Take a Number

We just had a little work done at the house. Nothing major. Pretty much routine. After 15 years of living lightly in our home, it was finally time to freshen things up. Even an older couple with kids on their own leaves knicks the baseboards and smudges the walls. It was time to attend to some minor repairs and make the walls and the floors look great again (MWAFLGA).

I’m very pleased with the results. It was freezing this week in Tulsa, Oklahoma. With an arctic windchill and ice on the streets, we never thought that the crew would come. But they arrived as promised day after day, exactly on time to do the work we had agreed to. In the midst of a city-wide, week-long snow-down, there was nothing more satisfying that watching the fulfillment of our contract. That’s how small-minded people operate. People like me like to dot the i-s. Crossing the t-s is even better.

If this were a blog that covered home improvement, I’d be glad to share the details of the project. This kind of thing really engages me. I’m not skilled enough to do this work on my own and I’m hysterically averse to particulates and contaminants. I’d give a lot to master a circular Skil Saw, but then I’d have to stand in the middle of the debris. Better for me to stand quietly in the corner.

But I couldn’t help but notice the nature of our crew. At one point there were six lovely guys in the kitchen, every one of them skilled in his craft. All of them were immigrants to Oklahoma, all of them spoke the Spanish of their origins. Even with the help of Google Translate, I could not make myself understood, until one shyly revealed that he was their informal leader and he could communicate perfectly in English. It was a relief and also a shattering embarassment. I took French (?!) in high school as if I lived where people spoke it. Here was a man without formal education perfectly at home in two connected cultures. I could barely squeeze a word through the barrier of my lips.

There was this and something more important. I could feel in my heart that their days were numbered. Sweet, respectful, law-abiding men, threated by the Ogre of Mass Deportation (OMD). That would be Donald Trump, Sauron of the Americas. Not one of them had committed a crime except finding a more secure place to live. If I had to guess, no one was documented. Whatever stability they had was hanging by a thread.

These are men who pay their taxes, support Social Security and get nothing in return. These are the men who do the jobs that native-born Americans scorn to consider, and nevertheless make the world go forward. On cold days in February in Tulsa, Oklahoma, they kept their promises and made my life better. They made my home more bright, more orderly, more commodious.

I will do my best to shield them from cruelty, but I will be mowed down by the force of Homan and Miller. So doing, they will repudiate the God of Israel who demands that we shelter the stranger and the wayfarer, that we treat the immigrant as a member of the family.

And speaking selfishly, what happens when I need more work? Good luck to me and other privileged white people who seem willing to tolerate Our New Regime. Sorry, buddy, take a number.

Please read Take a Number II for further comment on this issue.