From The Editor

 
Coming soon, an essay on 'Our Friend,' John "POW" McCain by editor Hosho McCreesh.



[image courtesy of Father Luke]
 

True Terror

by Father Luke

Despite what the television and radio talk shows may present, growing up in a violent and alcoholic home is not romantic, it’s not something with easy solutions brought about by swift decisions. It’s not debatable, and it’s not something that has an easy solution, because the problem is not obvious. It’s truly something akin to actual terrorism.

Imagine this. Imagine being barely old enough to talk gibberish, wearing a full and wet diaper, your face dotted with food from this morning’s wrestling match with breakfast. Then imagine the people you love most fighting each other with voices so loud you want to cover your ears and cry. Then the beatings begin. The people you are turning to for trust and security, are hurting one another, and all you want is to let them know your diaper needs changing. What is that if not terror? Who does a baby turn to to begin to seek solace? Is it the Church? How about a City Council member or the Television news? What does a baby do?

Well, you’re a baby, so you cry.

But big kids don’t cry, now do they? Oh yes we do. I do. I cry for my lost youth. I cry about the children still in homes where there is violence. I cry for the alcoholics, still trapped in a situation they cannot win, and who feel they have no way out. Not unless making someone else to blame is a way out. It’s still popular, you know. Blaming someone else for your actions is still making the rounds, even today. I cry for violence in the home, and for the children too scared to cry.
When I was young, I lived in a house where I saw violence; I saw plenty of violence. By the time I was 16, I was a pants shitting drunk, pissing myself in school, and daring anyone to fight who looked at me. I hadn’t yet found drugs. That came when I entered the work world. At home, my Father would disappear for days at a time. There would be a peace in the house with his disappearance. Nerves would settle, like bubbles in soda rising to the surface, popping letting the soda go flat. There would be calm. My Mother’s bruises would have time to heal. The purple welts on my brothers and I would begin turning yellow, and start to fade.

Then it would happen.

The brakes on my Father’s vehicle were old, and they made a sound like someone screaming in pain. That’s very appropriate, as I look back. Because when he would come back home we could hear his brakes a block away. My four brothers and I would look to my mom. She would look to the door and say: He’s here. We knew what to do. We would become petrified. Absolute horror came to live where the calm serenity had lain down for a nap, and we would all prepare ourselves for the worst we could possibly imagine.

But how do you prepare yourself for the worst? Imagination is a funny thing. It can heal, and it can hurt, but a hyper vigilance sets in which allows for suspicion, and keeps one keen to be able to survive in any circumstance. So, you wait. You wait for the worst of it. You wait to see what you will need to do to survive. And, if you haven’t given up, then you also hope. But you learn not to hope too much. For in hope lies hopelessness. You certainly can’t trust those who are in charge. But, you make it. Somehow you make it. You always do.
 

The Election 'Oh Eight

by Father Luke

[The editors may or may not disagree in re: the efficacy of voting, but that won't stop us from publishing this or from strapping on our dancing shoes. - Eds]

I’m dancing with my arms in the air. My shirt is off, and my hairy belly is bouncing in rhythm with some shit-kicker music I’m listening to that is streaming over an internet radio station. Maybe it’s The Blasters. I don’t exactly know who‘s singing. I really don’t care. Eventually the airwaves will be owned by thieves. People owning air, it seems unspeakable, doesn’t it? But there are those who will control the very air which surrounds me.

I have never voted in a Presidential election. I will be 49 years old in November, and I have never voted, not once in my entire life. I am dancing half naked in the privacy of an old hotel room which I call home. I’m wearing work boots with laces tied in knots because the laces broke long ago, and I’m alive during a time in which the economy of my country has driven our privileged class to frantically rush toward insane solutions as if they were crazy housewives calling Psychics on a pay by minute telephone line looking for a plan they hope will stop their financial lives from crumbling like a flaky pie crust at the touch of an infant’s finger.

I am lunatic happy. Too bad I don’t drink anymore, this would be fun. What the hell, maybe I’ll start again?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not happy that the landed gentry are going insane with worry. No, no. That’s not it. Not it at all. No, I am not happy that my fellow Americans are losing everything they have. I’m simply happy. I’m happy because I have no other choice left for me. I have no choice as to where to work. There is no place to work. I have no choice as to where to live. Without money, there are no places to live.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was in the news today trumpeting this news:

"Given the financial damage to date, I cannot see how we can avoid a significant rise in layoffs and unemployment" – Alan Greenspan

I don’t know what paper you read, but the facts are in, unemployment is up in America 44% over last year. But not to worry, Ladies and Gentlemen, according to the experts it’s only going to get worse. Alan Greenspan has declared a depression. Ah well, easy dot com, easy dot go. Let me turn the music up just a bit.

So, then how will we live? Where will we live? Family homes are being brushed away like so many crumbs off the lapel of a fat man’s dark business suit. Ah, but the streets are open, aren’t they? The streets are always open. The streets are open twenty four hours a day. If you don’t believe there is vacancy on the streets of America, take a stroll through downtown Los Angeles. Hell, it doesn’t even need to be Los Angeles. It doesn’t need to be downtown! Former New York City Mayor John Lindsay called the crimes of the homeless and poverty stricken in this country a slow motion riot. Well, disaster is headed for your front door, Amos. Like dead zombies walking with their arms out in front of them, wanting to eat your brains. Slowly they creep, step, by step . . . inch by inch. . .

So where do the homeless live? Well, that’s just it. They’re homeless. They don’t have anywhere to live. Maybe they’ll shit on your front lawn while you are bathing your children, or look in the restaurant window as you leisurely eat, and pick their nose. Maybe they’ll steal your new car, and kidnap your children. Not likely, however. Besides not having any money for fuel, the poor truth is that you may very well have bought your car from these homeless people. Maybe you also bought your home from them. Maybe John McCain or Barack Obama may come by to ask you if you have any odd jobs, so they might have shelter for the night.

Does this sound farfetched: Political candidates with “Will Work for Food” signs? Well, think about it. It’s not exactly that wild, now is it? It’s precisely what is being asked of us at this very moment.

Vote for me, and put me in The White House.

John Steinbeck’s Tom Joad, in Grapes of Wrath, during the depths of a depression, never stooped to such lickspittle measures. Grapes of Wrath told about hard working, depression dust bowl people looking for an honest day’s work. Yet our country’s highest Politicians engage in cockamamie posturing, ridiculous charades, and manipulative crap slinging every four years. One of these lying bastards will end up with the most powerful position on the planet. Goons; Smear Pundits; Deviants, Pick Pockets, all of them vying for the same thing: The Office of President of The United States. If you miss it, the festive parade repeats itself every four years. Hitch a ride, hayseed. It’s all in fun. We’re going to Fresno to look for work! Hoorah!

Oh, quite a stretch from Grapes of Wrath, Father Luke. Well, not really. But, it crosses my imagination that Tom Joad, with a car full of weary and hungry family members, was more honest than any of these manipulative bastards. Ha Haw! Has it really been four years?

BOHICA, Buster: Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.

Servant of the American People

Of The People, By The People, and For The People, that’s the paradigm. And this new collection of power hungry manipulators will have become the trusted public servants held on high, and put forth to preserve the American Dream; servants who will again have been elected on their word, and who will again double cross the American public. I’m certain of it. It’s the torch they carry. Like the Summer Olympics, the shenanigans happen regularly every four years. It’s nice work if you can get it. But please note: The official in charge of building Beijing's Olympic Games venues worth about $55 billion was recently sentenced to death for taking $1.45 million in bribes. If we were moths, you would see us flying into the lights bulbs above the heads of these screwballs each time they come up with another harebrained idea during the dark night of our depression. America’s Presidential Candidates are gumball machines dispensing stupid every four years at the twist of a wrist, and we chew it up like the sugar craving idiot children we have become.

What is the meaning of this?

So, where does this all end? Where do all roads lead? What is the meaning of this? What am I talking about? I don’t even vote, and so by all rights I don’t even get any say in the matter. The truth is that nearly 5 million, or 1 in 43 Americans, are not entitled to vote. So why don’t I just shut up? Well, as I dance in my little hotel room to music which moves me to smile my lopsided smile, I have full knowledge that Now More Than Ever, and Four More Years is still only four more years, and that this is still the only moment there is, and the only choice I have is for happiness. Happiness is at a premium in a world gone foamy mouthed rabid with money sickness, in a world grown weary of Political lies which are increasingly more confusing than the Religious beliefs we turn to in our places of worship during our times of soul sickness.

Happiness is wisdom. Wisdom comes with a price. It’s paid with a grinding, and gnashing of teeth when the things we want aren’t the things we get, and the chasm between the upset of what we have is balanced with the expectations of that which we didn’t get. Happiness does not depend upon a political outcome. Happiness does not depend upon a Religious belief. Happiness depends entirely upon whether we choose to be happy. Come Election Day, I will be happy. I’m practicing my dance steps for the inaugural ball. As AC/DC said:

We’ve got the biggest balls of them all!

We do! We put up with this horse shit every four years. Let’s ask the poor how to be happy. They’ve had lots of practice, and they’ve suffered the storms of injustice we are only now beginning to prepare for. Let’s go find them, and ask them to dance.

Low Sulfur Diesel

by Father Luke

[What would've been written had Whitman drove big rigs. - Eds.]



“Well, now you know what truck drivers go through. . .”
--Letter from Victor M. Farr, death row inmate - circa 2006


I heard it over the CB Radio:
“Have you ever seen a driver so fat that the back of his head looked like a package of hot dogs?”

I looked at my partner.

The back of his neck looked like a package of hot dogs. He was fat. He was very fat. Oh, he was skinny by Truck Driver standards. And the dough dick was ignorant. He could barely put a sentence together. He pointed and grunted when a simple “Hi," or a smile and a wave would work in any civilized society. He was dumb, fat and awful smelling. It had been nearly a week since he had showered. He smelled only the way that fat men may smell after not having showered for a week.

I looked away from him and to the white lines in the middle of the road. The small lines passed under the truck, and I hallucinated that I was unzipping the American Country side, and that it stank. It stank horribly. Its rank odor was bad, Honcho. Sour, dead meat bad; road kill rotting in the sun bad. I dreamt that America had rotted from the inside out.

The land of plenty: Johnny Cash, prostitutes, and jumbo refills.

Why would I endure being cooped up with a man who refused to bathe? And then, cooped up in a space smaller than a jail cell? Money, that’s why Chief; the Greenback dollar. The promise of money makes an unshowered fat man’s smell the sweet smell of success. Filthy lucre; the American Dream, pal, that’s what it is. Every whiff of his duck butter was another day paid on the rent. America; My Country ‘tis of Thee; Sweet land of Misery, it’s of thee I sing, over the Johnny Cash tune on the outlaw radio.

I am a forty nine year old man. There is a United States Government record of my entire earnings since age 16. Come here. I’ll tell you the amount. It’s less than 170,000 for my entire life. Let’s add that up, shall we?

49 – 16 = 33

49 years of living, minus the age I started having a record kept for me of my earnings by my dear old Uncle Sam. Thirty three years, Buster. Thirty three years of my life adds up to 170,000. Let’s take that one step further.

170,000 divided by 33 = 5151.51

What are those numbers? What gibberish am I spilling now? It’s simple, Simon, and I’ll explain it to you.

For thirty three years of my life, I have lived on approximately 5151.00 per year. Oh, I could throw in the extra .51, but why quibble?

One more step and we’ll move on. I promise.

5151.51 divided by 365 = 14.11

Still with me?

For thirty three years I have lived on 14.11 per day.

I have a website, Father Luke dot Com, and I have an “About me” section where I brag a little bit about who I am. I brazenly state that I’m a man who has been homeless, off and on, for 27 years. I have been a Priest, I have been a Court Trained Mediator, I have been trained by the state of California to drive 18 Wheel trucks. I have been trained to do these things. In the land of opportunity, and justice for all, I am a man who has made $5000 per year for 33 years. I consider myself a lucky man; a happy man, the type of man who’s happiness only the desperate may experience; a happy idiot. And why the hell not, I ask you? Why the hell not. . .

A swell couple’s company I was working for earlier this year went bankrupt. Their small family business had been purchased for 580,000. If my calculations are correct, it would take me 113 years to be able to purchase that company at my current rate of employment.


I looked out at the American Countryside, with the stinking ignorant beast beside me; an animal, too stupid to care. I looked at the land which so many call their home. We stopped at a roadside stand, and he filled up his jumbo jug with a sugary, caffeinated drink.

As I waited outside, fueling up the truck, a woman with no teeth walked up to me and asked if I wanted to buy some cologne for 25.00. She was offering me oral sex. I put my hand on the side of the truck and I wept. I cried for me. I cried for Americans everywhere who believe in a dream . . .

Everywhere for fifteen minutes at a time - - - cooking the books - - - .22 per hour

Drivers are held to strict Government standards. 14 hour shifts. No more than 11 hours permitted within those 14 hours for driving. The trucking industry is big money, man; BIG money. It’s the kind of money that can make people disappear. Comprendo? If you drive a truck, Federal law says that operating expenses will earn you 52.00 per day as a tax write off. That is immediately. This is your per diem.

Let’s say you own your own truck. You are making 1.50 per mile to take a load of shoes from one end of the country to the other. A long run of 4000 miles at 1.50 would bring you 6000.00 before expenses. There is no state in the union with a speed limit of more than 75 miles per hour. On average, a truck driver will find himself traveling at about 65 miles per hour. Got your math hat on?

4000 (miles) divided by 65 (miles per hour) = 61 hours

61 (hours) divided by 11(legal hours to drive in a shift, i.e. 14 hour stretch of time) = 5 shifts

5 shifts x 52.00(per deim) = 260 and that means tack on another 260.00 to your profits, because the Federal Government says: “Hey? Take 52.00 per day, and use it how you like. It’s on us, Bud.”

6026.00 for five days work. 6026.00 to drive a truck from here to there in five days. Hell, your per diem is 18,980.00 if you were to work 365 days a year. You won’t work 365 days per year, so take off 52.00 for every day you don’t - - nice bonus from your Uncle Sam.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that there is good money in being stupid.

Now here is the twist which will make you sick.

Go to work for a company that has a fleet of trucks in every state of the Union. Each week, big trucking companies hire on hundreds of workers who are looking to make that kind of money in their life through good, honest, decent hard work. Men and women who grew up with a work ethic that says:


• Get up
• Make your bed
• Go to Work

Go out and begin employment with a trucking company that has a large fleet of trucks. You will be paid approximately 61.00 per day to drive anywhere from 500 to 700 miles each day.

You will do this for approximately 30 days.
Do you still have your math hat handy?
Okay. Put it on . . .

61.00 (per day) x 30(days) = 1830.00

No per diem is allowed, as the company “Takes care of that for you." In essence, the company has you hauling freight for them for free.

Oh. I could say that you are paying the company to work for them, but that would be ungrateful, wouldn’t it?

The sad truth is that you are being paid the per diem you are rightly owed, as full salary.

The man I am driving with is leasing the truck we drive. He pays 1200.00 per week for the privilege of using the company’s truck. It’s no wonder that the poor goon doesn’t ever stop to take a shower, he’s bat shit crazy with worry that he won’t be able to make his truck payment.

He drives till I have to push him awake. “I’ll drive for you,” I say. And he curls up in back and snores like a wino farting in a rescue mission.

I have already driven 14 hours today. Well, so has he. What’s few more hours, I reckon, so that my friend might rest his worried head? He has children he needs to feed, I only have rent.

I look at the country side. I’m everywhere in America for fifteen minutes at a time. I see beauty, and I peacefully go on the nod behind the wheel.


Once back at the hotel the Trucking Company owns, I fall asleep on a box spring covered with a sheet. It’s supposed to pass for a bed in the room I have been assigned during training. I wake in the morning. I have a roommate. He is missing a big toe on his left foot.

“What happened to the toe,” I say to him by way of good morning.
“Still have it,” he says. And he holds up his right hand. The toe is a thumb.

I look around the room for a coffee maker.

“I have been waiting for 14 days to get assigned to a truck,” he says.
“Well, you aren’t getting paid for that,” I said.
“I know,” the man says to me. “I’ve added it up. I have been here for a total of fifty days. The total of my income divided by my time here amounts to about .22 per hour. I’m getting sick of this.”

There is no coffee maker in the room. I look at the man with a toe for a thumb. I ask him about his bed.

“It was a sheet over a box spring,” the man said.

Home

The man with a toe for a thumb and I phoned the bus station, and we each bought a bus ticket. After 40 days on the road, I am going home. I have less money now than when I began.

The bus driver is an angry man; he yells over the speakers in the dark as we approach small towns. Babies wake, and they begin crying. Old people cough. Adults and children look out dark windows which reflect back to them the sad and angry faces which are inside. I’ll ride the bus for four days.

America: The land of opportunity. America: Love her or leave her. America: of thee I sing.