Sometimes I think that I get too involved in my passion for politics and as they say, "I fail to see the forest through the trees." No matter how turbulent Washington D.C. might seem to be, it is the humdrum complacency of daily life that is the heartbeat of America. Politicians come and go yet, the American people endure and just this past Thursday I was pleasantly reminded of this.
I was in the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California picking up a load of various diameter 18 foot long steel pipe for delivery to a customer in Fox Island, Washington. It was a gorgeously beautiful spring day in Union City. The sun shone brilliantly on the green vibrancy of Eucalyptus trees as they shimmered in a slight breeze. It was just one of those days when you come to realize just how great it is to be alive. I've taken many loads of pipe out of this pipe yard over the years and I know most of their employees well. Pete, the security guard of Indian descent, and I bantered over the upcoming season for the SF 49ers. As usual, he gave me crap for being both a 49ers and LA Dodgers fan by asking yet again if I knew that there was also a baseball team called the Giants across the Bay? The forklift driver, an Indian man in his fifties, is the big man in the pipe yard and I was lucky enough to have him load me. He never takes any guff from a driver and he didn't with me either however; per usual, after putting the pipe on my trailer he ended our short interlude with a huge smile and a hand off of my paperwork. After securing my load, I drove back to Pete's office so that he could verify the pipe count and give me my bills of lading. I asked him if I could park alongside the curb and buy a burrito from the mobile diner which had just set up shop in the employee's parking lot. He told me, "No problem, but you might want to hide that LA Dodgers baseball cap."
The smell emanating from the mobile diner, or more colloquially, the "gut truck", stirred my pangs of hunger. A good looking oriental lady in her mid thirties was sitting in the shade talking to somebody on her bluetooth. Inside the van was another woman, also in her mid thirties however; she was of Latin descent. Her English was just as poor as my Spanish and we proceeded to engage in the point at the menu game while I decided what I wanted to order. Eventually, I settled on a pork burrito with the works. As she was putting my order together, I began to wonder about these two women. Both of them were slim, well groomed, with brunette hair and charming smiles. They had that "real" look to them. They were not plastic copies of some Hollywood or Manhattan women of fancy. I wondered what they talked about, how they maneuvered through the urban miasma of the East Bay region, and if they were friends? Soon, my order was finished and the young oriental gal came over so that I could pay and I had to chuckle because her English was spoken with such a heavy oriental accent that I had to ask three times for my total. As I pulled out of the pipe yard munching on my burrito I began to think about our great country.
Only in the United States could an individual observe so many people of different descent working within one facility. Indian, Black, Asian, Latino, and White were all interacting in their daily lives on a small piece of real estate in sunny California. Life as we know it here is complex and yet, if we all just remain true to who we are and have respect for our fellow human beings as they trek along on their life's journey things seem to move along quite smoothly. I made a resolution this past Thursday to try on a daily basis to pay more attention to the fluid interaction of all Americans and to an extent, disregard the media's incessant reminder of just how disparate our nation has become. The simple acts of doing my job and ordering a burrito proved that we are all more alike than any of us know.
De Oppresso Liber
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