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sixth july | noon:nineteen
"Persons of Mean and Vile Condition"
�Is an early chapter in Howard Zinn's revisionist A People's History of the United States that documents the formation of rival classes, rich and poor, in pre-revolutionary America. Its emphasis, of course, is on the Mean and Vile, their hardships, struggles, escapes and rebellions. "At the very start of the Massachussetts Bay Colony in 1630," he writes, "The governor, John Winthrop, had declared the philosophy of the rulers: '�in all times some must be rich, some poore, some highe and eminent in power and dignitie; others meane and in subjection.'" "At all times" including, naturally, these new times, in this new world, with its new and manifest hopes that things would be better than in the old. The African slave trade was underway by this time, though it would not be formally legalized in most colonies for another half century. Indentured servitude was rife; Zinn cites sources claiming the landless and indentured peasantry accounted for 50-80% of the population in most areas. While granted a modicum of respect more than chattel slaves, white servants were abused, forcefully separated from their families, the women raped and then forced to continue their work all through labor (delivering the boss' children but not allowed to have any of their own, by their own will). Most, after completing their terms of seven or ten years, remained landless. The fortunate became tenants to wealthy farmers (often the same ones they'd been indentured to), providing cheap labor in addition to tithing and rent. By the 1730s, the dramatic increase in widows, the crippled, orphans, the unemployed, war veterans and new immigrants created a demand for urban poorhouses, which almost immediately exceeded their capacity. With the expanding of the already large discrepancies between rich and poor throughout the century came increased strikes, mobs, rebellions, sabotage, crime, and murder.
I'm dogsitting again. I wuv this pooch! Here's a picture:
This dog sits on me. It sits on everyone. It smiles, too. It has about 20 of those spots on its stomach where if you scratch them it will kick its legs. I made it run at least half an upside-down marathon last night. It's a lovely, fun, rasslable puppy, and its spoiled too. It likes to go through garbage. Despite the house being out in the woods, I can't let it out without a leash, because the next door neighbors leave heaps of filled trash bags lying around their yard, and this dog would tear them to pieces if it could. They're poor, the neighbors. Their house is is an ugly manufactured home which sits on a lot, in the middle of a forest, from which every last tree has been removed (the dog's owner's house, on the contrary, is barely discernable beneath so much lush vegetation). There seem to be about 15 of them living there. Last night I saw one of them, a shirtless teenage male, light a firecracker and throw it at his sister/cousin/girlfriend, who was holding a baby. Their driveway is filled with shoddy-looking cars with expensive accessories.
I mentioned this (the trash bags in the yard) to my mom, and she told me about neighbors we had when I was small, too small to remember. There were three generations of 20 or so people living in a one story house. Despite being renters, they would cut down trees on the property for firewood. Instead of paying for garbage service, they just piled it in the back yard (right next to our backyard): heaps of filthy diapers and uncomposted table scraps and various pointy shards of old metal and glass. My parents called the Health Department but they were unable to do anything about it. The landlord was living in Hawaii and unreachable. When she finally moved back and broke their lease, she found the place trashed. They had, among other things, punched a large hole in a brick wall for a fireplace/chimney. Her renter's insurance had to pay out for ~$20,000 in repairs: new carpets, new walls, new countertops, almost everything except new foundations. As descriptions of the tenant's behavior, Mean and Vile wouldn't be exaggerations.
For a few months in college I worked for a landscaping company. At lunchtime on my first day, my boss asked, with genuine concern, "Do you have money for lunch? We can pay if you don't. Everyone here eats." I assured him I had. He and I were the only free American citizens on the crew; everyone else was either an illegal immigrant or on work release from prison. A couple of the prison guys were middle aged and obvious drug casualties. One kept breaking the equipment, so we ended up having to do edging with hand clippers rather than an automatic weed wacker, and push 80000000 lbs. lawnmowers that were meant to be motor-driven. I was a wuss, of course, and nearly broke my back, but most of the others kept on without complaint. Sometimes we would spend an entire day in just one gated community, where every house was one of two variations of shape and redness of brick. Cars could not be parked on the street, they had to be in the garage and the garage door could not be left open. Leaving your garbage can on the street past 10am on pick-up days was not allowed (didn't any of these people go to work?). We had a dress code when there: long pants and t-shirts with sleeves, even on 90+ degree days. I always thought, isn't this communism? Isn't this what you people supposedly hate? This anonymous and regimented lifestyle? It isn't really, of course - they earned what the Soviet bloc gave away to their debilitated breadline comrades. Money and privelege meant you could pick any communist-like lifestyle the free market offered. There were never any bags of trash lying around your neighbors yard, though I'm sure no dogs without leashes either. Mean, maybe, in the modern sense of the word, but never Vile. Never.