Overdue Visits and Scary People

Can you believe it, fall is just around the corner. The nights are getting cooler and the sidewalk chalk art is fading around the neighborhood. I guess all the kids got the memo that it’s time to redirect their energy into back-to-school mode…however that will look this year during the pandemic.  

For the first time in nearly a year I took an overdue trip to my niece’s cottage, wanting to get it in before her daughter goes back to school. My great niece teaches honors English to kids who really want to learn while her two sons are cared for by my niece turned-granny-nanny and her husband who are both retired teachers. I asked Niece #1 (I have two) how her daughter feels about going back to school, given the Covid-19 pandemic we’re living in, does the school she teaches in and where her son was supposed to start 1st grade have plans that feels safe and comfortable? "No! Not at all,” she answered. It seems the powers that be in their school district is a Republican who either doesn’t think the virus is a real threat or he don’t care. They aren't taking many of the same precautions other schools in the state doing. So Niece #1 will be doing online classes with her grandson and, she says, if her daughter so much as has the sniffles coming home from the high school she’ll keeping her two grandsons at her house instead of sending them home. Last January they all got extremely sick---my niece with a confirmed case of Covid-19---and she says they’re not going through that again!

Like all states in our union there is at least one county that is a hot bed for hate groups and both my nieces lives in one. Niece #1 was telling me about the local chapter of the Proud Boys which make themselves very visible. Look them up on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website, where they track hate groups, and you'll find this introduction: “The Proud Boys are self-described ‘western chauvinists’ who adamantly deny any connection to the racist ‘alt-right,’ insisting they are simply a fraternal group spreading an ‘anti-political correctness’ and an ‘anti-white guilt’ agenda.”

My niece says they run around the area in groups of 12-14 pickup trucks that are decked out in gun racks and large American, Confederate and Trump flags, generally trying to intimidate others by the mire sight of them. They made the news last year when a black family was having a birthday party for little kids and the Proud Boys were racing back and forth in front of the house while the party was going on. And just last week they made the news again when they gathered in a college town causing counter-protesters to gather. A local news media wrote: “The group is listed as a hate group because of its frequent denigration of Muslims and Islam, misogynistic rhetoric, and its role as a gateway to other extremist groups.” You know where this is going, don’t you. Yes, our president thinks the Proud Boys have “some very fine people” in their numbers. And if you think that's the most outrageous endorsement he's made then you didn't see him at a press briefing this week saying nice things about QAnon, a group that spreads conspiracy crap and believes the Democratic party is full satanic pedophile cannibals. Yup, we literally eat aborted babies for breakfast. It would be funny if Jo Rae Perkins, a proud card-carrying QAnon member hadn't just won the Oregon Republican U.S. Senate primary and was praised by Trump.

Back to normalcy: My nieces have both grown into wonderful women, both have very different personalities and interests but they are close friends as well as sisters. They talk on the phone every day and hearing that made me long for the days when I had daily phone contact with someone I loved and who knew me as well as I know myself. It’s been years since I've had that kind of relationship in my life. Niece #2 was on vacation up north or she would have been at the cottage too. She's cornered the market on humor in our family and it's always fun to be around her.

I hate driving the expressway I have to take to get out to get to either niece’s home in the boondocks and as I was going through the infamous S-Curve through town it occurred to me that the number of times I’ll have to get on that expressway for the rest of my life can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Once I move I’ll never have to do it again and good riddance to that route out of the city because I don’t want to be one of those old people who drives thirty miles an hour under the speed limit while cursing drivers dart around me with their middle fingers in the air. As I told my niece, one of the things I like about moving is that when the time comes for me to give up driving, I’ll have a built-in back up plan in place. The continuum care campus will have a mini bus that will go to the grocery store weekly and a concierge service to help us arrange rides to doctor appointments. 

With any luck, I won’t have to give up driving for 6-7 years. But from the first time I sat behind the wheel of a car, I’ve hated driving so giving it up will not be the traumatic 'benchmark' for me as it is for others. For my brother…now that will be a different story. His first wild driving stunt happened when he was four and he took his tricycle at full speed off the end of the porch to a six foot drop below to a cement driveway. Picture Fonzie and Happy Days and that was the brother I grew up with---the stereotypical teen aged boy of the mid-'50s trying to look cool with the help of a pocket comb and pomade-enhanced greaser hair. He pushed the envelope on everything he ever drove: bikes, boats, snowmobiles, dune-buggies, cars and pickup trucks. I don't envy my nieces if/when the times comes when they have to ask their dad to hand over his car keys. ©

* That's my brother on his bike at the top.