Ken Zuckerman

Two summers ago, a new neighbor of ours….who just assumed we were Trump supporters…was doing the typical “chat across the fence” thing that happens when two people happen to be in their yard and near the fence line at the same time. We had some surface level chat about the housing market, etc….since he had just bought a house. He then took a swerve to the border. “Man, if we don’t get these Mexicans flooding across the border shut down…this country will be all screwed to hell.” I asked, “Hey. Who roofed your fucking house last week? Looked like a hispanic crew to me. I didn’t see one person who looked like white. Know why? (We lived in a depressed economic rural setting) I’ll tell you why. Because every Goddamn white, high school drop out around here…is on social media bitching about not being able to make $40 fucking dollars an hour for doing NOTHING.” He looked intimidated. I was comfortable with that. I don’t know about where you live, but for the last twenty-years…in my area…I’ve watched immigrants happily doing hard jobs for a solid livable wage, and showing up to work on time every day of the week. When it comes to hard, strenuous jobs….where you actually have to bust your ass all day long, the immigrants are the ones getting a lot of it done. The neighbor hasn’t tried to speak to me again. That’s probably best. I watched our weekly postings of who has been thrown in our county jail. There’s almost never an immigrant in our jail. It is flooded with repeat Meth addicts for stealing, domestic abuse, or assault charges of some kind. I know one thing; I never see the people who are on in and out of our jail….on the roof of a house on a miserably scorching mid-July day making some Trump supporting asshole happy that they didn’t have to roof their own house. Never.