In my mind, I should be in a rented car rolling through the thick but manageable summer air in Beaver County.

   Rocking some shorts and a nice Polo style, shoes and socks flung across to the passenger floorboards as soon as my suitcase was stowed in the back seat. Good Lord, I hate having to wear shoes! Out of the airport and rolling down 376 towards Center, Aliquippa, Monaca, Beaver, Chippewa and more points north northeast. Down this four lane monstrosity crossed by other roads that seem to branch off like the veins of a leaf or on the back of my hand, the roads that feed to homes and businesses and shopping centers.

   Across the Mighty Ohio at Vanport and then off this major artery onto one of those smaller ones and into Beaver. Two lanes and some change feeding between houses, row houses, businesses and churches, a cemetery, a park and even the county courthouse. Past one location of the Brighton Hot Dog Shoppe – yes of course we’ll make it to one of these locations and the Housing Authority offices where several of my relations worked at or were based out of. Past Kretchmar’s magical bakery - I’m sure someone thought to get some maple rolls and cinnamon bread for my visit! Down from Beaver, briefly into Bridgeport and across the Beaver and then the climb through Rochester. Through the roundabout, up to the four way stop, the red light at Sheetz – left up the hill, across the Deer Lane Extension, past the school and Shewak’s and the new St. Cecelia’s. Bear right up the hill twisting past houses built almost right against the road or with driveways that fly up at impossible angles that must be hellish in winters. Past Sylvania Hills cemetery and mausoleums where a few of my own are laid to rest – Grandma and Grandpap Sheets and aunt Barb resting in peace. Around the curve where Marion Hill Road comes up from New Brighton, past Bachman’s Garage, signal for the left I’m going to take in the middle of the next curve…

   And then we’re on dirt. Officially it’s 911 address is Schoolhouse Road but to most everyone in our family it’s just “The Lane.” Second house on the right. Unique but unremarkable white block house with some white siding, one car garage and a couple of car ports. But this is “home.” This is my Uncle Richard’s home or “Dickie’s house” now that my grandparents have passed but it is still referred to as “mum’s” or “Grandma’s House.” This is the place a good deal of my Pennsylvania memories have been made.

   This is the place I’ve enjoyed walking in dew covered grass that hides no little sticker burrs that dotted out yards in Texas. This is where I’ve sat on the swing and enjoyed my coffee smelling the grass and clover and listening to the cars and trucks passing on the Route I came in on. This is the place where me and my many cousins chased and captured lightning bugs and played croquet and freeze tag. This is the place I’d hear my Grandfather whistling as he puttered in the workshop or coming up the stairs from the garden. This is the place I’d play dice baseball on the desk in dining room while Grandma whipped up supper in the kitchen. It was here I’d hit and toss the whiffle ball in the back yard pretending the Pittsburgh Pirates once again defeated the hated Reds of Cincinnati.

   I have already written at much length about the kitchen table in this place.

   This is the place I would pop in every couple of years and see my grandparents slowly age, one visit to the next. Noticing a hand shaking lifting a cup of coffee, a little less spring in the step, a body a little more bent. As I noticed it became more important to pay attention and to ask questions. And I tried and I learned and locked some things into memory. And they watched me grow – tempestuous child into bored teen into a grown man [in my own mind] and into a mature person.

   In his famous speech in Field Of Dreams James Earl Jones’ Terrance Mann speaks of a place where it’s as if they’ve “dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces.” That’s how this place feels to me. Just standing in the drive, looking up I can feel days and nights many decades gone so many times returning to this safe haven. Standing in the kitchen I hear the voices and the laughter of so many loved ones. Standing in that yard I feel the worries of the world being drained from me and the energy and peace of my youth flowing back into me. Truly this is the one place I can totally relax and totally recharge myself. A few days here and I am good again for another year, even with the whipping that modern travel has become.

   In my mind, I have pulled into the drive…

    I hate writing about this stuff but I have to clear my head.

   A friend of mine – or maybe a former friend – parroted [copied / reposted because like so many people today they don’t have original thoughts] a couple of things on The Facebook that disturbed me.

   I will preface this by saying that I was associated with a group that would meet once a month or every six weeks for two or three of years – until the Covid pandemic hit and we were all locked in our own little universes. Since then due to some health issues with various people that were the primary hosts, the group has basically splintered and disintegrated. In a way I breathe a sigh or relief that there was no knock down, drag out over politics.. There was no “Fuck you!”, “No FUCK YOU!!!” screaming match. [Which unfortunately also mean no tearing of shirts off and women wrestling in their bras cat fight either.]

   Now this member always our ultra-conservative in the group which balanced out one full time ultra progressive liberal [with one liberal who was a non-regular attending member]. I am sure there were some spirited yet civil discussions as the more moderate persons kept the balance.

   As a bit of insight, I was a Republican [a moderate conservative but still] for many years but as the evangelicals became increasingly prevalent and the party shifted harder to the right [about 2004] I became less of a Republican and more of a Libertarian. I’m pretty sure I DID vote Libertarian ion 2008. In 2016 I voted for Trump over Hillary. I did not want share her vision of America. In 2020 I voted against Trump specifically on his personality. He did not present himself as a proper person for the office of the President. Corporate CEO, maybe [although his record of bankruptcy says maybe not], President of the United States, no. I saw 2024 as another referendum on Trump again and voted against him. [Which will probably get an FBI file opened on me since I am saying it out loud.] I don’t think he understands regular Americans and I know he doesn’t understand politics but somehow he rallied a populist vote promising stop the inflow and then get rid of the brown people coming to America despite America “not being great” [since we need to make her great again, which Trump failed to do in his first term]. He also told the world that he was going to go after his political enemies. That meant basically anyone who stood up and said he was a crook, a serial rapist and the world’s biggest narcissist crybaby with a martyr complex and that there was no fraud in the 2020 election and he lost fair and square. In retrospect, I kind of wish he had won in 2020 so we would be done with his shenanigans and he could fade into the sunset.

   Anyway, the post in question had [surprise] an aging white male opining that the Left and Muslims were moving to Texas to change voting patterns to turn Texas Democratic and that once that happened “that would be the end of America.” To which someone added “ [There is a] Global Marxist / Communist [plot] using Muslims as pawns to overthrow the governments of the world.” In researching, I believe that this is from a group called that Faith And Freedom Coalition, a conservative advocacy group linking the Tea Party movement to evangelical voters.

   I sighed when I read the headline and the added comment. I should be used to this by now having lived in Texas for fifty years but sometimes the level of ideocracy just gets to me.

   I asked if this person truly believed that. I pointed out that the persons coming to Texas must be coming to fill all of those great job opportunities that the Guv and the legislature has brought in and to fill the jobs that the brown people being shipped back to their points of origin. I pointed out that in order to turn Texas Democratic [“Blue”], those people would have to take over a lot of very, very rural areas that were very consistently Republican [unlikely because that is not where jobs or homes are] and asked why the current group of conservatives is so afraid of dissent or opposing viewpoints. I also reminded them that Texas had been a fairly Democratic state up until the 1984 election. [Democrats continued holding a lot of the state offices until the early 1990s.]

   The answers were pretty party line: “Muslims [the next non-whites to be targeted by The Administration, mark my words.] are here to destroy America, they’re screaming it all the time.” Trump won in a landslide so the people must not have liked the Democrats.” And “I Stand with Israel” – which no one asked about but I am sure links to Muslims wanting to take over the world. Starting by turning Texas back Democratic.

   I sighed again. And “unfollowed.”

   I don’t want to give D.J.T. or his falling all over themselves fawning followers any more foothold in my brain than I have to. I am not going to argue with people who are not open to discussion. I am not about to try to convince someone who has chosen their version of “truth” and “reality” that they may not be seeing The Whole Picture or A Realistic Picture.

   The fact is that the internet has made it so much easier for people to slip down rabbit holes and find these extremist views that resonate with them and then parrot them right back out on social media. And social media given each and every one of them a megaphone to announce what they have found, what new “truth” they have been enlightened to. And when we were stuck inside for most of 2020, it gave a lot of people time to fall down a lot of rabbit holes.

   I recently told someone that the only thing that Trump say that connects with people is
“I believe the same conspiracy theories you do.”

 

    This bunch scares me.

 

   They’re taking their cues from someone who is clearly unstable and obsessed only with power and revenge. And making deals. Not deals that are rally going to help Americans mind you but to say “I made a deal. I did this. I did it. Me. Don’t you love me for it?”

   Sadly, Trump’s obsession with money has him trying to run America like a business and make deals with the world and increase revenue in any way except, you know, allowing his Billionaire Buddy Club to cough up a few more dollars a year in taxes. This now includes trying to whitewash history, roll back progressive hiring and college admission practices and legislating any discussion of gender [as opposed to sex] out of existence. And kill public radio and television. And levy huge “fines” against colleges for Anti-Semitism for “allowing” Anti-Israeli demonstrations on campus.

   And now they want to try and re-run the census. But not count anyone here illegally. Despite the fact that the census is Constitutionally mandated to run every ten years. And that the census is to count all persons dwelling in the United States, including citizens, non-citizen legal residents, non-citizen long-term visitors and undocumented immigrants.

  

   This bunch scares me. The fact that 77 million people thought that this person was the best person to run the country saddens me.

   The Boomers have been allowed to hold on to power for far too long. 70- and 80-year-olds rarely bring fresh thinking and new ideas to the table. But who wants to be a Senator or Congressman now? I don’t blame my fellow Gen Xers for saying “no, thanks.” And realistically, our time is coming soon, too.

 

   This is the strangest point in my life and maybe in American history. I can’t believe the thigs that are happening and yet, these are a lot of things I thought would happen in Donald Trump was re-elected.

     I hope that when historians are looking back at the start of the next century that this will just be an era of one-man throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. I hope that the next elections begin the return the nation back toward moderation and politics back toward a more civil discourse. Yes, I might as well hope that Santa Claus brings me Elizabeth Perkins for Christmas but a man can still hope in America. For the time being.