Straight outta Cayucos: The real problem with America

October 28, 2024

By DELL FRANKLIN

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. 

Franklin’s memoir, “The ballplayer’s Son” is currently on Amazon.

The real problem with America is not inflation, or immigrants, but that we have become a spoiled, petulant, fat country that eats too much, wants too much, therefore needs too much. Ever looked at pictures of Americans from the 1900s through the 1950s, and even the ’60s and ’70s? Very little signs of obesity, or, in those days, “fatsos.” Growing up in America in the 1950s, if you were fat, that’s what you were called—fatso.

Walking along the seawall during tourist season in Cayucos, which is almost all year these days, one usually observes a parade of belly-bulging heifers and slugs in a feeding frenzy, parents and children alike, with a gorging burrito in one hand and a super-size soft drink in another.

When did the tide turn that Americans needed to literally wallow in excess?

When did it become an obsession to pursue luxury beyond our means, feel cheated when it wasn’t attained, and set the table for generations of people who began to expect too much?

When did the rich start expecting not just one or two houses, but three and four and then a gigantic yacht and then a plane and then more and more until nothing satisfied them, or their progeny, while feeling they were entitled to hold the levers of political power?

When did the middle class begin to feel it was necessary to aspire to all this junk, or at least a part of it, and feel cheated when they didn’t have more than they needed and, most disgusting and depressing, began buying and consuming everything in sight and not seeming to be really happy?

If you can’t quite pay your bills, the solution is simple: don’t buy what you don’t need, and try eating a little less, and eat something that’s actually not going to turn you into a wobbling blimp.

Ever looked at the political pundits on cable TV whining about the price of food? None of them have ever missed a meal. They’re at least affluent.

Ever looked at some of those scowling billows of humanity whining about the price of food when interviewed on TV cable stations during political rallies? They not only have never missed a meal, they’ve never missed second and third helpings, and they pile it on.

You want to buy a house? How about scrimping? That’s what people did at one time in their lives; they started budgets and deprived themselves of things they didn’t need that weren’t vital. They didn’t buy things they couldn’t afford.

Your kid wants a bike with a motor? No!

I realize it’s tough. Everything advertised on the tube seems so irresistible, and especially the food, and especially the bad food that will either put you in the emergency room before you’re 40 or kill you at 60. Stop looking at it. Stop the chips and the sweets and the super sodas and monster burgers and hold your nose and eat some steamed broccoli and try and be satisfied with a smaller piece of meat, America.

Hey kids, you don’t need a lot of toys. You need a ball of some sort, a skateboard and a pair of sneakers. A bike? Okay, a real bike. Ride that baby to school. Ride it everywhere. Don’t be a pussy, build some strength and stamina. Maybe then you’ll be one of the 23% that qualifies for the army. A disgraceful situation.

Put that phone away, and, if you don’t, you deserve a good paddling or punishment. There’s a whole world out there to explore.

Ask yourselves, Americans young and old–whatever category of so-called class you dwell in–who’s happy?

I’ll tell you: Immigrants with jobs, any kind of jobs, dirty jobs, jobs you’d never work; but they’re thankful for a roof over their heads, enough to eat, and the freedom to enjoy whatever off time they have with their kids, who know enough not to expect what they don’t need, unlike what they observe daily in Americans who feel if they don’t have what the other guy has their lives are miserable and meaningless and unfulfilled.

Why were the Depression era/WWII people our “Greatest Generation?” Because they grew up with next to nothing and made the best of it. Today, we’re the richest country in the world, with an economy that dwarfs all other countries, and yet we’re a pitiful laughingstock reflected by our politics, our politicians, and our people.

Poor America.