It really was too hot to sit in anybody’s garage even with a ceiling fan and a window AC. It wasn’t the weather that was hot, it was the conversation. And I didn’t have my pocketknife, so nothing felt right.
“You know, those founding fathers had it rough,” garage owner man sighed. “It was all about how to keep the colonies together without having trade with England, the country that had all ships and salesmen. There was no way a displaced group of families scratching out a living in a strange land could compete with reliable shipments of tea, tobacco and tomatoes. I’ve really got to hand it to those guys who wrote the Declaration of Independence.”
He waited.
He waited longer.
I had nothing nice to say about the founding fathers. To me, they were the ones who assumed this land belonged to them because they were standing on it.
It wasn’t uncomfortable until another man asked why the American Indians never actually achieved civilization. “The Mayan did it,” he said. “The Inca. The Aztec. They developed calendars, sports, chocolate, written language. They built pyramids and treehouses. They stitched wounds. But American natives didn’t seem to have the get-up-and-go of their southern brothers.”
I thought it best to not talk, so I went ahead and opened my mouth.
“OK, you guys, why does it make sense to you that when someone doesn’t see things the way you do, you attack the one you don’t understand? Do you really think that the founding fathers had it so rugged they gave up everything to be free? What did they give up? They didn’t give up money or slaves. They didn’t up wives or titles. They didn’t give up telling others how to behave.
“They gave up buying imported goods because they were mad about taxes. Americans weren’t obeying Mother Father Aunt Saint England anyway – colonists were outlaws, they would bypass established shipping lanes and smuggle non-taxed goods right into Plymouth or Jamestown.
“It’s just like Thunder Road, only a couple hundred years earlier. Colonists drove the back roads. Deception is way more fun than negotiation. We’re doing the same thing today.
“Which is how we got to corporations being people. We have been told over and over that the one percent control the money. Well, money is not for fair distribution and never has been. If the colonists hated their roots, why did they not leave money behind and try honest trading?
“Corporations will feed us, shelter us, provide medical care, education, retirement plans and maybe even give us two weeks off every year during which time they will have someone else water our plants. All will be minimal and tax deductible. Talk about not having a civilization!”
I didn’t want to talk about the history or future of man. I really wanted to talk about the 3-blade Case pocketknife that I lost last week. I had given it to my dad for Christmas in 1981 or ‘2. When he died in 2000, I got it back. I carried it with me in my left front pocket. I used it every day – cutting straps off newspaper bundles, limes, pieces of anything into thirds – I used that knife.
Until last week, when it vanished.
This was different than anything I’d ever lost, which is a lot. But I kept thinking, looking, checking. It wasn’t in any of those places.
I left the garage on Sunday afternoon without mentioning my pocketknife because how do you even bring up a personal grief after two hours of talking about the crazy horrors humans cause each other by trying to build a free and fair country that isn’t?
When I got home, I folded my laundry and slapped my jeans onto the top shelf, two pairs at a time. Then it hit me.
The pocketknife hit me. In the head. It had been in the front left pocket of a pair of jeans I only wore once and had refolded and reshelved.
I wish it would be that easy to understand the mystery of man, but that really wouldn’t make me any happier than finding my pocketknife.