I looked at the old man in his rocking chair, a man that appeared to be about a hundred years old. He came across as the kind of a man that's seen trouble, lots of trouble, but had kept on keeping on despite of it. He had a scar that ran clear up the right side of his cheek that showed clearly through the stubble of his unshaven face. His nose had been broken, probably a long time ago, and it bent to one side unnatural. I don't think he'd been born that way because he had been a feisty fellow, the folks in the camp told me, back in his younger days. I asked the old man how long he'd been in this particular camp. I was a newbie here and he had looked like somebody that had been around for awhile, somebody worth talking to.
"Twenty odd years" he said, looking away into the distance. I thought he might be thinking something profound when he said that, but he was just watching a bird.
He came back to the here and now and I asked him another question.
"Like it, living in the camps?" I said.
"It's all I ever knowed" he responded. "Thought I'd get out of 'em but never have. Thought I'd have a house and a white picket fence and all that but....."
"But what?" I asked him. Surely he must've been able to buy a house once in his life. You know, a man works all his days he oughta have something to show for it.
"Nope. Never could save enough. Damn revenuers! Ever' time I'd get close to enough ta buy somethin', somethin' would happen".
"You probably got drunk" I thought. "Pissed your money away".
"I know what you're thinkin'!" he gave me a look. "But it warn't that way. I was always stable, a hardworkin' man. I worked full time, every time. Gave it my best shot wherever I was"
"And still...?" I asked again, desperately wanting to know. Such a thing couldn't be. This was America!
"Oh, most times it was 'cuz house prices got to be just past my reach. Soon as I'd get enough to put a down payment on one speculators come in. They bought up all the houses and wouldn't sell 'em till they got their price. Profit was what they wanted. Easy money"
"Why didn't you become like them then?" I blurted. "I've read about how they done it. They used a thing called 'financin'. The banks would lend 'em money and with just a little bit they could move inta a place. Soon as they could they'd finance to buy another place and put a renter in that'un, or they'd do a thing called 'flippin' where they'd sell the house quick as they could. Lots of folks were doin' that and making good money"
'Yeah" he sighed. "But doin' that didn't sit right with me. It, well, it just put a bad taste in my mouth. Nobody ever seemed to put the results of that kind of actin' together. Next fellah comes along had to pay more for the same house, and every fellah after that"
"So what's wrong with that? It's the American Way, better'n yourself".
"That ain't better'n!" his sharp glance pierced my countenance like a dagger. I could see in his eyes that they was fire behind 'em, the kind of fire you don't regularly see in a man. Man looks at ya that way its like he's thinkin' about killin' ya. Old man must've been a real live wire in his day.
"How so it ain't betterin', if everybody is doin' it?" I pressed him. "If you ain't doin' it you ain't keepin' up".
Damn old fart got's me talkin' like a hillbilly, I thought, catching myself.
"Each man's got to take a stand" he replied, with the kind of calmness that comes over a man what's made his mind up a long time ago. "It warn't right then and it ain't right now. I know folks have troubles, and that economies go up and down, but that don't make cheatin' right. Folks got to stop thinkin' about just themselves, is all, and look at the big picture. Back in my day we didn't have no internet. Hell, we was lucky to have radio! An' lookit you now- you got technology that can calculate and reckon all sorts of things but even so you can't figure out what the right thing to do is. Half 'a you is so conditioned you don't even think and the rest well......" he sighed….
"......the rest has come to some sort of greater understandin' about things but that sort of understandin' falls short due to folks facin' life in different ways. Some don't have to live in the camps 'cuz Ma or Pa died and left 'em a house, or maybe it was their grandma or grandpa. Those folks is few. Fewer still are the folks that were born rich. They never gave life in the camps a thought and never will. Most of the people livin' outside the camps are buyers and of those, some has it easy and some hard, accordin' to how they's fixed for making their payments. For a lot of those folks it's rough out there. You gotta pay taxes, just like campsite rent, spend money on upkeep, and try to keep ahead of your mortgage. You stumble a bit, not hit your number for a month or two, and right off the bank comes a'wantin' their house back"
"That's just business" I said.
I keep on forgetting that back then everything was in color. It was, for the people that lived then.
Stephen Walker- Unsplash.com
He carried on like he hadn't even heard me. "Prices keep risin' and folks what owns get cold. Them what's got don't care about them that don't. They justify their reasonin' in a thousand different ways. I 've seen it all, young’un. They was a time when folks could settle down in one place but that time didn't last long 'cuz businesses are always wantin' profits and men are greedy. Those men took their businesses and relocated 'em to China. Folks what was settled had to move on, chasin' work elsewhere. Even college folks couldn't count on anything bein' sure. House builders stopped buildin' small houses, flippers and investors snatched up entry level houses, local governments dragged their feet, lawsuits stopped developers trying to build, and demand for houses has been constantly outstripping supply. Its gotten steadily worser and worser, an' now this virus comes along…"
"I almost forgot" I gasped. "The virus!"
"Ain't that the damndest thing! Now ya can't even trust the air you breathe and folks are nervous. Nervouser than I've seen 'em in a long, long time. Some of 'em are gonna end up in camps 'cuz they ain't got no money".
"Government says they're gonna take care of 'em"
"Yeah. But for how long? Folks get restless when they gets all cooped up. You don't want folks bein' all cooped up. Trouble starts, folks get blamed for it, the camps get busted up, and people get told to move along! To where? Where folks gonna go when that happens? Nobody knows.
Capitalism sucks, but it sucks less than everything else. I know how to survive inside the system 'cuz I’ve had ta learn how to! Ya gotta live simple, is all. Be as self reliant as you can. Can't say that'll keep you out of the camps- the camps bein' anywhere a man has to rent instead of ownin'- but you can make it. Right now the world is run by bankers, investors, and house flippers and there's a word for that- usury! Everywhere ya look people is either usin' others or bein' used. It's a personal choice, like I said. Comes down to it everybody has to choose where they stand. Long time ago I decided I wasn't gonna use anybody. I knew I wasn't that kind. Even though the folks sellin' usury slathered it on real thick at times, tryin' to sell me on it, I told 'em no. I lost my whole family 'cuz of usin' people, never saw 'em again. But the blood that ran in my kin still runs in me. None of us were users and damnit I'll go to my grave before I use another human bein' for profit!"
"Good luck with that" I snorted, along with the issuing a wry laugh. The old man just wasn't seeing the light. The chance of changing the status quo was ridiculously slim. Why, it would take a majority of people to change The System and the majority of people weren't going to stand up for anything as long as they had theirs. "Shamin' users ain't gonna work" I told the old man. "A man named Steinbeck tried it. Not a lot changed".
"It didn't work then” the old man said, rocking back in his chair some while looking off into the fields stretching beyond the camp. "But it just might work now! You got a new thing called social media. Awareness is risin' and risin' fast. If enough people get on board with a cause, a cause that makes a dent in profits, that’ll catch business people's attention right quick! I'm not sayin' that folks need to take businesses down, 'cuz we all need businesses to survive, mind you, but businesses constantly adjust to the times they're in. I may not see a big change in my lifetime 'cuz I'm pretty damn old but you might see something big happen, or your kids will. Things are gonna turn around, they have to, if enough of the public demands it".
"Nah, I don't think so" I said. People are too dumb. Too self absorbed".
"That's true! But even so, like a great herd of cattle that moves because somethin' spooked 'em and they don't know what, so goes the human race. There's a herd mentality in our race, one that constantly evolves over time. Right now the time is pert near ripe for change, I think, what with this virus goin' on. The herds been halted and who knows where it's gonna go when things get movin' again".
"It’ll probably obediently shuffle back into the same old ruts" I muttered.
"It might". The old man replied, scratching his chin. "But then again it might not! Nothing is guaranteed. People been thinkin', in these quiet times, lots of them. Some of 'em might not go back to their old ways. If them folks is leaders of some kind, the herd might shift around them- just a little- and set the whole off on a different path".
"I'll look for it" I wearily said, feeling that it was near to beer and puttin' some food in my belly time. Life in the camps, I had discovered, was rougher than the life of home ownin'. There was a lot of uncertainty in livin’ this way and that uncertainty brought with it a lot of stress. Fortunately I had quickly, through exhaustion, undoubtedly, learned to live for the simple pleasures of the day. "Gotta get goin'" I said. "Stomach's growlin'".
"Yeah. Mine’s too" the old man replied, stretching a bit. "Time for some supper! Say, it’s been nice talkin' to ya. If you don’t mind, let me give ya a little advice before you go, and I’d be obliged if you don't take it like preachin'. Take it easy on yourself, hear? Life in the camps ain't hard if you keep to yourself and don't make trouble. We take care of our own business here. Everybody gets along".
"Okay, thanks. Uh… ….I didn't get your name" I thought to add. "Be nice to know it, if we run into each other again".
"Name's Joad” the old feller said. “Tom Joad”.