Big Mike: Maybe I Should Turn Republican

October 25th, 2009

The Loved One and I took a trip back to Louisville yesterday afternoon to pick up our plants. Since we had to stay in a hotel room for our first few weeks here in Bloomington, Indiana, we had to leave our plants with a sitter, an old work chum of TLO.

It’s funny how attached I’ve become to the plants. We’re not green-thumbers by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, all we have are a single fern and two small potted trees that I think may be ficuses, although I couldn’t testify to it in court.

Nevertheless, I really, really like our plants, ergo the arrangements for their care. At one time we had a grand total of two plants — the fern and a ficus — but then I decided to play Gregor Mendel. I cut a sprig from the ficus, put it in a glass of water until it sprouted roots and then potted it. Voila — two ficuses! I felt like the daddy of a newborn. Only this was much better — I didn’t have to change diapers and, later, endure all that teenaged bullshit. All I had to do was water it and give it sun. Under those criteria, I make an excellent father.

Anyway, The Loved One dropped me off at my old familiar Barnes & Noble while she dashed off to meet her chum for lunch. I was greeted by the B&N cafe staff like a returning general; they wanted to know all about Bloomington and how I’m dealing with the radically different culture there. You’d think Bloomington is as alien as Angkor Wat.

Come to think of it, it is.

While I sat in the cafe, doing the New York Times crossword, sipping a coffee the size of a 55-gallon drum and nibbling on a stuffed pizza pretzel (I am addicted to them), who strolled up but good old Trivia-meister Andy. I invited him to sit and we talked about old times at Dick’s Pizza (if events that occurred longer than only six weeks ago can be considered old times.)

We remembered and laughed about Captain Billy, Printer Bob and All-American Allen, all of whom espouse philosophies that would bring smiles to the faces of Father Coughlin or Rush Limbaugh. I’d gone around and around with the three of them every time an issue of current events was raised. To them I represented a chilling future for this great land of ours. Guys like me want to take their guns away, tax them into the poorhouse, force their daughters to marry black men and euthanize them when they get too old.

We’d fight tooth and nail over Barack Obama’s plan to phony up his birth announcement in Hawaii, get his schooling in a terrorist madrasah, come to America, run for president and win, and then turn the keys of the country over to Osama bin Laden — whose name is so similar to his that only an idiot could fail to see the connection between them.

One night Printer Bob and I argued our points so loudly that Jason the bartender had to come around the bar and warn us to knock it off.

The funny thing is, Captain Billy, Printer Bob and All-American Allen would be viewed as softies in the hills of Kentucky only 25 miles to the south and east of us. It’s a scientifically proven fact that more Kentucky men prefer sleeping with their Savage Model 110 bolt-action rifles than their spouses. Then again, I’ve seen some of those spouses and I don’t blame them.

Don’t ask me why, but Captain Billy, Printer Bob, All-American Allen and I all really liked each other. Privately, I’d describe them all as candidates for the lunatic asylum — and, no doubt, they’d describe me similarly — yet we always sought out each other’s company. And, as Benny Jay told me recently over the phone, my recounting in this space of the exchanges between us were often uproarious.

But now, no more. There are no Captain Billys here in Bloomington. Nor are there Printer Bobs or All-American Allens. If there are, they’re doing their best to remain under cover. The crowd that hunkers down at Soma coffeehouse is right on all the issues. In other words, they think exactly as I do. What a bore!

For instance, a fellow sat next to me at Soma last Sunday afternoon. We struck up a conversation during which he revealed to me his views that George W. Bush was the worst president we’ve ever had, the Iraq war is an atrocity, everybody in America has a right to health care coverage, and the Republicans are increasingly catering to a close-minded, crypto-racist, xenophobic, anti-intellectual crowd.

My responses to these opinions? Yup. Uh huh. Sure. I getcha. Boy, you said it.

I’ll bet you didn’t even titter as you read that. Besides the lack of entertainment value in such an exchange, there’s really nothing to be learned from bobbing one’s head at a fellow conversationalist who thinks exactly as I do.

Take the time All-American Allen and I squared off over guns. He reveres guns the way I do books. Without them, his life would be empty. At first I thought his feelings were a sure sign he’s nuts. But as I probed to find out why he thought this way, I learned his fondest memories of childhood were golden sunlit autumn afternoons trudging through fields and woods with his father as they hunted deer. His father taught him how to handle a gun safely, how to aim, how to avoid snakes in the grass, how to keep his hands warm and so on. Those outings brought him close to his father, a sharing that I’d never experienced and have longed for all my life. The gun he held as a boy was bridge between him and his dad. The memories keep him warm to this day. And here, I wanted to take that away from him.

I considered myself a tad smarter after that argument. I felt no such enrichment after my conversation with the man at Soma. Who knows? Maybe I should start quoting Rush Limbaugh. Nah. Benny Jay wouldn’t approve. And I’d feel awfully stupid.