Wednesday, July 23, 2008

"THIS COUNTRY BROKEN"

I got a great meal yesterday at a place local people call a "deli" though it's run by a short, tough, middle-aged Latina and most of the food available, besides candy, is hot—rice and beans, chicken, plantainos (sp.?) etc.

They just built a new police station next door, behind which they built a new skate park, or basically moved the ramps and such from the old skate park, next to the community pool, which was getting a little rough. So now it's perfectly safe, if a little smaller.

The food was delicious and unbelievably cheap. I thanked her for it, and she thanked me, seeming genuinely, almost teary eyed grateful (the kids, my son and his friends and others who came and went, only got soft drinks or candy) for my patronage.

I asked her if the new police station was helping her business. She shrugged, and said "little bit" and then "no good now, everything" and then threw up her hands and ended with: "this country broken."

2 comments:

Jamie Rose said...

ugh. stab me right in the heart why don't ya?

you lulled me into safety with the skate park and the plantains and then ...."this country broken"...!

yep.sure is tough all over.

Harryn Studios said...

yeah - ya don't need eloquence to speak the truth ...
reminds me of an afternoon years ago when i was sitting on top of a mesa at acoma pueblo in new mexico with an old native american man after the beginning of the first gulf war ...
it was getting cloudy in the western skies and i said "it looks like a storm" - he shrugged and turned my attention to the clearer eastern horizons which we stared into for a while ...
he pointed to the east and said "big storms come" - then, closed his eyes ...