This
is the third part of a series in which I had been on a road trip and decided to
put some fictional stories together based on persons and adventures I had on my
voyage. Naturally I used no one’s real name and changed the names of places I
went. We continue with The Happydale Travelogues;
While in Happydale I visited my friend
Mikhail Bakunin or Михаил Бакунин in Russian. He usually went by Mike since most Americans could remember
that name better. I’m not sure if he really believed he was the early anarchist
philosopher, the writer who came up with the idea of the “propaganda of dead.”
But many of the people in this town believed they were famous people and he
seemed to want to jump on the band wagon.
He
went through a lot of trouble to look like Mikhail, complete with a beard and
long hair. He lived in a moderate ranch home with his mother. He had read every
book the guy ever wrote. He knew his philosophy inside and out.
We
sat on the covered porch of house. We on some wicker chairs he had on the
porch.
“You
know those yellow and black tripped warning cones I drove over last week, at
that construction site?” Mike asked me.
“Sure,”
I answered. “That episode landed you in the hospital as a major melt down on
your part.”
“True,”
he said. “But thinking it over, I’ve decided that crashing that road construction
site was actually my way of getting back at the Kansas Government for spending
so much money on road work and so little on education.”
“Now
wait a minute,” I said. “You said that part of the reason you blew up that
night and trashed that place was because your medications weren’t working right…You
had been depressed all week……And you finally snapped and attacked those cones
without putting any real thought into it at all.”
“That’s
what I originally thought. But on further contemplation, I realized my subconscious
mind chose that site because of political reasons. Keep in mind I am Mikhail Bakunin,
the originator of the “propaganda of the Dead.”
“But
the propaganda of the dead implies that the propaganda is thought out before
the dead is committed. I’ve never heard of it being done the other way around.”
“I’ve
never read anywhere were it couldn’t be done that way. Besides do you know that
the State of Kansas
“Well….Maybe.”
“And
you know as well as I do that for the last five years Governor Sam Brownback
has been cutting education, causing less needed equipment, causing the firing
of teachers, larger classrooms…You see… we value our smooth roads, but we don’t
give a shit about our future citizen’s education. They’ve cut drivers ed.,
language classes and cut backd on history and even English language arts. So
you see…. it was perfectly logical for me to decide to decimate a construction
site.”
“Come
on. You had got all those facts and figures after you trashed that site, not
before.”
“Wrong.
I’ve been thinking about these facts for a long time. I am political you know.
I pay attention to these issues.”
“OK.
Maybe you knew about these facts ahead of time. But I still don’t think you can
commit a crime and then decide it was a political crime. I may be old fashion,
but I just don’t think that kind of political action is responsible.”
“Well,
I didn’t get arrested for that.”
“And
that amazes me.”
“I
was in the poor black part of town, the ghetto if you can call it that.”
“Did
anyone see you doing all that damage?”
“I
don’t know. Do you think it is possible that most of the black people living
there just didn’t really care that a crazy white guy was going off on construction
equipment?”
“I
have no idea. It does make me wonder if that site had been in a purely white
neighborhood, would some anal retentive up-tight white person have called the
cops on you?”
“That’s
a good question. I guess I may never know the answer to that.”
“That’s
provided you never drive your car over construction equipment in a white
neighborhood, some night when you flip out and go crazy again.”
“PLEASE!
That last episode was enough for a whole lifetime. I don’t ever want to go
through that again. Once was bad enough.”
“And
don’t forget that when you were done at the construction site, you went to your
favorite bar, scared your girl friend and all your other friends there. It was
they who suggested you go to the hospital. And the bartender wouldn’t serve you
any drinks at all. Surely none of that was political”
“Well….no.
I can’t think of anything political about going off and freaking out my
friends. That part was not political at all.”
“We
have agreement here.”
“And
maybe on one other thing. You see it was probably a terrifying even when I
drove over those cones and they went flying in all directions. But now I think
it’s funny. In fact, the whole episode at that site seems funnier the more I
think about it.”
Mike
was right. We both had a weird sense of humor and the more I thought about his
car going over all those cones at that construction site, and how many of them
were probably flying all over the street, maybe even up in the air, I started
laughing. Then he started laughing. The next thing I knew we were both laughing
out loud at the though of all those cones flying all over the place.
And
that’s the way it seems with many of life’s trials and tribulations. What can
seem like a major tragedy one day; may turn out to be a funny story later in
life when the fear and shock wear off.
-សតិវ អតុ
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