Back in the late 90s, during one of the times I was
trying to get out of this nasty music business, I drove a truck for Big
Brothers and Big Sisters for a couple of years.
Our job was to pick up donations from people who were contacted by our “solicitors”. They would leave their donations in a
conspicuous place in front of their residence or business, and mark it, “BBBS”. One of the glaring things I noticed, and this
was consistent, something that happened no less than 99% of the time,
was that in the more affluent neighborhoods, there would be a lot less
addresses to stop at, and the ones that did agree to leave a donation, many
would not leave anything, and the ones who did, it would be a pair of used
socks, ONE used t shirt, or, in many cases, plain and simple junk that should
have been thrown in the trash. I
remember one house I stopped at – it was in the rich part of town, looked to
have 8 bedrooms or so, two story, huge two car garage, big yard both front and
back. Well, they had a folding table set
up in the front yard, near the sidewalk, with a few pieces of junk sitting on
it. It was used, rusted out pieces of
metal, wadded up balls of rusted out wire, and other miscellaneous stuff that
was totally useless. When I pulled up,
there were maybe 7 or 8 of these things on the folding table. A young-ish woman came out as I approached
the house, and said, “Ok, here’s your stuff”.
I started to load in into the truck, and when I returned for the next
armful, she has brought out a few more items and put them on the table – more
junk. I took my next load to the truck,
came back to find that she had brought even more junk. This went on for about 45 minutes, my truck
was about a third full of this woman’s useless trash. By the time I was done loading up all this
crap, I was fuming, called into the main office and vented a little, only for
the lead driver to tell me to “calm down”.
Needless to say, all of her stuff went straight into the dumpster at
Savers (, similar to a Salvation Army store, where we delivered all the
donations to). The rich neighborhoods
usually did stuff like this, but not usually quite that bad, and quite that
sneaky. This woman was obviously ready
for me, and ready to trick me into hauling that junk away – instead of calling
the city refuse people to come and get it.
I figured she probably tried this once before, but just had the whole
load of junk sitting out front, at which time the driver told her he was not
obligated to haul away her trash. So, in
order to get even, she pulled this, and I had the misfortune of being the one
to be her stooge. Funny, in the poorer
neighborhoods, there were many, many stops, and most of them would leave bags
and boxes of donations – most of which were in good enough condition to be sold
at Savers. We’d have the occasional
sourpuss, but most were pretty good about all of it.
Back even further, around 92, I made a trip to Nashville,
I really had no business being there, with all my personal B.S. that was
happening at the time, but, while I was there, I got shanghai’d into working
for the Kirby Vacuum Cleaner Company. I
was only there a short time, but I was there long enough to see a pattern. In the more affluent neighborhoods, the
people were rude, condescending, and sanctimonious. There were a couple of times when the people who
lived at the house would tell me which room they wanted to have cleaned, and
then get in their car and leave me there by myself. This is the way Kirby advertised – they would
offer to clean and shampoo one room, and that would be the demonstration for
the machine. Of course, these rich
people knew that, and looking back, they were doing nothing more than shaming
me, ridiculing me, and probably snickering the whole time. As with Big Brothers/Big Sisters, in the
poorer neighborhoods, the people were always attentive, sometimes apprehensive,
and sometimes even a little angry, but they would sit through the
demonstration. I only sold a few
machines, and you get three guesses which people bought them – hint – they were certainly not in the rich parts of town.
There’s more. When
I was in Austin in the mid to late 2000s, I had a little hula company, we did
live Hawaiian music and hula. The thing
that comes to mind first is this one black woman who called to book us for her
party, she dickered and dickered an dickered over the price. She got us down from $300 down to $250 – that’s
fifty bucks, for the arithmetically challenged.
We get to her house, and it’s a mansion – four stories, each level being
its own house with 6 or 7 bedrooms, 4 or 5 bathrooms, huge living area, huge
dining area, and at least two of the levels, there was a huge, full
kitchen. This house was right on Lake
Austin, complete with swimming pool, Jacuzzi, concrete statues around the pool
area, and a nice sized boat tied to the launching dock right outside the gate
that went to the lake. The husband sat
there for the first 20 minutes of my being there after I got done setting up
the sound system, telling me all about his multi million dollar business, his
huge house, his cars, etc. And these
people just HAD to save the fifty dollars at our expense. It was the same, poorer people treated us
very well, made us feel welcome, made sure we had something to eat, and were
happy when they handed us the check at the end of the show. I don’t need to tell you how much hassle it
was when we played for the Rich and the Ruthless. I remember one in particular – huge ballroom
in an upscale hotel, huge first class buffet, bunch of uppity people at the
party. Before we went on stage to do the
show, somebody came to us and said, “Follow me, we have dinner for you guys”. They took us into a room that looked like it
had been hit by a hurricane, and pointed to a table that had a bunch of brown
bag lunches – sandwiches and potato chips, and we went to the drinking fountain
to wash down our food. Back in the mid
90s, I did a bunch of luaus in Hawaii – mostly for lower income people on the
west side of the island – the families would get together, pitch in, set up, cook,
and there would be anywhere from 100 – 300 people. Not only did they NEVER try to question our
price, but they always made sure we, the entertainers, ate as much as we wanted
– they would wait on us hand and foot, making sure we were comfortable, always
felt so welcome by those folks.
This is no coincidence, this is a definite pattern of
behavior. I’m sure there are exceptions,
and I’m sure they’re very rare. In my
lifetime I’ve noticed this, the “Haves” are very selfish, self serving, greedy,
and they treat folks less fortunate than them like they are lower forms of
life. My own step dad is one of ‘em, I
had the misfortune of going to restaurants for dinner with him and my mom on a
few occasions over the years, and let me tell you, I was beyond embarrassed by
the way he treated the wait staff, and this jerk was not even rich (fairly well
off, but no rich), he was more of a put on than anything else – and one of
those sleazy sales type guys who would go to parties and make the rounds,
selling everybody on his latest pyramid scheme product – form Super Bluegreen
Algae to the water ionizer to the Chi Machine to the Hothouse, on and on and on. I
have tons more of glaring examples of this, but hopefully you get the
idea. And, let’s not forget that most
rich people see poor people as the reason for all the ills of the world, and
that we are nothing more than a bunch of lazy people who have no ambition, and
who only have our hands our expecting free stuff.
As with most things, I have no answers, only
observations, and lots of disgust.
Sorry, but that’s my reality.
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