RUDIMENTS 697.

RUDIMENTS, pt. 697

(handmaidens and louses)

The first words of Richard

Nixon's autobiography are:

'I was born in a house my 

father built.' There probably

aren't too many Nixon fans, 

and that's understandable.

In fact though, I wonder

how many people there are

who actually even know the 

name. No matter; for the lame

they make walkers. That opening

sentence always hit me good;

it has an understated, almost, 

elegance of the sort little found

these days. Most people would

end up saying, if they say

anything, 'I was born in a

local hospital and taken home

to one of the development

homes all in a row and pretty

much alike alike, built by the

'Founders Acres Land Mill

Group,' an investment-builder

firm.' Something like that - 

and whatever it would be would

be a far cry from the home your

father built. Everything's changed.

-

I don't even know what that would

feel like - to be able to say that

phrase and have it possess a

meaning for me, for anyone.

Any bit of that older Americana 

stuff has been sent away. We've 

fought wars, as a nation, with

some form of solidarity, to defend 

such ideals. Intrinsic ideas, as they

are, to the dedicated premises of

the Nation's defining: work, place,

and individual responsibility, and

at the same time we've lost it all.

I said what I wanted to say about

that in the previous chapter, and

all I'll do here is add this coda:

We've diluted and given away all

of that. Because it was impossible.

Wave after wave of ethnic and

problem group has swarmed in.

If there had even been anything

solid as a basic underpinning to

the land (I guess the 'people'

would have been the original 

WASP Scots/English who ended

up as the Tidewater and Tennessee

kind of mountain folk and hillbilly

sorts still in all those uplands and

out through the Ozarks and all).

That, and the Connecticut WASPY

blue-blood types, are probably 

the real core of what founded 

the land. Except they bring with

them now all sorts of racial problems 

and attitudes of real trouble these

days. As for myself, I can't talk

because I was never any part of

that arrival crowd. Ever. I've got

no roots anywhere - being as

Unearthly as I am - and lay no

claim to any of that. With my own

'forebears' and since, I guess, what

has come into this country is wave

after wave of debris. Basic junk.

Like a virus attacking a hard-drive

brain. People give more attention

to protecting their computers from

viruses than does anyone any longer

do the same about what washes up or

creeps in to these shores and borders.

-

The world, in that sense, is pretty

much over, and all the defining

characteristics of it can now just

be called the 'bad past.' The two

largest, devious, and troublesome

things right now are China and 

Russia; and no one wishes to

give them any attention, nor 

counter their moves. We, on the

other hand, as a country, are

dead meat - our own horde of

whiners and complainers is

dismantling us from within.

The current swarms of energetic

refugees holding supposed claim

to all this are the worst. And they

have all the obsequious deviants

working for them, from within

here. It's over, Ken and Jane 

and Bob and Ted and Alice.

Your new neighbors' names are

probably, on one side, the

Miranda-Patels, and on the

other, the Ming-Petrovs.

-

What I'm saying is that old solid

America did use to have a form,

a recognizable shape, that's been

whittled away, chipped down and

smoothed; most resembling, I'd 

suppose, the United States of

Dildo, but I don't know how

good that would look on maps.

-

My own father, a rugged landslide

of not much at all, had a massive

pride in his ethnicity. A pride I

never understood. As it went, he

never even was really sure about

where he originated and with 

whom. Just goes to show. My

father might have had 'some'

Italian in his blood, but I always

swore him to Albania, just across 

the water down in that bottom

section. Those blue-eyed sea bums

running back and forth between

Bari and Tirana. That's my blood.

Probably, if my father could have,

he would have loved to have built his

own house - and God the Builder,

I hope, would have extended all 

the help in the world, or out of it,

because by all other design categories

my father's sense of proportion and

construction was so off-the-wall

wrong that the entire thing would

have been leaning, and monster-sized

to boot. Everything my father ever

built - probably including dreams

and aspirations - was too big for the

space it was going to. You should'a

seen - shelves, closets, brackets,

and such.

-

If the Devil ever had a handmaiden,

and I suppose the Devil did, it would

have been, here, in this country, the

haggard wife of Uncle Sam. Always

wanting more and better, pushing old

Sam along, even when Sam was nasty

and bored and tired and achy. Maybe

the word I seek is 'harradin.' I'm not

sure. But there's some essential quality

that's wrecked this place, and it's

still running hot and heavy, like a

Henry Ford Thomas Edison Alexander

Graham Bell Robert Fulton P. T.

Barnum Bill Gates Elon Musk

Halloween critter. There's probably,

and better for my sake, thirty female

names I should put there too, but I ain't.

I was born as the louse my father built?