Disconcerting States #10

12th November 2024. Tuesday — just after USA’s Veterans Day. Day Ten.

By John Dean

Dear People,    

As I was saying yesterday…

It was a great drive down that broad, smooth interstate Route 81 north but going south on that autumnal, leaf-bright, storm-washed road across Virginia and down through the gullet of the rich Shenandoah Valley.

Extended, extending.

I wasn’t driving. I had made acquaintance with a neighbor to the people I was staying with up in northern Virginia. The man was in between jobs. Laid off from one, then many months later found a new one. He worked in manufacturing, had a B. A. and M. A., one degree was in liberal arts and the other was in business. Both from quality schools.

He was about mid-forty years old. His face had a clean, square-jawed look, a cross between Brad Pitt and Kevin Costner. Far as I could tell, he was a white, middle age American. He seemed liberal in most of his attitudes that I had talked to him about so far.

But I knew he’d been having a hard time economically. There’d been too much time between the old laid-off job up in Maryland and his new position down in Virginia. He’d never financially recovered from the pandemic. But he had nice, understanding wife, who had a steady, low-paid government job, lived in a modest, red-brick ranch house with his wife, two kids, a dog and two cats family.

But that didn’t sum it up.

He also needed money since he was between permanent jobs. He had bills to pay and debts had been piling up. He also had real construction-type building skills. On this Veterans Day 2024 he was headed down to Abingdon, Virginia in the shadow of Mount Rodgers, for two weeks of well-paid work doing electricity wiring at a construction site where an old friend from college was doing work. His tools jangled in the car’s truck s we drove.

I met him when he was cleaning leaves with a leaf blower by the house I was staying in. I told him what my direction was on this trip and the day I had to go south. Headed to a place between Verona and Waynesboro, about a third of the way down 81. He offered to give me a ride when he heard. “Make it easier for both of us,” he said, smiling.

On the road, I soon learned the man I traveled with had also voted for Trump.

That’s what we talked about. There was no rancor between us. Just an exchange of attitudes and ideas. What was on our minds; me specially trying to figure out his mind. Why Trump?

That’s what this is about…

We started out just outside DC on local route 66 connecting to 81. We headed south from DC in his big SUV.

We drove past — I wrote this all down quick as I could — Gallows Road, Virginia, Tom’s Brook, Prosperity Avenue, State Farm Insurance, Royal Gas Station, Man Cave Barbering, Thundering Herd Road, The Way of Flesh Christian Academy, signs that read incoherently “Notice to Truck, Begin 8 Tons…” or “Live Amphitheater, No Business Waste…” . We even passed a Mormon cathedral along the way that looked like a Disneyland castle and a wide, wild variety of hand-made posters that celebrated Veterans Day.

The deeper we got into the South, the more lawns were studded with TRUMP VANCE posters. There were lots of flag polls proudly displaying the Red, White and Blue — old glory — and “Donald Trump” or “Thank You Trump Save America Again” flags — new glory?.

It looked like Trump’s flag had replaced the Dixie flag.

He and I started off talking easily, agreeing on bromides. I was older than him by more than thirty years. Another generation. But at first I couldn’t tell if that made any difference.

“Boy, that was a long election,” I said out of the blue.

“Yup, sure was,” he replied.

“Wait! There’s a mall,” he exclaimed. “I gotta get coffee.”

I forgot to mention that it was 6 a.m.. And we’d left DC at 5:30 a.m. because he had to be in Abingdon by late morning. It was a five or six hour drive.

So we pulled in at a mall, near a Starbucks next to “Jersey Mike’s Subs” and a “Kkabob” store. I waited in the car.

High over the Starbucks front door a big turkey vulture sat on the roof’s edge looking down. Seriously. It stared down on customers as they paraded in and out. A common bird in these parts. Large a big bed pillow, but no way comfy. All midnight black, scruffy feathers, with a scrawny bobbling neck.

After the vulture, I examined the parking lot clean as a whistle after yesterday’s violent wind and rain storms. What happened to the leaves? What happened in this election? I wondered. Small dams of crinkled brown leaves and a mess of brushwood lay piled up in the gutters underneath large black-on-white “No Parking or Standing Fire Lane” signs.

With his big cup of Starbuck’s coffee in his hand, he hoped back into the car, revved it up, and off we went back down the highway’s slide south.

“As I was saying,” said I. “That was kind of a funny election, no?”

He took a sip of coffee, placed the cup back in its car holder, looked at the road, then me and said: “When you’re in the present,” he said, surveying the alternately crystal clear or foggy early morning road, his brown eyes focused low and forward. “You’re trying to build the future. That’s what Trump helps us with.”

Seemed like the coffee had jazzed him up. I followed through.

“You think he’ll build a good future?”

“You never can tell. But I think he’s better than the opposition.”

“But, wait a sec, he screwed up big time with the Pandemic, no? And two impeachments?”

“Can’t blame that on him. Neither on the Chinese. Shit happens. Look, we didn’t even wear face masks. We all got the Covid, my family and me. And we bounced back.

“But why…” I began. Stooped, thinking, No. This isn’t about confrontation. Just try to fit in understanding. See how the pieces fit in his mind.

“Well, how…” I hesitated “How do you decide with all the information you get?” I asked

“Right. Fair point. I read a lot too. There’s a lot. A Roman banquet of information with little time to digest. And I listen closely too.”

A Roman banquet? I wondered, where did he get that from? And asked: “When?”

“I listen usually at breakfast. Also driving off to jobs, to work. I’d be listening to talk shows now, if you weren’t here to talk with,” he added, smiling.

“You watch the news comics at night like Jimmy Kimmel?”

“Sure. They’re funny. I don’t find it offensive. I’m not an idiot. I like the way they make fun of everyone’s plans. I know what it’s like. Plans don’t work out. But you’ve got to try. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you got to laugh and move on.”

“But you voted for Trump?”

“For sure. Me and a lot of other people. Younger people too. There was the real power of mimes this time. The power of reels.”

“‘Reels? — like r-e-e-ls,” I asked.

“Sure, he answered upbeat. “You gotta give ‘em that. Ok, maybe it’s click bait. But anyhow it had a point. And the funny stuff got young people’s attention. More than ever, I know young people thought they should give Trump another try.”

“And Musk?”

“I liked the way they partnershipped. Sure.” He paused. “Look, Musk means Hopefulness. Creativity. He’s Technology that has the potential to solve the world’s problems. He’s a leader on that. Proves it can be done. “

“So you didn’t like Kamala Harris at all?”

He laughed. “I don’t listen to Taylor Swift. Harris brought in the celebrities. No body votes for celebrities. George Clooney for President? Forget about it.”

“So Elon Musk…”

“Was real,” he finished my sentence. “He gives a voice to the nerds. Trump is for freedom, for the little people. They’ve both done real stuff together.”

“But Harris was the Attorney General of California,” isn’t that big stuff?”

“Sure, yahh” he said grudgingly. “But that’s all politics. Not business. She’s a government hack who reads idiot cards in TV. Musk is for real. That why Musk brought in middle-aged guys like me. Who’ve worked.”

Did your son vote?”

“For sure,” he said. “That’s about the youth vote. My oldest son, that’s who, he voted for Trump too I think. First time he voted.”

“For Trump or for Musk?”

He looked at me and smiled. “C’mon, twenty-years old feels: ‘You think I’m so stupid I’ll vote like Beyoncé tells me to?” He paused. “Celebrity factor doesn’t speak to that generation. They’re savvy. Celebrity stuff is for fun. Politics is serious.”

We were quiet for a while as the miles rolled on. We came out of a fog bank over some big mountains. I spoke up and said: “Yeah, it was different before. I mean for my generation. Boomers. Maybe in my day….” I trailed of. “Maybe we didn’t have any leaders, really. All we had was opposition. ‘Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters’. Maybe it’d be better if we had, or if they hadn’t all been assassinated.”

“Hey,” he joked; taking his right hand off the steering wheel and punching me playful in the arm. “Don’t get morbid on me.”

I smiled. More silence. Then I said. “What about the money?” I asked.

“What do you mean, Trump is rich?”

“Well, sure. But the money they make and you don’t.”

“Well, there’s the problem with the rich. That’s for sure. Maybe Robert KennedyJr., help with that. He’s another entrepreneur who wants to help the little guy and is on their team. You see the way he does push ups?”

“And Trump?”

“And Trump,” he echoed, looked far ahead on the road up to the colorful, foliaged mountains. “Come the hour, come the man,” he whispered. I was very quiet. He looked at me and said very seriously: “I heard that on a TV documentary. But it sounds right.”

“Wait, you worship this guy?”

“Nah, it’s just that we need someone like Trump. Like Musk too. Shake it all up out there. It’s mess. Need new management. Too much government regulations everywhere. I can’t piss without the government tells me how close or far from the bowl I stand.”

“But isn’t some intervention good? Like rebuilding America’s roads and bridges?”

“Ok. I’ll give you that. But not the regulations. That hurts small business.”

“And the big business?”

“They’ll always take care of themselves. I just want government to lay off small business. In a month I’m going to work for a small business that starting out. I want government hands off. It’s up to us. Not them.”

“But how about regulations? Would you accept regulations on air and water? I mean, Nixon, a Republican, created the Environmental Protection Agency, didn’t he?”

“Oh sure, that’s good. Good for the kids specially. I’ll give you that.”

We had arrived in the Verona-Waynesboro area,The radio played Willie Nelson singing the haunting 1940s Stan Jones “Ghost Riders in the Sky” hit. The car radio really did. It was eerie. The drive was over.

I was at my destination to visit with my old friend and his wife. We’d been three hours on the road.

It was strange how much the driver and I had said. How little we said. How much remained to be said.