“You know, 11 million people live in the shadows. I believe they’re already American citizens. These people are just waiting, waiting for a chance to contribute fully. And by that standard, 11 million undocumented aliens are already Americans, in my view.” — Joe Biden (2014)
My favorite radio personalities at the time were the gravelly voice of Rush Limbaugh, the measured no-nonsenseness of Dr. Laura Schlessinger, and the personable, perpetually outraged Michael Savage. All of these personalities – they did something for me and that strong sense of tradition, security, and peace I was feeling as my father drove on. They made the world seem safe and secure. It wasn’t like I hated liberals or was heartless or intentionally insensitive. These radio warriors and were people that reinforced the world’s clarity, that exposed its foundations, that revealed to me the machinery behind the blessings we had and stood guard to make sure these blessings remained. They made the world clean and safe and richly alive with traditional, hardy, secure values.
Michael Savage was my favorite. Back then, in the mid 90s, he ranted and railed about three things: Borders, Language, Culture. He claimed these made this country great, and that, without them, everything that we loved in the world would collapse. I think he probably believed this strongly. I certainly did. My dad seemed to. It wasn’t like we hated illegal immigrants – the very idea of an immigrant being illegal and yet living in the country violated the law. That was kinda where things ended. And the laws and rules were there for protection. It wasn’t heartless – the rules kept us safe. It wasn’t about people and being cold towards them – it was about how much we all depended on the conservation of our borders, language, and culture for our survival and the survival of all the people I knew and loved and cared about in the world. For our family’s safety and future, and the preservation of our dearly held freedoms. For the future of a country I deeply loved and the security of the camaraderie I felt with my Dad and nature and the world on those fishing trips. The rusty static sounds of the ranting Michael Savage from my Dad’s shortwave radio were all mixed in with the light red glow spreading over a wide open sky of awe-inspiring sunsets, the ripples widening out peacefully from the disturbance of a freshly cast line, the beauty of it all seen through our straight stares as we sat on the dirt of the bank, reeds surrounding us, and the steady creaking of the crickets coming from an ambient everywhere. Security, beauty, belonging, vastness, the beauty of God and family and country all around us and settling in our hearts and minds, and the steady background hum that somehow allowed me to put my feet on the ground of it all – within our borders, speaking our language, and validating our sense of culture. All of it seemed to make the moment possible, and Savage was the centerpiece of it all at least as much as everything else.
If I had stayed in Suisun, gotten a degree in a non-humanities field, and grown up, got married, and had children back there, I might be out on that marsh right now, fishing and listening to Michael Savage all these years later. But now I can’t stand it. Not just because I disagree with him, but because that teen kid in love with that moment is still in there and hurting even as who I am now looks forward. Maybe that’s immature, but it’s the truth.
I suppose things changed when I started working at Cracker Barrel. Up to then, I hadn’t met an illegal immigrant who I actually knew was one. When I was working on my BA in English at Northern Arizona University, I worked, simultaneously, as a secretary at the college of education, a secretary at the college of admissions, and an admissions counselor for the orientation program. The jobs looked decent on a resume, but I was jealous of the cash my roommate was bringing in from waiting tables at a popular nearby Denny’s. At the time, the best family restaurant to work at in Flagstaff, AZ (where the university was) was Cracker Barrel. It was the only location for about 140 miles in any direction, and it was right on I-40, where people came through from the South on their way to Nevada (Vegas, Reno), California (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco), and so on. So it was almost always extremely busy, and the people coming through were usually tourists, in a good mood – the best kind of people for decent tips. Plus, I needed to develop social skills, and I thought working as a waiter and adjusting my social interactions based on tip feedback would do that. I didn’t make a killing, but it was more than my other three jobs – which I quit as I started my Master’s in order to make more money while applying to educational jobs that might match what I was making at Cracker Barrel.
When I started working there, a middle aged woman helped us, on occasion, by bussing our tables – and it was often badly needed. She only came when it was fairly busy, didn’t speak much English, worked hard, and eased things whenever we were in a pinch. Her calming eyes mathed a friendly smile, and she got along very well with everyone there. We all loved her.
I’ll never forget the day our boss gathered the entire crew together and said we were going to have inspectors come through looking for illegal immigrants. And then, in the middle of his speech, he said that the middle aged woman was an illegal immigrant, that they (the managers) were paying her 4 dollars an hour under the table, and that they appreciated her hard work — as they were sure we all did.
I was stunned.
This lady was a beautiful person. She deserved every dollar of that money. I did care about her and I appreciated her. I mean, she was a PERSON. And she was only making 4 dollars an hour?! Was that enough for her to live on? No, wait, she was illegal. She should go back to Mexico, where she was from, right? Why was I so concerned about her? It was confusing.
Then there was a cook – the fastest cook at that Cracker Barrel, and probably the best cook I’ve ever seen at a restaurant of that class – always high quality food, always on top of everything. A little short, a bit pudgy, extremely friendly, and – fast as hell. Holy shit, he was fast. And he was almost always smiling, whistling, or, when his favorite song came on (“Me and You” by Cassie), dancing. I found out, later, that he was getting paid and staying in the country long after his green card expired. And the dishwasher. And another cook, who worked at Cracker Barrel and at my roommate’s Denny’s. This last one – I saw his wife and his two little girls, and got a glimpse of their closeness when they came by my roommate’s Denny’s once to pick the dad up.
The day the inspection came, almost all the Hispanic employees didn’t show up for work. Then, afterwards, they came back. And we talked about their stories. I was still trying to be against illegal immigration, and felt a moral dilemma. These people should be reported and sent back to Mexico, right? But I knew them; they were my friends. We had been through a lot of shit-crazy hectic times at that restaurant, and there was a camaraderie there. Reporting them would feel like a betrayal.
So, I was in the breakroom with one of my American coworkers and a couple of these immigrants a bit after the inspection – they were cooks on break. And we were debating this illegal immigration issue, and I said, “Why don’t they go back to their country?” And the American coworker said, “Here, these guys work an 9 hour day and make $20.” He turned to the immigrants. “How long would it take you to get that in Mexico?” The reply came back– a week and a half to two weeks for $20 for a pair of decent jeans. And getting a job wasn’t easy – so once you had it, you had to work your ass off to keep it (I later found out that Mexico was the second hardest working civilized country in the world) — because there was a looooonnnggg line of unemployed people tripping over themselves for your job as a dishwasher or line cook. Here, they could make $20 in a day, which gave them plenty to send home.
I never forgot that. And I think that, although it took me awhile to formally cross over, that’s when I began to change.
It wasn’t all that dramatic, admittedly. But the thing about it was that the rules got challenged by relationships with people. I don’t have all the answers, and I do want to keep America from becoming as economically bankrupt as Mexico, so people still have a place to come. But the Mexican immigrants I worked with were not lazy – they were the hardest workers I had ever come across. They were intelligent, they were friends, they were family members, they were people. And that blew a lot of the rules right out of the water in ways that prompted me to care more about people than empty rules.
Over time, that’s changed my view drastically, transforming my views on politics and religion a near 180 degrees. And, even so, the world still isn’t as black and white as the portraits drawn from my dad’s shortwave radio static; I don’t have a short, sweet ending to this, and things are really a lot more muddy and head-scratchingly complicated, and I feel quite a bit less secure. The thing is, I still long sometimes for those old days of security and unquestioned rules that made things black and white and simple and safe, even as I look forward to try to promote new, innovative, caring solutions as well as I can from my small corner of this universe. So…this morning, in my old car, I went to Burger King down the street and had their new BBQ burger, thinking it was similar to that old western bacon cheeseburger, and I sat at a table and ate it as I watched Obama speak about the immigration crisis and kinda waited for the old memories to come.
The burger didn’t taste the same. I walked back to my car and felt as if I was floating between the past and the present somehow – things seemed surreal. To put my feet more or less on the ground, I pulled up the link below, watched it, and let my eyes water. Nothing was resolved, and more needed to be done, and questions overshadowed answers, and the world wasn’t all OK and I wasn’t sure it ever would be, but somehow I felt — not at peace, exactly, but as if I had something to hold on to. I don’t really understand “love” and I think its meaning is often abused, but I tend to think something in that word’s connotations comes close to it, more or less.
“mmmmhmmmmmmhmmmm…mmmmmhmmmmmmhmmmmmm…mhhhmmmmmhmmm….
Feeling my way through the darkness….guided by a beating heart…”