Oh, The Places We’ll Go

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Oh, The Places We’ll Go

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I just finished reading a commentary on CNN by a CEO named Carl Schramm. Carl, bless his heart, is lamenting the threat of a wave of government intervention in our economy. He wrings his hands and seems to say that since there is a danger of bad things happening the government should keep its hands off of the economy. Laissez-faire is the holy grail of economic prosperity.Well Mr. Schramm, Laissez-faire is what caused this melt down in the first place; following the buck isn’t always what’s best for society.

I wrote in an earlier post (Banks- or- I wish Adam Smith’s invisible hand would stop touching me there.) about the banking industry charging fees everywhere they can.

Health insurance companies are giving minimum services for whatever the market will bear and cutting off whoever they can who need their services.

We are bailing out the financial industry, all the while being berated for being too greedy, using too much credit, and not being careful about our investment. I must have been hit in the head because I don’t remember all that.

Politicians are telling us how we are going to have to sacrifice. Why? Because we have had so much benefit from this boom? What are the beneficiaries of this recent financial boom going to sacrifice?

I don’t know if anyone has noticed but wages have been stagnant since 2002. Our free market choices have degraded to a game of pick your rapist in banking, health insurance, and retirement. Our political system has long been a system of voting against the most odious candidate but now it has moved onto other parts of our life.

The most frustrating part is, there is no one to pressure for change. Faceless Corporate America is a tough target with no one responsible for its decisions. Not that I would expect a 40 or 60 million dollar a year CEO to take any responsibility.

I could push for change if only I could find a place to push. I feel like Archimedes, I could move the world if only I could fine a place for the lever. Well maybe it’s more like Sisyphus and his rock.

I am, even as I type, listening to Senator Obama speak for the bailout. He made a statement that has been used time and time again when asking the American People to get in line and cooperate. He said, “we will all have to sacrifice.”

Well, news flash for you Mr. Obama, and you Mr. Bush, We have been sacrificing.

I would ask how are you gentlemen are going to sacrifice?  Is there any way that YOUR families are going to have to suffer, give up, sacrifice, for the good of our country?  OUR families may have to postpone college, lose jobs, hold down multiple jobs, fail.

What will you personally sacrifice, as an example, so we can, in good conscience, sit at our supper tables and tell our children that they have to sacrifice their future, for the good of our country?

President Bush warned, “We are in the midst of a serious financial crisis. Our entire economy is in danger.”

I would say to him that YOUR entire economy is in danger, MINE is already in the tank.  With sub-inflation rate raises for the last several years, rising health insurance costs,  children in colleges with rising costs and reduced student aid, sky high gasoline and heating prices, my world had been in a pinch for quite a while. 

Well Mr. President, now that YOUR economy might feel a pinch and the multimillion dollar CEO’s are hurting, well something must be done.  Drop everything and bail’em out. 

Some kind of health care reform will have to wait. 

Maybe we can afford to educate the next generation, this one will have to fend for itself. 

Fiscal responsibility my butt, greed is what motivates these guys and they don’t lose one minute of sleep worrying about what they might be costing us “lower classes.”

I received a bullshit survey from one of the political parties the other day.  Which one doesn’t really matter since they are both cut from the same cloth.   It was designed for sound bites, not to find out what difficulties I and my family are experiencing.   If you really want to find out what I think, hire yourself someone who can write a survey and not leading questions for numbers in your next speech.

You people are out of touch with what is going on out here.  Pull your head out of wherever it is and stop worrying about winning, that will take care of itself if you can really address the needs of the people.

I’m only one person, but here’s what I think you would see if you lived in the real world.

I see double digit inflation right around the corner and no salary increases to counter it, assuming you keep your job.

I see my insurance rates last year rising %13 and even though my company is self insured, the insurance company that administers the plan raised their rates 9% so only %4 was due to medical expenses.

I see us becoming huge raw materials exporter, that used to be one of the measures of a third world country, but here we are. Our engineers are in India, our manufacturing is in China, who is going to be able to buy anything here.

So there you are. There’s some of my answers. Call me and I’ll give you more if you like.

We stayed and extra day so we could see some of the local sites. One of Marseille’s really interesting places to see is the Chateau D’If, the setting of “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexaner Dumas. I knew I wanted to visit it when I saw it from the Notre Dame de la Garde, the cathedral high above Marseille.

Four of us took the metro down to the old harbor to catch the ferry. The day was hot, the line was long, and tempers were short. Things were going alright until suddenly, without warning, they opened another window. For some reason the people from the back of the line were able to best capitalize on this development. There was some grumbling but we were pretty far along the line so most near us just shrugged it off. After about a half an hour, they closed the window again and all the people from the back of the line started to shift into the line we were in. No one was happy, there was a lot of muttering but no physical threats. Some time and some ticklish merging later, we were at the ticket window. We asked the girl at the window, “what was the deal with closing the window.” She said, “I have no idea, I’m from Germany.”

With our tickets in hand we went over to the mob waiting to board the boat. This was another long wait. Finally the boat arrived, the gate was about to open, and some guy wearing a motorcycle helmet jumped the fence and ran for the boat. The ticket guy threw his clipboard down and ran after him. We never saw the guy with the helmet again, even though there was only one way off the pier, well actually two, but only one dry one.

The ticket man came back looking angry, he milled around near the gate a bit, then did a surprising thing. He went over to another side gate and opened it. At this point the crowd thought he was punishing them for…letting the helmeted man go? I have not idea, but when he opened the gate, the crowd got really ugly. I really thought they were going to take apart the gate. What I think the guy was really doing was letting the locals and a school group board first, but now he started shouting too. I was glad we were kind of on the side where we could kind of step out and enjoy the show cause it would be hard to pick a side and participate. Eventually he opened the main gate and we all boarded. Before we left the ticket guy came on and apologized…I think.

Off we went to the island If, home of the Chateau D’if. It was well worth the trip. The place was sometimes used for a prison, and sometimes for a home for royal hostages. There was grafitii in some of these rooms hundreds of years old. It looked pretty gloomy but when you think that it’s usually really hot so the thick walls would be cool. Add candles and tapestries to the walls and the bigger rooms could be pretty comfortable, if you weren’t there against your will. One big difference between the real thing and the Chateau D’if you see in the “Count of Monte Cristo” movies is that there is no vast series of underground dungeons. This place is built on top of a rock. There is nothing underground, just rock. It’s big, but only big up. This place reminded me of and expression I heard once, “in Europe a hundred years is a short time and a hundred miles a long trip, in the US a hundred years is a long time and a hundred miles is a short trip.”

One of Marseille’s signature dishes is bouillabaisse, a bunch of us decided we needed to try it. Armed with a reservation at what was recommended by the hotel as a good place for bouillabaisse we headed off after the conference, which happened to be the rush hour in Marseille. It really didn’t matter because the metro had plenty of capacity, but there were more people, and there was a lot more security.

One thing I never get used to is automatic weapons in airports. I don’t know if you travel much but lately in US airports there are a lot more machine gun toting security guards. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind them there, I just can’t get used to them.

In Europe these security guards are pretty much everywhere. At rush hour on the metro there were two rows of them watching everyone coming down the stairs and into the station. We had to wait because one of our party had trouble with her ticket. While I waited I noticed something odd. The first row of security was unarmed, the SECOND row of security had automatic weapons. My question was, what was the first row for, to slow down the bad guys?

We got to the restaurant and sat down outside overlooking the old harbor. It was a beautiful night, and a beautiful setting.

Since we were on a bouillabaisse mission, let me describe bouillabaisse. It’s fish soup. Yup, fish soup, good fish soup mind you, but fish soup all the same. So it came as a bit of a surprise that this was going to cost more than any meal on the whole trip. I think of the 5 of us, 4 had the soup. I really liked it. With a curry-like stock and three kinds of fish it was what you would expect a fishing city’s people to make when times were tough. I find it interesting that time and time again, local “poor food” becomes the expensive tourist cuisine.

This restaurant was also where we learned never to ask a French waiter to hurry with the check. We said one of our party had to catch the bus so would you please bring the check. It took a good forty minutes! I like that they don’t hurry you out, but when you have to make a bus you’d think they would accommodate you. In the end we had to use the metro and a taxi because we did miss the last bus. It was no big deal but it was an important lesson in French behavior. I wonder if the restaurants have a deal with the taxis.

I had some time today so I went to the old part of town to look for presents for the family. I had thought I had this pretty much handled when I was walking and found a guitar shop near my hotel. All my kids play guitar so I thought some nice French straps or picks or something. No chance, there was not a single thing in that store that was French. There was not even a pick that had French writing on it. So down town I headed.

I had similar problems shopping down town. There are really very few “French” things. Oh, there is wine and cheese but I was surprised that there are so few French products. I finally settled on some local soap made with lavender and some local chocolate made with olive oil.

Shopping done it was time for a look around. I am kind of nut about old buildings, so I walked to every old fort and church I could find. There was a lot of beautiful Romanesque architecture down around the old harbor, but there was a big cathedral way up on the hill called “Notre Dame de la Garde” that I had to get to. The long bus ride to a church that already looked big should have been a clue to how really really huge this church was. This place was awesome. It was built like a fortress. The church proper was on a rock about 40 feet tall. To get in there was a staircase to a drawbridge, a thick studded door, a portcullis, and another door. If they say they are closed, they are closed! There were paintings of local ships lost at sea, paintings of WWI and WWII planes down nearby. There were other paintings of these pilots being helped and hidden by the nuns and priests. The painted vaulted ceilings were incredible, and the church is topped by a truly huge statue of Mary. The stone work was beautiful, colored stone and incredible workmanship. I’m an engineer and am impressed by such things so I could go on for ever, but I won’t. But if you go, it’s worth the trip. Outside there were shell marks earned in the liberation of Marseille and you could see the countryside for miles around. As I walked back to the bus stop I had an excellent view of the Chateau d’if, the lodging of the Alexander Dumas’s Count of Monte-Cristo. I promised myself I would try to get out there.

I sat down at the bus stop that I shared with about 10 other people, old people, families, just regular people. I was on the end next to the curb, and a young guy and girl sat down there just outside the bus stop. I sat looking out over the city and saw them take out a couple of cigarettes. She lit hers but he took his apart. This caught my attention. He set the tobacco aside and took out a small bit of what looked like a bullion cube, but it wasn’t a bullion cube. He started heating it up with his lighter and crumbling bits of it into his hand. I thought, “he’s going to smoke some hash right here in front of all these people.” Nobody but me seemed to notice but I was fascinated by his audacity. He mixed the hash in with the tobacco and was about to re-roll the cigarette when the bus came. Not to worry, he just moved about 10 feet down the curb and finished up and got on the bus with the rest of us.

A 900 year old church and hash at a bus stop, this is definitely not America.

Following the…less than stellar choices I made at the last dinner I nonetheless looked forward to another try at French cuisine. Tonight I was the fifth wheel to two couples (two of our happy travelers troupe had brought their wives). We picked a restaurant from the map provided by the conference organizers that was within walking distance from our hotels. Our inability to notice the three stars next to the “word” budget led us to believe that this was a budget restaurant. As it turns out it had three stars out of four on the budget scale so the Euros flowed freely. This was not really a surprise since we were asked if we had a reservation when we came to the door. Luckily she took us in anyway.

Let me take a moment to talk about Euros. It is impossible to think of them as anything but dollars. Unfortunately, they aren’t, they are about $1.56. So when you are shopping for trinkets to bring home to the fam and you find a nice bit of jewelry for say $25, you say “Self, that’s not too bad,” then, as you ride home on the metro you realize you have actually spent closer to $40. By far the hardest to get used to is that the little quarter looking things, which come in one and two Euro flavors are actually worth $1.55 or $3.10. They are very pretty money though with a silver center and a gold band around the outside. Every country in the EU has a different back and it’s fun to guess where they have come from.

So it was much easier to tell myself that we had an excellent meal for $40 instead of 40 Euros and I am happy in my delusion.

This most excellent meal started with a round of truffles on toast. These are the special mushrooms that they hunt with specially trained pigs. I love mushrooms and I heartily enjoyed them. I felt guilty about not being overwhelmed by the awesome taste though. I have read about truffles my whole life and I expected something, I don’t know, remarkable. They were good mushrooms but…maybe part of what makes one appreciate the overwhelming worth of truffles is to have a hand in the training and handling of the hunting pigs.

There was a salad with a wonderful mix of different greens, the bitter and the sweet made a subtle blend of tastes. This was followed but excellent salmon, (ok I was playing a little safe).

We had the house wine and I discovered something that I personally found no exception to throughout the trip, even the house wine in France is better than most of the wine I buy at home.

For dessert, a caramel flan, simple but nicely done.

In France you will never get the bill until you ask for it. If you sit there for 3 hours no one will be leaning on you to leave. So you have to ask for the check, but never, never, never ask them to hurry. We did this once later in the week when we wanted to catch the last bus. That waiter took a good 40 minutes to get the check. Anyway this check came with a shot of aperitif, we had melon or apple to chose from. A little booze always makes a bill taste better. Our waiter, and I suspect our cook, helped us tourists with our menu throughout the meal because he spoke the best English in the place, and even had a shot with us.

In my whole trip the only place I saw the legendary French surliness was at the bank. Maybe what some American tourists see as surliness is really that the French don’t suffer jerks, and they don’t take if for granted that you not a jerk until you prove otherwise.

We arrived having breezed through customs. Via bus, and metro (subway) we got to our hotels. Our first big surprise is that Marseille pretty much rolls up its sidewalks on Sunday. There were a few sidewalk cafés open but most everything was closed. As luck would have it, one of the open cafés was just outside of one of our hotels. We sat down to an good meal and mostly stared into space. We were majorly jet lagged. Once fed, it was time for a nap, exciting times!

A couple of hours later we went met up again and decided to walk down to the Mediterranean Sea. I can vouch for the fact that it is indeed there. So, our geography verified we were hungry again. We headed back.

Standing on a corner we took turns saying, “I don’t know, where do you want to eat?” Right in front of me one of the ubiquitous mopeds wrecked into the curb and another moped. I lifted the bike off of this kid and tried to do the first aid thing, but he didn’t understand a word. “Stay down, stay down, don’t get up, well at least don’t get up fast, are you hurt, you’re laughing at me, so I guess not.” He gathered up the pieces of his moped and left, apparently unscathed.

After much deferential discussion, “you decide, no you decide,” we went to the same café where we ate lunch. Now at lunch I learned the French word for lamb, which I have since forgotten. But at this meal I was destined to learn a French word that I will never forget. I asked the waiter what andouillete was. He answered “pork,” so I, with visions of a pork chop, or roast pork, said, exercising the full extent of my French language skills, “andouillette por favor.” In the fullness of time it arrived. I was a little disappointed to see that it was a sausage, but I like pork sausage so it was still all good. As a rule, I TRY not to pay too much attention to what’s in exotic food till after I taste it. Without looking too close I cut off a piece of the sausage and popped it into my mouth. This sausage rates as one of the worst tasting, worst smelling things I have ever seen passed as food. It’s made from parts of a pig that never should be eaten. I had unsuspectingly stumbled upon the French “betcha can’t eat this food.” All societies have one of these, Mexican menudo, Scottish haggis, and French andouillete. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andouillette)

So I did the only thing I could, I offered some to everyone else, I had 3 takers. One even managed to put a little in his mouth, but not for long.

The most grueling part of this kind of trip is the plane ride, mostly it’s long, boring and cramped. This is compounded by the necessity to drive for 4 hours to get to the airport. That said, the trip was not unpleasant, mostly because the Delta flight I was on was what they call, Code Sharing, with Air France. What this means is that we were flying on Air France, with believe it or not, good food, great wine, and mostly on time departures.

I had the opportunity to travel to Marseille, France with some people I work with, to attend a conference and deliver 2 papers. It was an exciting trip and I promised some of my friends I would write about it. You Bill Bryson whine fest fans will be disappointed because I had a great time, I see the things that go wrong more like Patrick F. McManus, when he tells a story of being wet cold and stranded you wish you could be there too.

So, I’m watching TV and a commercial comes on. This woman is asking this obnoxious sales clerk why his prices on name brand electronic are so high. The sales guy squirms and looks even more slimy but the perky shopper says again, “why are your prices for NAME BRAND electronics so high and WALMART’s so low.” Well obviously since it’s a Walmart commercial he doesn’t answer her, but I will! It’s because they aren’t even the same product. That’s right, a Walmart Sony for instance, isn’t a real Sony, it’s a specially contracted, specially manufactured product made just for Walmart with the Sony name on it and with every possible corner cut to make the price lower. When it fails, Sony might not even be the one’s to service it, or like the Mongoose bike I bought my son, they might have a “special” service section for Walmart bikes. With my son’s bike you find out when you get it home that the manual even says that the bikes sold at Walmart are not the same.

So here’s this Ad, inferring that the only difference in the name brand products sold at Walmart is the price, when in reality, the name brands sold at Walmart, everything from clothing and shoes to televisions, are cut rate look alike products with a fancy name.

I remember when Walmart meant American made, it meant middling quality. Now they stick to the motto, always lower prices, on cut rate products. Why do I shop here, well since they’ve driven nearly every other store out of town I don’t have much choice, but I do go there last so I can see if I can get what I need ANYWHERE else.

Well, the dirt eatin’, ears ringin’, heart poundin’ season opened last Friday. Yup, the 2008 season started at the local 3/8’s mile dirt track. As it happens, I share a stock car, ol’ 94, with another guy and we trade off driving. I gotta say, it’s more fun than humans should have.

This is our third year, and I have to tell you that stock car driving is one of those things that looks easy from the stands but really takes some getting used to when you are in the fast chair.

For starters, you can’t see. That’s probably the biggest difference between stock car racing and just going fast on the road. You have on a helmet, which may be tied to your seat, so you can’t turn your head. Instead of glass you have screen in the windshield and net in the side window, not bad when you get used to it but at first it’s hard to see through it. There are no mirrors, you kind of “use the force” to know somebody is coming up behind you, and come they do! You think you’re just flying, “wow mom look how fast I’m goin’,” and all of the sudden swoosh, a car passes you like you’re stopped.

All your instincts are wrong too. Suppose you’re on the freeway, and there is a car on each side of you but just say a fender length ahead of you. Now suppose the freeway narrows down to two lanes and the two cars begin to move into your lane. Well of course you’ll back off the gas and shift back behind them, defensive driving and all that… well not on the track, if you’re on a good line and headed into a corner, you push on the gas. It’s ok to rub a little and you can rub your way right past them because you’re on the fastest line through the turn, assuming you don’t all spin. And you haven’t lived until you’ve spun in the middle of a pack of cars.

Now since I share driving, I also share watching. You see a lot of interesting people in the stands. Of course there are the experts who have never been in a race, but they’re just boring. The amusing people are the ones, usually crew or family, who sit in the pit stands and try to give signals to their driver. Now I can tell you, in the car you don’t even SEE people in the stands, they are just something not to hit. There’s too much going on to see somebody waving their hands around off the track. The funniest though is when they try to signal the driver to pass, just what the hell do they think he’s doing out there. There is really only three things the driver is trying to do:

1. Pass the guy in front of him.

2. Don’t get passed by the guy behind him.

3. Don’t smash up the car, at least not real bad.

Pretty much in that order.

Now I would never tell them that their driver can’t see them, in fact I’ve advised them that they most certainly can be seen but they have to make the signals big, REALLY BIG! Heck, now it’s almost like watching one of those modern dance routines.

I feel like I’ve gone back in time and I didn’t even get to drive a tricked out Delorian.

Didn’t we have a deal a few years back where we, those of us with jobs and mortgages, bailed out them, the saving and loan executives who sat behind big desks when we got our mortgages and asked us important questions about our worth as human beings in society? We saved their sorry butts and they went back to their McMansions in their gated communities in TEARS. It took days before their friends could get them out of thier houses and get them started in their new life as high paid lobbyists.

Now here we are again, institutions that ran subprime mortgage companies (some of them lived in the COUNTRY and had a lot of TIME) made a lot of money and paid their important exec big bucks. Now the chickens have come home to roost, be butchered, or I don’t know what, and who is going to have to pay? Well the people who benefited most from these risky practices and questionable advertising and misrepresentation, right? I’m sure that with what we learned with the Savings and Loan problems that our governmental representatives have put new measures in place so this time they will march right down and make the people responsible pay. Heck, how hard will it be to garnish their wages since they’re right there lobbying anyway.

No folks, we will pay. We who can’t even get an interest rate on our savings account that matches inflation. And when it’s all over, and we’ve made everything right, you can rest assured that your reward will be another set of rules and regulations that help out the banking business.

Remember bankruptcy reform? Men in fine suits talking about how irresponsible credit use had to be curbed. What he didn’t say was that most revolved credit card debt is:

1) Medical Bills (duh)

2) Car Repairs (gotta get to work)

3) Emergency Travel (Mom died)

How dare they be so irresponsible!!

Now shut up and leave me alone, I gotta fix this flux capacitor so I can get back to the future. I’m gonna look so I can get in on the next big bailout, I hope I can sleep at night though, this darn conscience is a real liability in this business.

Let’s talk about banks. I remember, back in ancient times when I was in school, being taught that banks pay you interest to keep your money and use your money to make loans and investments. From the loans and investments they make their money. In other words, they pay you to borrow your money, and you pay them to borrow the money that someone else has loaned them. Simple right, but something has happened. I can’t understand why the interest you receive for any kind of deposit doesn’t AT LEAST match the inflation rate. The experts always say Americans don’t save enough but why should we, if you save in a typical saving account you are losing money. If inflation’s 3.5 to 4% and your savings are getting 1.5 to 2%, less fees for EVERYTHING, you are losing a nice little chunk of change. Meanwhile, your full SERVICE bank is charging probably 9 to 15% for non-home loans while charging you for everything.

Not only are they charging for everything, but they are finding ways to develop new profit centers. Take debit cards for instance. When these things started, they were perfect for new young adults, use them like a credit card but when you were out of money they stopped working. No more! The Banks fixed them so they will continue to charge, just like a credit card but with a fee for EACH PURCHASE. Oh, and if a purchase includes a security deposit, like rentals do with credit cards, and the seller doesn’t tell you, like they do with credit cards because it automatically clears before it matters, the money comes out of your account immediately. So if you rent some ski equipment and they put a fee on your care equal to the value of the equipment, then you return the equipment and go have dinner, that deposit will probably still be hanging around, maybe for a couple of days. Now each purchase you make gets wacked with an overdraft fee. You buy some Chapstick, that’s a $35 purchase. I don’t know what the reasoning was behind the change but it probably was something like, save the customer the embarrassment of being refused. Hell, if it’s gonna cost me $35, embarrass me. Sure if it’s a choice of getting arrested for a bad check or the fee I’ll take the fee, but these card systems are more sophisticated than that!

I think that the reason they do it this way is because they can!

Everyone needs to go to “Variant Frequencies” and listen to the short stories podcasted from there. They especially need to listen to “The Mason’s Son” written by me and read by Paul Jenkins.  It’s a story of tyrants, castles and intrigue.

The large red welts are finally healing. I took a bunch of Boy Scouts and their friends paint balling the other day. My youngest son had been blowing the whole week about how he hadn’t taken a direct hit the last time we were there, just splatter. Well we went to get his girlfriend, who was going with us, and he started telling her the same old tired story. I told her, “he’s been like this all week, don’t stand too close to him cause he’s got a target painted on him and he’s going down.”

So, there I was, my son on one side and me on the other in a 3 on 3. I told the other two guys that my boy was all mine. The only thing I hadn’t planned for was I had loaned my heavy shirt to his girl, who had only worn a T-shirt, which left me in…. a T-shirt.

The attack started, I moved up well. My boy and I were trading fire but neither of us could get a hit. I decided to take drastic action. I charged, gun blazing (can a paintball gun blaze?). We traded fire getting closer and closer, and finally I achieved my goal, my son had experienced “several” close range, direct hits, at the cost of several for myself. In the normal way of men, I feigned indifference to where I was hit and made my way back to the dead box. I am here to confess to you though, IT HURT LIKE HELL!! He nailed me good and with only my light T-shirt, I might as well have been naked. Paintballs make these goofy rings when they hit you, and I actually had bleeding rings on my chest side and belly. Did I stop? Nah, after a few minutes they got numb (till the next day) and the testosterone poisoning kicked in I went a couple of more rounds, after all, I’ll heal.

We were driving around on a shopping trip on Saturday and finally I had to suffer the painful process of purchasing gas for my Trialblazer. Yes, I drive an SUV but come on, I live in the mountains of West Virginia, if I can’t justify it who can, and every trip to the pump makes me reevaluate the wisdom of that choice. Believe it or not though, this is not a rant about gas prices, or pollution or any of that stuff, this is a piece on plain old embarrassment, not everyday embarrassment but the mortification so terrible that you have to look around and see if anyone you know has seen what happened. Alas, I am happy to say I was only a witness, not the subject of this experience.

So, there we were, having used the pay at the pump, we were in our car, freshly fueled and ready to go. We were on the self service lane just outside of the first line of pumps. The inside lane, the one between the first line and the station, I noticed, was that ever rarer echo from the past, a “full service lane.” We were checking out list and deciding where we needed to go next when someone pulled into the full service lane. These days one might expect someone to pull in there to run into the station to buy something, or get out to check a tire, but they just sat in their car and waited. This in itself caught my attention, but only as an odd thing. We continued to check off our list to see if the “shopping” experience could come mercifully to an end and we could begin the two hour trek home. In the door appeared the station attendant coming to pump our neighbor’s gas, but this was not some fresh faced young high school kid, in the door stood a tall withered octogenarian. Yes folks, here was a man so old he probably remembered when transportation ran on hay, eager to serve what I now noticed was a woman of about 30. Then I noticed the old man’s walker, and as he moved toward the car, his odd gait drew attention to his lack of a left leg.

Now, imagine if you will, a thirtysomething woman pulls up to the full service pump at an unfamiliar gas station and an ancient, one legged man with a walker, spends an eternity negotiating the distance to and around your car to pump your gas, check your oil, and wash your windows, while you, a healthy woman it the prime of your years are now trapped in you car, force to endure his services. He is in the way now, you can’t back out and move to self service. You can’t even remember whatever impuse led you to choose full service today. All you can do is endure and tell yourself, “I AM a good person, I am NOT a calous insensitive creton.” As the man slide-hopped around her car, I had a good view between the pumps, of her deer in the headlight eyes looking more trapped by the minute. For a long time I couldn’t leave, finally, we had to go because after 15 minutes he was still working to fulfill his tasks faithfully. As we were leaving the woman became aware she was not alone with her faithful attendant. She noticed us watching and put her head in her hands, I think she was weeping.

The auto industry and the United Auto Workers (the UAW) are trying to work out a new contract.

On one hand you have the Union, champions of the underdog. Anyone who has been laid off can tell you how quickly they can lose interest in you when you are no longer a dues paying worker. Troubled industry? Maybe a pay cut to put the likes of you back to work, ha. They sell labor (that’s us) to industry, that’s their business.

On the other hand you have the Auto Industry, whining about benefit and pension costs. They especially complain about all the retiree’s health care benefits. Benefits that were prepaid out of the workers pay for 30 years. What they don’t mention is that the companies have raped what was called “over funded” pensions and used the money for their own ends and now, gee guys, sorry, your pension fund is broke and we need to cut you off or we’ll all go down.

Here’s the real deal, we don’t have anyone who truly represents us, in the workplace, in the government, in the economy. We are alone! Our parents have been stripped of their pensions and health insurance, our retirement programs are a joke, and there’s virtually nothing we can do.

Maybe it’s time for us to start some of the old CO-OP ideas for health insurance, banking, and retirement. Well it so happens some companies do something kind of like that BUT the health care industry still forces them to work through an insurance company. The company I work for is “Self Insured” this means we pay for our coworkers health care. If someone gets cancer or has a baby, it’s a little higher, if no one gets sick it’s a little lower. Now everyone talks about the rising cost of health care but two years ago our premiums went up 13%, only 4% because of medical costs, 9% were increases in the insurance company’s fee to administer the program, and they are abysmal, slow to pay, slow to respond, losing paperwork.

Anyway, my point is (yes I did have one) is that these two titans, the Auto workers and the UAW, are clashing over power and influence. We are but grist for the mill. If we realize this now, maybe we can break a tooth or two in the bread they make out of us.