Post-election tidbits from Cayucos

November 21, 2020

Editor’s Note: The following series, “Life in Radically Gentrifying Cayucos by the Sea,” to be posted biweekly includes the notes, thoughts, and opinions of an original American voice: author Dell Franklin.

By DELL FRANKLIN

I was talking to handyman, ex-bartender, three-times divorced, father-of-many, now working with solar panels all over America, Tag Morley, about the political situation. The farthest person from a political junkie, Tag is a quick study who sees things as they are, his clarity focused sharply by the fact he doesn’t really give a damn and possibly views all stimuli from a purely objective entertainment perspective.

“Now Biden,” he said, “he seems like a guy who’s sitting in the back of the limo on the way to his rally, and they have to inject him with a really strong stimulant to get him out of his senile stupor before he goes up there to the honking horns and says the same old shit. If he gets elected, it looks like he might last a month or two before they put him in an old folks home. Do we want him?”

Tag guffaws at the thought of it.

“Now Trump, he’s John Gotti, the Teflon man, the real Teflon Don, the big time gangster they kept trying to put in jail for years. You see Trump up there rallying those idiots frothing at the mouth, and he’s wearing those gloves, he’s in that trench coat, the perfect ten thousand dollar suit, surrounded by gangsters protecting him because everybody wants to beat his ass or shoot him, he doesn’t have a hair out of place, only difference between him and Gotti is he bleaches his hair orange. Do we still want him? Is this the best we can do?”

Tag guffaws.

“You think Trump’s ever been in a fight?”

“No! He’s had bodyguards since he was ten!”

“So you’re not positive about the two guys fighting it out right now with lawyers? Who would you like?”

“Neither of those vice president contenders. What about that woman from back east? She’s impressive.”

“Elizabeth Warren?”

“Yeh. She’s smart as hell. She’s on it! You listen to her, she makes sense. She’s ready to go. These other two, my God, what a fucking joke.”

He guffaws.

*****

I ran into the sweet lady who took her Biden sign down after continual intimidation. She was in her yard. She’d been watching the results of the election and felt Biden had a very slim chance. It was the morning after. She felt she couldn’t put up with the stress of another four years of Trump. She felt the country was becoming too mean. She seemed a little desperate. People in Cayucos do not like waves. We are not used to the harshness of the rest of the country. We are trying to avoid that.

I told her that unlike myself–an old man–she was still young enough to move to another country, because the nuts were going to take over if Trump gets reelected. Kind of like Germany in the mid 1930s.

“But where?” she asked. “Canada? It’s so cold.”

“Well, there’s New Zealand. Ireland. Spain. Those are places I’d like to go to. A Greek island. I can see myself at a sidewalk cafe on a small Greek island, or lounging on a hammock, watching the Lakers.”

“But I love it here.”

“Well, we’re actually pretty much out of reach from the reality of this country, places like the rust belt, the suburbs, the big cities, the farms going under, the south. Maybe we can ride it out here and hope the madness doesn’t get to us.”

As an afterthought, I thought of reminding her that we as citizens were no longer allowed in other countries and were generally hated and regarded as lost crackpots, but I was depressing her, I think. She’s a very positive person. She shouldn’t have to listen to my brutal cynicism and pessimism.

“I hope we can stay here,” she said. “But I’m thinking about it. But right now I think Biden has a better chance than he did last night, so I’m hoping for the best.”

“Me, too.”

******

I ran into Greg down by the seawall on the morning after election day. He’s a man who has been involved deeply in city and county politics for years. He said, “I turned the TV on for a minute last night, saw the results so far, and turned it off. I’ll turn it back on later on.”

He was reading the Tribune. He was reading about things not pertaining to national politics. Unlike Tag, he feels the effects of the condition of the country in a way that engenders pain because he has children and grandchildren. Though he suspects it’s a joke, like Tag, it doesn’t pass easily in his gut. Greg is and has been so distressed he can’t talk about it. He’d rather get on his mountain bike and rip it up.

*****

The morning after the morning after the election, I ran into Greg again at the seawall, and he was with an old friend. I asked him if he’d spent any more time watching the election results on TV, and he said, “I looked at the news for one minute last night and saw the senate was going to be the same, so it’s going to be pretty much the same thing the next four years.”

Just then, the lady I’d talked to the morning before at her house came by with her dog, and she was in a much calmer mood, almost relieved, even happy.

“Biden is going to win,” she exclaimed. “He’s closing in on Trump. I feel much better about things.”

We talked awhile. She moved on. The wind was blowing so much sand on us, we broke up.

*****

I got an email this morning from Audrey, one of my two most dependable sources for info in Cayucos, and she said she read my latest article in Cal Coast News. She added that on the part where I went ape-shit at a guy with a Maga cap who told me I was not a real American for not having candy for kids and celebrating Halloween, I should have “handed out candy.”

My retort to Audrey, who of late has been thoroughly disgusted with me, was “Bullshit.”

Our kids don’t need candy. Kids in Cayucos and many parts of America can go without candy. They should have their parents explain to them that in many parts of America, kids don’t get enough to eat, live in homeless camps or shelters, and that generally around the world kids are starving and dying, and maybe they should start thinking of them instead of themselves.

That’s what my Dad told me at dinner when I didn’t finish everything on my plate; as the son of a Great Depression survivor, I had it pretty easy in comparison. So I’ve never left anything on my plate, or at least saved what was on my plate for the future, if I couldn’t finish it.

Fact is, we’ve become, as the richest country in the world, forever claiming our exceptionalism and greatness while waving the flag, a spoiled, petulant, whining society leading the world in obesity, drug addiction, hypochondria, homelessness and consumption of energy, and we want more and more and refuse to give up less and less.

We’ve become a bunch of pansies, and the pandemic has highlighted it. We can’t do without anything, and we leave too much on the plate.