Don’t steal from the rich

 

3-13-2009

 

The cold came back, an irritating issue of March.

I keep waiting for the spring to arrive and know that when it does, we’ll slip right into summer.

When I lived in Passaic, spring’s arrival was a huge event, as I got to turn off the heat for another year and not have to fear the utility company turning me off or charging me increasing fees I couldn’t afford.

Life in America is all about keeping poor people poor, or forcing them into the market to make money by imposing greater and greater costs so that a person has to keep getting greedier just to keep up.

I like to stand still, to breathe deep and to live my life without having to look over my shoulder at who is trying to rob me next.

Back in Passaic, I had to worry about muggers; nowadays, I have to fear the phone company, the credit card company, the gas and electric company, all of whom had taken up the role of street thugs.

I have more sympathy for street criminals than bankers, who collect their little bit of me and then get high. The high bankers get is from constantly bleeding me.

That’s why the Madoff sentencing seems so unfair.

Steal from the wealthy and you get hammered. Yet we’ve given license to bankers, insurance companies and others to rip off the poor in a steady drip of blood and all we get from law and order people is: “Don’t’ regulate.”

I got ripped off so many times by so many people under the Bush Administration, I feel like a pincushion from the blood dripping out of every pore, that I feel I’ve been robbed royally with no one to complain to, and no government worth a damn to stop it.

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Forty years later, I finally found Ralph again.

He was a boyhood pal I used to chum around with in grammar school, and later, before I went into the Army.

The internet has finally penetrated the main street society so that people really can connect.

I’ve been searching for Ralph since web pages starting popping up in the mid-1990s.

Always somewhat nostalgic for the past, I’ve grown more desperate as I close in on 60 years old.

While 60 may be the new 40 in modern times, it always seemed old to me, and frankly, I feel old.

John Wayne felt old at my age, and I feel the same way.

This may be the reason why I’m seeking out the past to reconnect with to see if everybody else feels the way I do.

Misery does love company.

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I’ve discovered some sad truths.

As a collector of things, I find myself in possession of rare items such as band tapes and old family stories (and photographs).

If I don’t do something with them, both will vanish, and for some reason, preserving these things seems important to me.

I remember how delighted John Ritchie was when I gave him copies of some of the band tapes from the 1970s.

His death last year shocked me, even though it was expected, striking at the core of me the way the death of John Lennon did.

It said the dream of a reunion of the band won’t happen.

Fortunately, John made a few last appearances before he stepped off this mortal coil.