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| Gold King Mine, Jerome AZ |
Every day, working folks,
stone broke and desperate, perform perverse acts simply to survive. Read, and
weep:
Every morning, John Doughless
(his real name), rises before the rest of the household and strategically
rearranges pantry and refrigerator contents, to trick everyone into using
oldest food first. “Moo juice saved is moo juice earned,” he muses, “An' that
fruit ain’t rotten just yet.”
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| Gold King Mine, Jerome AZ |
Some days he washes plastic
bags and bottles for re-use; ‘green’ ‘cause he hasn’t got much choice. Other
days he sews buttons, or stitches the kids’ pants, hollering “Yr britches
wouldn’ split if y’d quit showin’ yr butt!” He hand-harvests dust bunnies and
trash bits from the floor, to postpone electric “vacuuming." Finger-feeds to
dirty fewer dishes.
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| Gold King Mine, Jerome AZ |
Whenever he seems to need a
thing, he first tries to not need it. Like: ties knots to prolong the lives of
shoe-strings. And if a Gordian string must be replaced, he steals from a
retired shoe. “What sort of pompous ass gives a rip whether their shoe-strings
match?” he snorts.
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| Gold King Mine |
Fashion is whatever he can
get for nothing, of course, or the Used Crap store. He defends his pathetic
attire with wise-cracks:
“Only fashion models look
like fashion models,” “Cover only your goodies, unless it snows,” and “The more
naked the less laundry.”
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| (singing) "Up on the roof..." |
The same discriminating taste
guides every home project. “Inside every perfect house is a worn-out
mortgage-holder,” he insists. “Everything falls apart, eventually...so get used
to it.” He fights leaks from roof or pipes, but “the rest can crumble, I ain’t
gonna be slave to a pile of bricks and sticks.”
His ‘lawn’ is dead or
weed-dotted, trees and bushes unkempt, fence gate askew. “Mama nature is my
landscaper,” he boasts. “I already work too much.” He waters a tree only to nap
in its shade.
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| Gold King Mine, Jerome AZ |
Car repair challenge: fix it
for free somehow. Forget cracked plastic, dented metal, missing/malfunctioning
non-essentials. For the rest, duct tape, baling wire, and super glue, mostly.
“Why drive anywhere, ever?” he might wonder aloud. “Shiny or ugly, every car is
pure evil.”
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| Jerome AZ |
In his free-lance mining
enterprise, he snags aluminum nuggets, steel anything (finally worth a few
cents a pound!), or busted appliances for their copper-wound motors and
precious-metal circuit boards. Open dumpster mining: safer and quieter than
open pit mining, at a fraction of the pay! “Better than a kick in the teeth,”
he sallies.
Doughless curses every
holiday, claims each is a pretext to extract folks’ cash they don’t have for
crap they don’t need. Miserly malcontent or not, he’s right of course. “People
could save billions if they parked butt at home and ate peanut-butter
sandwiches,” he is fond of saying.
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| Cement Mine, Clarkdale AZ |
“Machines have taken over our
lives, unplug everything!” he often hollers, as if you could. He lets his phone
go dead for days or months...visits friends face-to-face, like olden times. The
tele-vision gathers dust, why follow the culture’s collapse? All this keeps the
power bill down, good practice for when it gets shut off.
Films, concerts, ball games,
circuses, he has no coin for such glitzy fluff. His life is his movie, he sings
for himself, plays his own game, directs a many-ringed circus, dancing,
laughing, talking wild. “If ya got a roof and some grub, the rest is gravy, so
quit yr whinin’.”
So, where to next for
bus-hustling trend-upsetting almost-homeless John Doughless? First he’ll be
officially replacing John Doe at foreclosed-upon and squatted-in middle-class
headquarters, 1234 Main Street, Anytown USA: the new typical citizen of Disunited
States.
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| Gold King Mine, Jerome AZ |
From there, the dirt’s the
limit! Will it be the classic egalitarian resort, “Van by the River?” The dry
and often warm nook “Under the Interstate Overpass?” Perhaps the trendy new
un-gated community at the edge of town, multi-colored all-ages “Tent Acres?” Or
will he swallow his pride, and camp in the stinky-spilled-bhangwater back
bedroom of his dumb-ass in-laws?
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| Gold King Mine, Jerome AZ |
Johnny D. is part of a
popular new army of mobile non-consumers struggling day-to-day. Everyone’s
welcome! Families and communities are re-forming for survival! Some whackos are
even living without electronics, in a bizarre world of sunshine, dirt, plants, rain,
rivers, and on good days, fresh meat! Rich do-gooders keep your travel
expense--the “third world” is being home delivered!
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| Along the Colorado River, Grand Canyon National Park |
So what’s the buzz on the
street, J. D., how’s life in the slack lane? His eyes twinkle over six day
beard and crooked grin: “Hell, nobody’s got squat, even them that’s got some
crappy job. None of us’ll ever live like the fakes on TV no matter how hard
we work, and they can’t fool us anymore. We can’t give a damn even when we try.
‘Civilization’ has already collapsed for half the planet, and good riddance.
With nothin’ left to lose, we’ll finally be free!”
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| Glenbar AZ cemetery |
His grin turns to dark leer:
“The corporate beasts eating the planet are going to slowly starve too...and
the Owners will live behind iron gates, nervously ever after.”
As sun struggles to sink
through industrial haze, giving way to coal-fired zap, his slow-paced, low
society night life begins....
“Ha! Now, everybody’s invited
to my back yard to drink some beer! So, uh, be sure ‘n’ bring some beer!”
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| Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Area, AZ |
%$#@!
“Early evening traffic was beginning to clog
the avenue with cars. The sun slanted down behind him. Harry glanced at the
drivers of the cars. They seemed unhappy. The world was unhappy. People were in
the dark. People were terrified and disappointed. People were caught in traps.
People were defensive and frantic. They felt as if their lives were being
wasted. And they were right.
Harry walked along. He stopped for a traffic
signal. And, in that moment he had a very strange feeling. He felt as if he was
the only person alive in the world.
As the light turned green, he forgot all
about that. He crossed the street to other side and continued on.”
--Charles Bukowski, Septuagenarian Stew
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