The Idaho Youth Ranch thrift store delivered some fresh (to me) Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass LPs into my hands today. They recorded some wonderful music. It is joyful, bright, harmonious and has the all-important priority set on BRASS music.
I’m moving and grooving with the music and thinking a bit about cultural differences.
Whenever I needed labor to supplement my tractor, I had wonderful luck hiring brown-skinned, native Spanish speakers. They seem to have grown up using hand tools and naturally assume that being hired to work meant they should actually, uh, work.
Whenever I see a three or four generation family enjoying barbeque, volleyball and family gathering in a public park, it is the brown-skinned, native Spanish speakers that we call “Mexicans”.
Threaten or violate a hispanic and you find a large extended family on their side. I don’t see that happening with Norte’ Americanos.
My wife accusingly claims I would eat “Mexican food” 3 meals a day. SO! Why should the Mexicans be the only ones who get to. What’s the alternative? Big Macs, triple-cheese pizza and TV dinners?
When my body is complaining about the gardening mountain we are moving, my Guatemalan friend is the one who comes out on my day off to join me operating shovel and wheelbarrow for 11 hours to take a little load off my old joints.
Our press is aghast because south of the USA border, government officials are often bribed in order to process paperwork or allow certain liberties. North of the border you can beg until you are blue in the face. While they enjoy seeing you squirm, it takes a ton of money to hire lawyers to beat the bureaucrats by using the court system. Somehow I’m unconvinced that their system isn’t a bit more honest and affordable than ours.
The ruling elite would have us get all spun-up about the influx from the south or the hispanic population explosion. I might be a lot more worried if I was in the south and the migration was in the other direction.