Politics, Christmas and a Guy who lives in a Trailer

Photo by Christie Gretter

It’s Holiday season in Coastal Georgia, warm days and cool nights around the fire pit. 

The Savannah tradition of holiday parties will commence, where the Woodford Reserve will be flowing, the food will be good and people who haven’t seen each other for awhile will get

together. They used to be called Christmas Parties, but since Christmas kicks off on Labor Day, it made sense to just lump everything together and have one quick holiday party --get rid of the ghosts, goblins, pilgrims, turkeys, dead soldiers and Columbus and get serious about selling billions of dollars of Christmas crap to a bunch of people who can’t afford it. You walk in the gate and hear Mariah Carey singing “All I want for Christmas is You” again and again until some middle-aged guy groans, “...I’m getting ready to lose my shit...”  and goes inside and puts on some Jazz, or old Motown.

About the time Mariah Carey got a rest, I ran into a guy I hadn’t seen since last year.  He

seemed a little thinner and his hair was grayer. He obviously wasn’t real comfortable talking

about it, but eventually he let on that he’d had a rough year. In February, he, and a bunch of other people at the company, where he’d been for nineteen years, got let go and his severance package had pretty much been a pat on the back, a bag of potato chips and a $10 bill. A few months later, his wife filed for divorce. He didn’t blame the divorce on the job loss, he just shook his head. It’d been a tough time for both, but he couldn’t shake the fact that Dion, her personal trainer down at the gym, seemed to have shown up quickly to comfort her— guess she needed a lot of comforting because he hadn’t left, yet.  She’d kept the house and he was living in a trailer out at Lincoln Mobile Homes Park. That summer, his unmarried sister had been killed in a traffic accident coming home from the diner where she worked the night shift. Since they didn’t really have any other family, he’d taken in her 12-year-old son.

He said it had turned out to be a good deal for both of them, he was a great kid, and he didn’t see much of his own teenagers, anymore. Apparently, things had gotten a little testy during the divorce and his kids had taken his wife’s side. He was philosophical about it, he knew that with a little time and patience, they’d get things in perspective- he figured about ten years should probably do it. As he was explaining how he’d gone about looking for a new job at 48 years of age, he said he’d got lucky and landed a laborer’s job at a local construction company. He was the only Anglo on the crew, but the Mexicans he worked with had adopted him and he was even learning to speak some Spanish, so far, he knew all the profanity and could order off the menu at El Potro.

Standing a few feet away, within earshot, a couple of personal injury lawyers were close

to tears talking about the bite that capital gains tax would be taking out of them in 2023. We

both looked at each other and without saying a word, agreed that it was positively criminal what Uncle Sam takes out of a couple of million, all that’s missing is the mask and the gun.    

Along with marital infidelity and the economy, schools are always a hot topic. Most of

the people at the parties had school-age kids and they seemed to spend a lot of time worrying about the schools. The guy who lived in the trailer told me that recently a 13-year-old had brought a handgun to the junior high school his sister’s kid attended. The student wasn’t suspended, but school administrators assured everyone their crisis intervention counselors had the situation under control. The kid had been sternly reprimanded and then had lunch with trained professionals, who’d explained to him that disruptive behavior might jeopardize his chances of getting into the Aerospace Engineering program at Purdue or Pre-Med at Stanford.

The guy who lived in the trailer told me he’d picked up some extra money at night

delivering pizzas and driving for Uber, figuring he could save up enough to send his sister’s kid to catholic school next year.

Not far away, the country club set stood in a circle in front of the bar, checking their

iPhones and grousing about their alimony payments, the new titanium driver they couldn’t hit straight with and Joe Biden, I figured they keep their phones close so they wouldn’t miss a call from the bank who’s trying to repo their Porsche or their ex-wife’s divorce lawyer, who wants more money to support his old lady’s coke habit. I noticed a lot of them had gotten divorced since last year’s Christmas party. Most had had affairs with their secretaries and then married them because the sex was better, and the secretary knew a lot of things the IRS. and the ex-wife didn’t.

Never too far away, the 2-inch nails, fake eyelashes and ankle straps crowd, the former

secretaries, recently upgraded to wife, hovered in their own circle. I think they stayed in that call-of-the-wild circle, so they could protect the weaker members of the pack and watch each other’s backs.     

Like last year, the small businesses owners, who were still afloat, were doing a quick

check to see where the food and decorations came from. This year, most of the plastic reindeer came from a Korean owned manufacturing plant that moved into town. The plant is one of those economic miracles where the Koreans got free land and a twenty-year tax break to hire a half dozen local people at minimum wage. The same small business owner had been after the city for months to get a squad car to drive by his place occasionally and keep the vandals from spray painting, EAT ME, on his front window. Their friends at the cocktail party always make a big show of asking how sales are, bad mouthing the discount stores and then get back to scratching their ass, hoping the Preparation H they just bought at Walmart kicks in soon.   

Glaring at everyone, focusing on every nasty thing they thought they’d heard, were the

“Always offended” crew-- a trio of women currently asserting their kinship with Ukraine in their long peasant dresses, granny glasses, Birkenstock sandals and athletic socks. Passing around a box of Kleenex, keeping their voices loud enough for everybody to hear, they discussed gender pronouns while keeping an eye on a television to see if there were any new issues that needed their attention. The most animated of the group, the wife of a university professor, said she’d considered psychotherapy, but after much soul-searching, had decided that might be an over-reaction and had settled for a weekly encounter group, where she could share the impact Russians, Republicans and Trump had had on her. One of her friends agreed, but said she’d needed direct action about the Ukrainian situation, so she’d gone down to the army surplus store, bought an old bayonet and spent the last week crawling around her backyard, probing for unexploded land mines and any other military ordinance.  

Working three jobs, the guy who lived in the trailer hadn’t had time to stay abreast of

everything, but he did appreciate community involvement. The people at the diner where his

sister had worked knew he’d taken on a big responsibility raising her son, so they’d put a big

glass jar on the counter and everybody who came in the diner threw in a little change, he said it meant a lot.   

A guy we both knew came over, his face as red as his MAGA ball cap. He’d just got in

a big argument with somebody about Mexicans and Donald Trump. I was only half listening,

but it was something about goddamn Mez-z-i-cans swimming the Rio Grande. I remembered

last year he’d been all worked up about Arabs. He’d said he had a pretty good handle on the Middle East problem because he had a friend who knew a guy who worked with a priest

in Oklahoma who knew a guy who’d been over there.  He was all in favor of sending the next

door neighbor’s kid over there to kick some Arab ass. The guy who lived in the trailer listened awhile and then reminded him the Israelis didn’t need help kicking anyone’s ass. When the irate guy told him all Arabs were terrorists, the guy who lived in the trailer just smiled. I figured he was thinking about that Jordanian couple who run that little grocery store where he does his shopping, the same terrorists who let him charge his groceries on weeks when he’s a little short.  

An awful lot of women of all age were congregating on the patio and they were most

definitely discussing politics. During the 2023 midterms, no group seized a chunk of the political action as aggressively or effectively as women. While the Republicans grump and wheeze about the Democrats placating women, they frantically scour the country looking for electable female candidates who won’t have an abortion, or let slip she lost a promotion, because she wouldn’t play a quick game of ‘bend over the desk, baby’. Do the Democrats schmooze the female vote? Of course, they do, shamelessly. Apparently, they’re the only party that’s read the numbers. Women make up over half the population, they punch above their weight, and they go to the polls rain or shine. Right now, they’re the single most disciplined and effective voting bloc in this country.  

The guy who lived in the trailer got me thinking about the female vote when I

recognized a couple who’d been pretty adamant Donald Trump supporters last time around.

This year, they seemed lost in their own world as they stood in front of the fire pit rubbing

their hands and shivering. They’d spent an afternoon kneeling on the sidewalk in front

of a Planned Parenthood Clinic, praying for the death of a doctor, who was inside performing

abortions. They said he was a murderer. I noticed they began most sentences with, “as a

Christian, I’m opposed ...”  They seemed opposed to just about everything except, murdering a doctor. I didn’t spend much time around them, the way luck runs, I’d have said something that pissed them off and they’d have been on the sidewalk in front of my house. After Ann got done with me, my life expectancy would’ve been shorter than the abortion doctor.

For a political party so consumed by the abortion issue, the Republicans have

never understood women and their sex organs. They refuse to accept the simple premise that women consider this first and foremost, a civil rights issue.  The Republicans have tried to fight abortion on a moral battleground and women won’t rise to the bait. Their position

remains coldly pragmatic- what happens below my waist is my business and they’re backed up by the polls and voting patterns that continue to demonstrate a clear majority of women, even those who wouldn’t personally terminate a pregnancy, vote pro-choice. Men view abortion as a singular issue, women tend to see a linkage between issues that directly affect them. They see abortion as simply the highest profile link in a series of gender issues that include sexual harassment, domestic violence, and discrimination in the workplace.

The woman of 2023 who’s been cooking the Republican goose, has a college education, a

career and is headed across the parking lot on the dead run after a long day at the office. She has a kid under one arm, a bag of groceries under the other and a Cocker Spaniel on a leash hooked her right ankle. She’s headed home to cook dinner and listen to her husband bitch about the woman in his office who just got promoted because she had big knockers and was obviously humping the boss. She won’t waste her time trying to argue with him. Instead, she’ll walk into a voting booth and like millions of mainstream voters roll her eyes and mutter, “aw shit, here I go again, I gotta’ vote for that goddamn Biden!”

The silly and the shallow may dominate the cocktail parties, but a certain political and

social sanity keeps dragging us back to the middle ground where common sense and moderation live. In spite of our diversity, we remain anchored by a big population block who land squarely in the middle on most issues. They’re conservative on fiscal issues and crime, but liberal to moderate on other social issues. This is a mildly neurotic group that’s sick and tired of being told how to live their lives. They’ve pretty much had it with everybody -- born again Christians, guilt trips from minority groups, the National Rifle Association, and mouthy congressmen with special agendas. They’ve become a fascinating paradox -- part conservative suburban parent, part left-over 60’s Freedom Rider.

Next year, we’ll all get together again, the good, the decent, the silly, the stupid, the shallow and hopefully, the guy who lives in the trailer will be there, because we’re all a little

better if he is...