Gas
It was a beautiful day, I was driving around the downtown block of a small Illinois town, on the Missouri border, almost clipped by a car at a stop sign, due to impatience, on my way to have a watered down coffee, at one of the national fast food joints. The past hour had been spent picking up deals at the local big box grocery; items normally quadruple the cost, in an urban setting, ignored by the locals, a steal for me, namely locally sourced, organic Kombucha, and high quality yogurt.
AARP has been my destination spot for tax aide. I was excited to join at fifty, all the great tax advice made possible by my long term foray into education, never making enough, to price myself out of this service.
The other line started at four a.m., I was told, in the heart of St. Louis, a city ringed by neighborhoods, holding up the city proper, a city somehow unable to have a proper city core, something to do with paying for parking, race, a lack of proper police protection, and a never ending feeling of coldly chasing space. At 11:00 a.m., on a sunny Saturday, I was turned away from the tax service at that local library branch. The room looked like an overbooked DMV, with many sad, serious people, waiting hours and hours.
I landed in Illinois, several days later, the route included breezing by desolate towns, factories, skirting strip clubs, all closely located to one of the most treasured Native American finds in America, just far enough away from danger to matter.
The highlight of the trip was not the two day excursion to complete my taxes, but the people crossing my path on this adventure. The entire IRS operation stopped working at the exact moment of completion, forcing me to wait an hour, and ultimately come back the following day, an excursion that would effectively take a total of eight hours. The following day again reenacted the crowded, disorganized feeling of the DMV, with cold stares as to how I got to the front of the line, hostile glances.
The irony of the trip would be both whimsical and political. Life lessons were not meant to be a part of the task at hand. Yet, I did decide to wait the final hour of operation to see if it was possible to not have to make the trip again, the following day. No such luck, but the conversation that ensued made up for the journey. Or, perhaps the conversation was the purpose of the journey.
I was just about to get engrossed in my library book, by J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy, a must read for any citizen interested in how our country got where it is today. Instead, I would have this reality throw me the most interesting curve ball, up close and personal.
The older gentleman, wearing a cap announcing he was a Korean War Vet, inquired about the book. The young woman, sitting next to him, began talking about her employment as a bus rider, for Special Education students, at the local district, and the difficulty of finding safe, local housing. The sharp diversion regarding the recent comments, made by the current political administration, the Press Secretary, caught me by surprise. Sitting in a country library, three individuals intersected to discuss whether or not the Jews were killed during the Holocaust, by gas.
I stated to the gentleman, a kind older man, who reminded me of my late father, that the chambers were called chambers, yes, but gas chambers because gas was used, to kill people, the Jews, and other people, as well. The gentleman just stared at me, after my comment, without uttering a word. Frankly, it would have been just as easy to ignore his comment, or go back to my book, but real life trumps really great non-fiction, and this conversation spoke directly to both the ironies, and parallels, of current day life. Words do matter.
The conversation stayed with me. This situation is an example of what happens to comments, made by important people, with power, and how fake news actually filters down to the masses, namely me and my compadres, in a small town library in rural Illinois, on a lovely, sunny day.
Ironically, several weeks later, my significant other would find himself on YouTube, looking at a video, made by a Holocaust denier, stating that the temperatures made it impossible to kill people with gas. We talked about the heat, and the number of bodies, enduring the heat, and those showers, and I was reminded of my time in a small, rural library in Illinois. I am glad that I said something, even if the response was a cold stare. We all share the same space and the same information. Words do matter.
