Part I of a series
Rollie Saucier, Special to Ill.com
(from our modern America )
June 1998
(Very Late, at the curb)
I return home a bit drunk.
It was a rather enjoyable evening out with friends, my wife drives.
It is not yet midnight as we pull up to our curb, and I am somewhat drunk. We
do not pull around back into our driveway to enter through our garage. We do not
have a driveway. We certainly have no garage. What we have at our home is a curb.
Actually, its the county’s, but I call it our curb all the same.
Suddenly, this somehow matters to me in the grand scheme of things. What I have
is a curb. And it is becoming rather clear to me, rather quickly, that I am what they call a sucker.
I have been played for a fool, and am likely laughed at, a lot, by those
who have turned my affairs such as they are. This curb now reveals my plight to me.
So, I step to my curb pretending not to know it is the county’s property, and try to
embrace my slice of private property, which of course is not even my own, as I have
mentioned. I think back to the night,s events, and how they changed me.
(Earlier that evening)
Just four hours ago, arriving at our friend’s place, I steppednot to acurb but to an elegant driveway. In grandeur it laid there before a spacious three car
garage adjoining a brand new palace of a home, easily $ 450 K, sitting atop three
rolling acres of fields, formerly plowed by a formerly impoverished farmer. That farmer, by the way, sold this land given him by three previous generations of men. Those men worked the land with plows, had little, and wanted for nothing. On selling to the developers everyone involved became wealthy, particularly the formerly impoverished farmer’s children, two of whom would become developers themselves one day.
Thoughts of wealth and inequities and greed and disgust begin dancing in my mind with notions
of humility and fairness and the nobility of poverty.
I do not have to ask myself why I am the visitor and not the owner of this posh estate.
For thirty years I have made sure that this would be the case. My
condition is one of a meager man living miles above the standard of living of most of the
five billion fellows on the planet. This relative privilege was thrust upon me through the
good fortune of being born into the opulent, decadent splendor that is the late 20 th century America, the reincarnation of the
glory days of the ancient Roman Empire.
And yet, I am NOT of the American noble class but rather of
the working classes prospering in this golden age. I do not struggle for life’s necessities, only for more luxuries.
I am fortunate, although without fortune. This house before me points to that higher plane well beyond my reach.
Striding into their towering domicile, I realize it is really a shrine of sorts. Our
host, Peerce, an investment banker, and our hostess, Vivian, his wife , have built
this temple to allow for worship from without its walls. So that the proletariot
may see what the God of Finance shall provide for the Chosen, as there friends clearly are. And onlookers may
green and seeth and tuck hapless chins to helpless chests in awe, as we clearly do.
WE certainly do not live here. But,WE do not aspire to this. WE don’t even
respect this display of wealth, not us. We resist such an obscene lifestyle on moral grounds. Yes, it is true, dear Wife, this IS a fine and widespread kitchen, but
certainly we do not need anything of the sort to …
Wait just a moment, I think to myself. What the hell have I been thinking?
And WHO has planted these naive notions of humility in my head anyway?
Was it the blue collared men that line my family albums generations back into the 19th century?
Was it the socialists who screamed against capitalism through lectures until spit overwhelmed thecorners of their mouths?
Was it drugs?
I really can not say at this very moment where it came from. But now I seevery plainly. It has been sitting down upon me like Babe the Blue Ox for so long that the weight has become commenplace and I
pay no mind to the oppressive inclination at all. It is just who I am now, I guess.
I am a meager man who does NOT aspire.
Well, this revelation stings just a bit as I am led from wing to wingthroughout this lovely structure. This is not mine. Worse still, these people have
lived no longer than I have lived, and somehow this IS their’s. Why didn’t they
buy into the humble and paycheck-to-paycheck nobility mush like me?
The rules of the game
were plainly written. I read them clearly without misinterpretation at age 18.
And I resolved that, although capitalism ruled the day, in fact the entire history
of my country, I was not subject to its allure and deviant motivations.
Twelve years later, I find that I have misread the rules altogether. The rules
were not some suggested menu of options on how to find happiness, but rather a decree, a warning, “play like this
or you will be sorry and we mean it.”
Well, at least I am not seventy-five years old and bending in the doctor’s office when
this corrective notion reveals itself to me. I am relatively young in fact! Much time
remains to get into the game! Yes, a Harvard MBA or Yale law degree are well beyond my
reach, as they ever were. And yes, I am not good with numbers remotely. And it
can not be denied that I am, as they say, “without prospects.” I have built up
exactly zero tangible wares to offer the marketplace.
But, as I stand within this master bathroom that recalls a classic grecian spa
and bathhouse, looking down upon row upon row of Audi Mercedes Infinitis beyond the
broad window … I finish my self -assessing calculations and conclude happily I do have ONE thing in my
favor, the knowledge that I have been silly. And thus, no longer the ignorant poorman, luxury is to be mine, now
that we have come to terms.
And, off we go to dinner in Peerce’s Jaguar. The wine selections fit my tastes,
not my accounts. The tab runs high and Viv insists upon it. Ahhh! Soon I shall
be doing the same! Picking up checks, paying others to clean my luxury items,
sending my children to wonderful resorts with equally well-healed nippers. What a
splendid evening! By my crude estimations I shall bring similar wealth upon my family
within five years,(the number based on little else than the standard used for
Eastern European agrarian reform plans.) Five years away lie the posh rewards of bowing in earnest to captialism.
(Midnight, at home)
And now … my curb … it rests beneath my feet, my townhome stands squished
between clones before me, my 11- year old 210,000- mile Volkswagen infirms beside
me. But, no matter. THIS poor man now has plans.
Tomorrow I shall rise early and begin the planned onslaught of wealth
acquisition. Many tycoons are sleeping tonight not knowing that soon, very
soon, I shall be in their purses, filling mine own to the brim. My lobes throb
now, probably the last paing of poverty leaving my person, and perhaps in part from being somewhat drunk.
No longer duped, no longer a pawn for those who conspire against the masses. No longer the meager and noble and humbled and unambitious man.
I climb into bed the hero-in-the-making.
The sleep of the just, of the aspiring, … it gently washes over me …
This has been R. Saucier, dispatched from our modern day America.