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The gang at Louie’s is together once again

To the editor:

Somebody told me the other day that Louie was back in town. I went over to the tavern yesterday, and sure enough, it was open for business with Louie behind the bar. It all looked the same except for a plastic palm tree behind the bar with a label that said “Another Sunny Day at the Villages.”

“What happened?” I said to Louie. “I thought you were in Florida for good.”

He shrugged and let out a deep breath. “It’s a long story,” he said, “this Florida thing didn’t work out too good. It was Loretta’s idea, really. She said ‘Lou, you’re working too hard. You’re old enough that you should relax and have some fun. Why don’t we try Florida? Marie’s down there; she likes it.’

“‘Florida? What am I going to do all day — play shuffleboard? C’mon.’

“‘No,’ she says, ‘these places have a lot of activities — you’ll have fun.’ And she’s going on and on about it so I said ‘OK, OK, but we’ll rent, right? I don’t want to get into some condo deal, find out we don’t like it, and then lose my shirt.’

“So we’ve been renting down there. It’s not good. It’s hot. The traffic is murder. It’s just old people. You don’t see a lot of kids or young people. It’s not good. So, we’re back; that’s it.”

Anyway, it was like old times again. My Democrat friend, Ken, was there; he was on a third drink and was all worked up.

“What do you think of your boy Trump now?” he said to me, loud enough for everyone to hear.

“What am I supposed to think?” I answered. “He’s still around, isn’t he? You thought he would be impeached and gone by now.”

“You wait, he’ll be out before long. He won’t last when he says things like he said about Elijah Cummings and Baltimore: ‘rat-infested — nobody wants to live there,’ C’mon, give me a break. That’s not how a president talks.”

“Yeah, well, Cummings said stuff about how people were being treated at the border by Trump — kids can’t have a shower and worse stuff. Is that how a Congressman is supposed to talk?”

“Well.” he went on, “what he said was racist. He always says he’s not racist. What a liar he is.”

“Oh, come off it, Ken,” said somebody down at the end of the bar. It was Henry; he doesn’t come in very often. He’s a retired lawyer; his wife died some years ago and he lives with his daughter and her husband and their kids in town. When he does come in, he says it’s just to get away from the grandchildren for a while. He came down the bar to us.

“Ken,” he said, “several years ago a London newspaper, in their travel section, ran a piece about traveling to America. It was a list of places in different cities that they told their readers to avoid because those areas were dangerous. Being an American, I know that those are almost all black neighborhoods. Does that make the newspaper article racist?”

Ken looked at him, then he said, angrily, “What’s your point?”

My point is this,” Henry answered, “Trump says Baltimore is dirty. You say that is a racist statement. A British newspaper says that certain neighborhoods in America that we all understand are mostly-black, are dangerous. I simply want to know whether you consider that a racist article.”

“It could be,” said Ken, “What do I know about the British? There certainly must be racists over there.”

“Ken,” Henry went on, “several years ago, there were riots and looting in Baltimore. If I said ‘people were rioting in Baltimore,’ would you agree that that was a true statement?”

“Yes.”

“If instead I said ‘people, mostly black, were rioting in Baltimore,’ would you agree that was a true statement?”

Ken hesitated before muttering “Yeah.”

“If I told you that on Sunday mornings on TV, I can watch a service in a large church with a congregation immaculately dressed and totally attentive to the preacher’s sermon, would you agree that that was true?”

Ken hesitated. Henry went on. “If I told you that that congregation was all black, would you agree that that was possible?”

Ken just looked at Henry.

Henry laughed. “I’ll take that as an affirmative. If I were to tell you that I was downtown yesterday (it was a beautiful afternoon) among a happy and friendly crowd, would you believe that? If instead I said that I was downtown yesterday among a happy and friendly crowd, about half black and half white, would you believe that?

“Ken, a minute ago, you agreed with me that a statement that black people were rioting in Baltimore was a true statement. Does that make us both racists?”

Ken said nothing; he just stared down at his drink. Henry patted him on the shoulder, then turned to Louie and said, “Louie, another drink for Ken — on me. He needs one.”

John Brittain

Lewistown

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