With renewed threats of violence in the streets from all radical leftists, I’m content to just lay low for a while and avoid the urban unrest. I’ve experienced this before.
I’ve always admired people who stand up for what they believe in, as long as they are respectful and willing to have an intelligent two-way conversation with those who believe something different. Most normal folk in my native South speak their mind but are generally respectful about it. Midwest folk for the most part don’t speak up quite as much but are just naturally polite and nonconfrontational.
Every so often, however, you encounter someone from … somewhere else.
During my years as a key account manager for Caterpillar Heavy Equipment products, I frequently traveled to Minneapolis to call on the large construction companies in the region. Quite by accident, I discovered an incredibly charming small town near Minneapolis that was a perfect and peaceful place to overnight — a place with the vibe of a resort town and yet close to my clients — and it became a regular rest stop for me.
So on one occasion, with the day’s work done, I’m minding my own business at my favorite hotel, sitting at the bar reading a book and nursing a cocktail. At 5 o'clock, I’m the only person there. The bartender knows my name and drink and always prepares it when he sees me walk in, setting it down with a “Welcome back, Mike.” He’s a smart guy working his way through college who tells entertaining stories when I want to talk and goes quietly and professionally about his business when I don’t. I always tip him well.
A few minutes after I arrive, a man announcing himself as a local real estate agent takes the seat beside me — always selling, I guess. I must look like a guy who wants a riverfront home. We are now the only two people at the bar. He won’t let me read my book and insists on making small talk. You have probably been next to one of these types on a flight somewhere… He never asks what I am reading, so I guess he’s not a reader. A shame — I always enjoy talking with avid readers because they always “know things,” and if they happen to be readers of history, then dinner is on me.
OK. So small talk it is.
He asks me what I am doing in town. I tell him I’m here because I happen to like the town very much and my customer is working on a major project nearby. All good so far, if somewhat predictable and boring. After all, this is the Midwest, and we are polite here. Ergo, I let him ramble on about the Minnesota Vikings’s current prospects (poor), how bad the traffic is in town during tourist season, and how his ex-wife ruined his third attempt to quit smoking.
After a half-hour of chitchat, two attractive and well-dressed 30-something-year-old women sit at the bar, and the real estate agent immediately leaves me and moves four stools down to sit by them. He strikes up a conversation. “So, you girls in town for some fun?” I’m guessing he’s a “hound dog.” I go back to reading. When his conversational skills fall flat, he tells the girls, “Mike over there works for CAT and is here for a couple of days visiting clients.”
Is he looking for a wingman?!
I am still reading when the ladies leave their seat and basically attack me as the environmental destroyer. I say, “Hey, I’m a pretty nice guy and like clean water and air as much as anybody.” They respond with, “People like you who rape the land should be locked up!” They piled on, “It is people like you who will cause California to slide into the ocean from all the fracking!”
I tell them, “I haven’t fracked anything. You’re not going to disparage the horse I rode in on too, are you?”
One of them is now telling me how I have not only ruined the world but their night out as well.
I’m guessing by now the girls aren’t from the Midwest…
The real estate dude disowns me posthaste and exits the crime scene.
I try to explain to the two complainants that California is unlikely to slide into the ocean. The tectonic uplift of the lower San Joaquin Miocene, a strong indication of weak coastal upwelling, and fossil assemblages and calcareous-siliceous rocks formed from diatoms and coccolithophorids prevent the scenario they describe.
The were not humored. The facts don’t matter. I am nothing but an “environmental destroyer” who now appears to be an insufferable know-it-all, and that just intensified their attack.
Sam the bartender comes over and asks, “Everything okay here?” They then turn their ire on him with a stare that could melt the polar icecaps and drown all the polar bears, unbelievably lecturing him on minding his own business. I suspect Sam won’t be getting a tip from them tonight.
I seize the opportunity to exit the bar and retreat to my room. On the way out, I put a twenty on the brass cash register for Sam and quietly wish him “good luck.”
Back in my room and peacefully reading my book, there is a knock at the door. My first thought is, “You’ve got to be kidding — they followed me?” I can see the headline: “Caterpillar salesman mysteriously stabbed to death in local hotel room.”
To my pleasant surprise, it was the hotel manager bringing me a fresh cocktail and telling me the drink as well as the room is comped for the night. “Our deepest apologies for what just happened.” He’s from the Midwest. I have stayed here like 30 times and they know I keep to myself.
Walking to my truck the next morning, I am stopped on the street by a local businessman whom I had met a few weeks earlier. He grins and says, “Well, have you sent California to Davy Jones’ Locker yet?”
Just one more great thing about small towns!
I never found out what agenda those two barroom assailants were pursuing or why they were in town, but I sure hope they saved California — and didn’t leave a string of dead bodies in their wake.
I am reminded of a statement I once heard deep in the mountains of my native Tennessee after someone had crossed way over the boundaries of social behavior: “You ain’t from around here, are you?”
Except, it wasn’t a question…
[…]
