not to come. What's a concern is that there are wide swaths of
society that live fragile push button lives, not knowing how to
survive with their own hands; and being completely alienated from
people that do. They would even have a hard time relating to their
next door neighbor, if he was a contractor(“Oh, so you work with
those things called tools, right?”). The police think that
mentality is normal, and are incapable of reasoning that somebody
might take national economic responsibility seriously at personal
level. In other words, if your income is derived from work paid for
immediately by individuals or companies; and, you live withing those
means, you'll be suspect. I guess they think normal people will have
a certain material standard; if you don't, well it's obvious you
spent your money on drugs. That and your habits make you incapable of
keeping a job, you loser. This mindset isn't terribly surprising from
persons who get their income from the government. And to think it
wasn't long ago at all that I figured we weren't near the point of
having to “pray for those that persecute you”.

One needs to be careful not to live
in the myth of continuity; that's why I keep an eye out for
indicators of big, sudden changes in this country. If that doesn't
happen in the next ten years, you can get an idea of the future by
looking at current trends. One of those being the disappearance of
the middle class. If you become part of the lower class, be ready for
a new relationship with law enforcement; be ready to be considered
guilty until proven innocent.