Oregon Tavern Age: Fourth of July

I dropped into OTA country for a draft of craft malt liquor on the Fourth of July. Stock car racing was on television. A statue of a loser Confederate general disgraced a corner. OTA men and women were gambling. Shots of tequila and vodka. Vodka and tequila on the rocks. Cheap beer chasers. A watercolor of a sad owl decorated a wall. One OTA man said he’d just got off work pumping gas. The OTA female bartender said she didn’t want to work today.

Wimbledon was going on another channel. What if I asked to watch all the European socialist players kick American capitalist ass? No, I didn’t really care. My interest in professional tennis ended with the death of Arthur Ashe, easily the greatest professional athlete in American history when it came to advocating for social justice. They didn’t call it that in his protesting heyday. It was called civil rights, and for some unknown reason, I prefer that name.

I looked up at the television and saw the stock cars go round and round and round, making useless noise, generating planet-killing pollution. I also saw stands filled with fans hoping for a crash, fire and blood. I thought the whole scene a good metaphor for the current state of America.

An Andy Jackson burned a hole in my pocket. Why not ditch that racist and genocidal son of a bitch into the bowels of a state gambling machine? The Harriet Tubman $20 bill is thankfully coming soon. I’ll never defile that unit of currency by gambling it away.

You just know there are going to be many white Americans who will refuse to use it or accept it as legal tender in their businesses. Imagine that on the Fourth of July. When in the course of human events, is this country not going to suck so bad on matters pertaining to race? I’d really love to see that day. If only Reconstruction had been allowed to run another 50 years. You wouldn’t recognize this nation today. The Fourth of July would be a whole lot different. Better. I might even celebrate.

No, I wouldn’t disappear Old Hickory into the machine. It could go a lot farther, to, say, the homeless person splayed outside the sidewalk of the OTA joint. It’s a funny thing to see a man frying like an egg on a sidewalk and you walk right past him. I’m almost getting used to it.

Yeah, give that Andy Jackson to the homeless man. It might end up being the only decent thing Andy Jackson ever did for America.