GRUMPY OLD BASTARD RANT

constantin brancusi, sleeping muse

I've been in a spin all day, a minor rage, a backed into a corner rage and no recourse. A call that woke me up this morning telling me whatever BigPharma the doctor's office gets their blood-reading strips from has recalled them all over the country. Now I have to go to the hospital, pay I can't guess how much to have blood drawn. Do they take Medicare? Answer: Maybe. Should. Two of the most meaningless words in the language. The part that pist me off was the expectation. Somebody calls at 8 in the morning, tells me to go to hospital and pay them money I don't have and go to the doctor's office for a blood pressure test with money I don't have, the doctor's office an eight dollar round trip. This is happening too much. I get notification that some corporation wants my money because they say so and the announcement they want my money is wrapped in a very articulate threat. I could not say what I wanted to say, talking with the woman in the office I like and know she has no motive beyond what she's told to do. The one telling her what to do is saying it from somebody else, on down the unaccountable line of absence of interest in anything but getting the money. I've had so much of it, people expecting me to give them my money because they say so and I have no recourse. So I have made up my own recourse. I did everything else I planned to do on this trip to town and beyond, bank, drugstore, grocery store. Then came home and went to bed at the time of the doctor's appointment. Didn't even call to say I wouldn't make it. Took a three hour nap. Whatever the repercussions, I don't care. I'll take whatever comes my way like Jack the donkey, stand still like a tree and say, Is that all you got, punk?

constantin brancusi, sleeping muse

The laugh on me is that I'm taking the situation personally and there's nothing personal about it. Except me, and I don't figure. I'm the one paying. And it's wrong of me to take it personally, because it's not. It's about money, not me. They want my money, I give them my money. I don't give them my money, they get all shittin. Threats. The Law. Individually, they don't get it that it is a constant assault of this attitude: I want your money--give it to me now or you'll REALLY pay. And it's not like debt money. A BigPharma corp screws up, has to recall their product, then I'm told to go pay a hundred dollars I don't have for something I don't want to do. Asked why I didn't want to do it, Because I don't want to. That's not a legitimate answer to anyone, but it is the most valid answer I can give. I'm not looking to pass a test, but to answer a question. If you don't want to hear the answer, don't ask the question. It was the expectation that got to me. It's never a matter of it will wait until next day when I can get some money together. It has to be now, or whatever constitutes else. Else, in the case of the electric corporation is cutting off electricity and charging $40 to turn it back on. Same morning, before leaving, I wrote some checks, one of them to the electric corporation, Blue Ridge. I saw on the bill I'm being charged $40 for being late plus $5 for being late. Everything was fine between us until winter came and my electric bill quadrupled due to electrical use increasing and rates raised. It threw me a month behind getting that first one paid, then the next one the same, on and on through winter. I pay first day I'm able the month before last hoping to catch up when rates recede somewhat in summer. I'm being threatened they'll cut off my power and charge me $40 more to have it turned back on. What do I do? I talked with the man at the desk when it started, Oh that's ok. Evidently, he's the only one that thought so.  

 

constantin brancusi, sleeping muse

 

Here's where the grumpy old bastard that I am kicks in. It was not like this thirty years ago. In that time, the "membership co-op" treated us like "members." Now they treat us like a corporation does. Zero tolerance. Then, the co-op gave evidence it liked its people, its members. Now, give us your money. Straight face. Understanding not an option. Listening not an option. Caring, don't even go there. I will pay the damn bill, and I will not forget this experience. It will be an anecdote in many a conversation from now on until everybody I know has heard it at least once, and you know how old people are; they'll tell you a dozen times. The power corporation has turned off my trust and turned on my anger. Believe it or not, there is community here. The people that work for the co-op like that we are a community. The office acts now like they're headquartered in Houston. Today I broke. Too much. It's worse here now than it was in the city when I left urban existence 35+ years ago. My very first Sparta experience popped into mind and gave me the needed laugh. I was brand new, first days. Did not know the road to town. Old man Tom told me how to get to town and told me to go to Wilco for gas. OK. Whatever. I went to Wilco. Then, the fall of 1976, Wilco was only pumps and a little island among the pumps with a white closet-sized space standing, an opening in the Plexiglas window to pay through. I didn't even see the man. A hand came out, took my money and went away. I thought of the black box bank with the slot for a coin and a white plastic hand that snatches it. I had thought I was going to a rural place where everyday life would be a little more personal than in the city. I never saw anything like that in a city. Never returned to Wilco. I can't really say the anti-personal attitude toward money is new in Sparta.

 

constantin brancusi, sleeping muse

 

Another one of my first experiences in Sparta, my friend Pat was visiting, we went to town to get some things. Ran out of what money we had and still needed a skillet. Oliver Sidden, then manager at Smithey's told me to take it and pay him when I'm able. He'd never seen me before. Of course, I took the money to him first day I had it. Some years later, I came to know Oliver, the man, and have a great respect for Oliver Sidden. He was a good man, good as they get. People said of him, Oliver likes to drink. So what. I respect a man that likes a drink. It means to me he likes to take his head out of his ass and look around every now and again. Sure, it's addictive. Ignorance is addictive too, and nobody has a problem with that. Of course, I'm talking about people of sensible behavior. People who destroy themselves on liquor would destroy themselves some other way if necessary. Everybody has their own way. And that's the beauty of an earth experience. The world around me grows increasingly anti-personal when I have sought all my life to live personally with the people around me, to regard the other as a valid human being and to be regarded same in turn. The people I spend time with are people I have such personal relationships with, like know them all their lives, whose parents and grandparents were my friends. The people I call my friends, I have deep personal associations with them where trust, respect and backup are concerned. My hillbilly family of friends are not guided by corporate-think, one of the many aspects of them I love. They don't think about the stock market. An exurbanite I used to know told me I was a fool for not following the stock market. I saw in my mind's eye three fingers pointing back at him. And I remembered what Jesus said about don't be calling somebody a fool. Not that I'm holding him to Jesus, just that I see the sense in it. It told me this is not my friend. In the first place, it was stupid. I have urban friends who followed the stock market and got ripped off big-time without recourse by the Bank. I trust former friend lost a fair amount too. I didn't get ripped off. But I do get ripped off by my own membership co-op at home. Gloryland looks better every day.

 

constantin brancusi himself

 

 

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THAW

iced trees

Woke this morning to ice all over everything. It was quite beautiful everywhere. Not a good day for driving evidently. The mail didn't get this far today. Wind, rain, sleet and snow now tells days we don't get mail. Back when that had meaning in the post office, the mailman rode a horse. It was Thomas Kincaid world this morning. Except in the night I heard a big thump, expected power out, but it didn't happen. This morning I found a big limb from a white pine broke and took down the power line that runs from the pole to the house. Ripped a connector off the outside wall of the house, but didn't break the wire by pulling it loose from the house.

I called Blue Ridge Electric, reported it, adding there's no urgency about it. I have power. I can go on the bottom of the list after all the people without power. Mine is just something I don't dare try to fix myself. It could be the last one fixed and still be all right. The ice fell off everything between 2 and 3 this afternoon, a rain of ice under the trees. Made me want to go out with a cooler and snow shovel and fill it up. Why? I didn't do it. Around 4, a couple of white trucks from Blue Ridge Electric drove up, 3 workers, guys who looked like they're in volunteer fire department and rescue squad. When they came to see what needed fixing I felt safe. Intelligent guys who have learned very well something I don't care to know anything about, dealing with lots of electricity, the kind that can fry you like a dorito and knock you out of a cherry picker at once.

These are people I can't help but admire. They're the ones out all night doing what it takes to restore power to every house with a problem, something different in every case. These are today's wind-rain-sleet-and-snow people. Those are the conditions where they work all night. They're well schooled and well trained in their knowledge of what they're doing. They have to be. It's a know what you're doing or die kind of job.

They worked together as a good team. They were outside connecting the wire back to the house and I was inside reading Ralph Stanley tell about his fiddler Curly Ray Cline. I was reading about people I admire as true human beings, while outside 3 men I felt were true human beings put the broken parts back together. These 3 and the others that do this sort of work are actively serving the people of their county. They do it in such a way nobody notices that's what it is, but it is. They do work that is highly specialized. They know how to deal with electrical energy that would get me knocked to the moon. And they do it because I can't. They're fairly well paid and deserve to be. Like other working man jobs, it doesn't pay what it's worth.

By the end of the day everything is melted. The temperature is 36 and looking like it might not be too cold tonight. Maybe. I feel more and more like one of the old people living alone on a fixed income in an old house they can't afford to fix up, needing fuel assistance and this assistance and that. I've become an eccentric old turd. I've followed my own light and that keeps me on a solitary path. That's why I'm here, the solitary path. After the thaw, a fog drifted in, thin at first, that thickened as sky darkened. A good day to stay at home and talk with friends on the telephone.