Private Enterprise Welfare

The last twenty years of my gainful employment included many miles on the highways and interstates mostly in the U.S. of A. Now four years past the threescore and ten when I finally stepped out the left hand door, I am amazed how even in retirement the memories continue - almost every day and every dream every night! I am alive today because of my trucks. Anyway, I just realized those longhaul years also provided a heads-up to a societal trend already beginning back then! I saw my first cardboard sign held up by a bedraggled homeless-type, probably about fifteen years ago, well before it was in vogue here in Canada. With signs lamenting their woeful circumstances and usually concluded with GOD BLESS YOU, their ‘evidence of residence’ often was blankets and pup tents underneath certain city bridges.

My first attitude to these less fortunate was one of sympathy, or even a kind of respect. A little sociopolitical thinking here: what circumstances would lead people to hold up their poverty for all the traffic to see? It takes a certain amount of guts and humility to stand out there in front of everybody. I would wonder if they had siblings, or parents - kicked out of the house maybe? Would parents write about them in their Christmas letters? 😏Then the follow-up thoughts after observing some of these same persons in ‘off duty’ feeding their huge dogs, smoking cigarettes or even toking up. Not good thoughts, these clouding my first attitude, but not immediately leading to disparagement. I did most of this 'thinking' quietly, choosing to reflect on condition of my inner spirit for the mouth speaks what the heart is full of, as it says in the Bible (see Luke 6:45). No shortage of opinions on the CB radios and in truckstop drivers’ rooms. Ironically, not much shaming among the drivers, just loud opinions about those poor #!.< ers out there. 

My thoughts? I was a guest there in America. This country which “Trusts in God” also provides opportunity for the have nots to show their face. If you are down and almost out, but still up for it, you stake a spot and announce it to the Cadillacs and the 4 X 4’s and Big Trucks and SUVs and whoever. Yes, considerable humility required, and courage, as I reminded myself. Up where I come from we can hide our poverty – at least for a while – because our social system provides opportunity for those who cannot (or will not) go to work to “go on welfare.” There are pros and cons to our slightly more socialist system, so I told myself; and occasionally I would allow myself to be special guest to a drivers’ room conversation telling about government health care, govt pension plans, and I felt no need to carry a gun in my truck because I did not feel threatened by communists at all! In hindsight I recognize I may have over glamorized my country just a bit, especially to a captive audience. Once a trucker, always a trucker; once a preacher always a preacher! ... always some bs - so I was told once. 😇

Fast forward to these retirement years. This old trucker, this old preacher still thinking about many things, including considerable meditation and reflection about my circumstances. By now I have taken stock of the modest income accumulated during my working years and now converted to ‘fixed income.’ It’s called a LIRA, so my wife and financial manager tells me.  Aah, it may be modest, but definitely better than no income. My dreams at night and my retirement volunteer activities bring up the unending subject of life, life’s opportunities and tragedies, and how to make good decisions among it all. I have the dignity of eating meals in our home which got paid for a number of years ago – not as elaborate as most of my relatives and colleagues, but that’s another story. And we are very comfortable – unless a disaster or sudden ill health were to occur. How big a disaster? And what type of disaster? Mostly we are good!

Also (yes also) I am endlessly reminded of those less fortunate, the almost homeless, the unemployed or underemployed and substance addicted right here in my neighborhood. And, in this city it’s an easy train ride now for the downtown homeless also to show up here. Yes, our fast food drive thrus are a handy place to stand with the plaintive looks and cardboard signs, even borrowing the American closer “GOD BLESS YOU.” (See one of my earlier blogs “Hey What’s Your Name,” April 15, 2021). They now stand here before us too - social safety nets expired or squandered or ...?  American private enterprise begging is now another reality emigrated to this good Canadian city, Calgary, province of Alberta, often dubbed “little U.S.A.” So in this good country many refugees, many immigrants, and also ongoing economic and political disparities, all of this in the grips of a pandemic of epic proportions, neither Americans nor Canadians exempt.

 I have the feeling that if I were still a trucker down there, I would perhaps need to be kinder and even a bit quieter. My political views are still similar to the way they were then, a Christian socialist (yes), but instead of the occasional pro-Canadian speech, I might do some more listening, and perhaps even confess a bit about us westerners becoming somewhat disillusioned with an out-of-touch eastern government which needs a tune-up. 

Maybe all of us, whether north or south of that 49^th parallel, need to reconsider the gift of this Turtle Island. Environment and neighborly relations of utmost importance, it behooves us to get it right with our Creator, and with each other including the indigenous, and who cares whether it sounds liberal or conservative! 

And I would love to have a conversation with – if still alive – one or two of those pioneer street corner prophets.