by Jim Miller
“Put Frank in the Tank for Tax Evasion,” read one of the protest signs held by a member of the City Workers United. The protest was in response to Antonelli’s proposal to privatize the city’s trash collection, janitorial, and park maintenance services. The move would put hundreds of people out of work and would replace them with workers who made a third less money and had no health benefits. “Stop the Race to The Bottom,” read another sign. I went over and interviewed a stocky sanitation worker named Omar who’d been with the city for over twenty years and who was just a year away from retirement. “This is a slap in the face,” he told me. “That son of a bitch Antonelli is trying to turn every well-paying job in this city into shit work.” I interviewed a middle-aged janitor, Carmelita, who wondered aloud how she’d pay for her kids’ health benefits without her job. A gardener who worked in Balboa Park spoke to me about the care he put into the big flower displays every spring. “We care about our city,” he said firmly. “Put that in the paper.”
Inside the building, I went through the metal detector and got a seat in the back of the hall. They had to move the hearing to Golden Hall to accommodate the number of people who wanted to speak to the issue. And they lined up and spoke for hours. Antonelli’s supporters were in fine form, assailing inefficiency and corruption and greedy, overpaid city workers. The councilman applauded them all and assailed the “union bosses.” I thought about the way Bobby Flash talked about the bosses and shook my head. He would think this was an upside down world, and it was. The supporters of the privatization move were greatly outnumbered by the city workers and their supporters—family members, clergy, local progressives, etc. I recognized all the usual suspects on both sides. The stories of the workers were emotional, and it was grueling to sit and watch them pour their hearts out for hours, deep into the evening. The overall feeling one got was a sense of betrayal and humiliation underneath the anger. These were people who’d been proud of their work and now they were reduced to begging—literally—for their livelihoods.
Antonelli smirked and sneered throughout the proceedings, relentlessly keeping the speakers to their allotted time. The workers’ supporters on the council snarled back at him. One of them was actually crying as she listened to a woman plead with them not to “destroy her future.” Here, Antonelli interjected, “I’m concerned about the taxpayers’ future. We’re not in the business of providing jobs above market rate or paying for people’s health benefits. We’ve been doing that for too long and someone needs to weep for the taxpayers.” This got boos and hisses from the assembled throng along with a “hear hear” from the Chamber of Commerce crowd across the way. Two men got into a fistfight after a speaker on Antonelli’s side called the union workers “communists sucking at the government teat.” One of the workers, a Vietnam veteran, took offense and it was off to the races from there. Finally, after hours of public comment, the council passed the privatization proposal by one vote. One of the democrats turned his vote on the basis of the “undeniable savings to the taxpayers.” After the vote, the place went crazy and they had to threaten to clear the room. I saw lots of the workers in tears and others sitting glumly staring bullets at the council. Some of the Antonelli supporters were high-fiving each other on the other side of the hall. I thought about Bobby Flash’s talk about dignity and fighting back. It was a bad night.
When I left, Antonelli was being interviewed by a TV news crew, crowing about his victory and telling them that this paved the way for pension reform, the next item on his agenda. On the way out, I wondered what it took for someone to get to a place where they could take such relish in wrecking hope. I couldn’t help but think he and his gang were vigilantes in business suits, ridding the city of the very notion that working folks deserved anything more than what “the market would bear,” as he put it. These respectable thugs wouldn’t be happy until the last union was busted, the last government services turned over to Wal-Mart, and the very notion of “benefits” of any kind had been made obsolete. Antonelli and his crew made the city’s few moderate conservatives look like Mr. Rogers, and they wanted to drive the moderates out of existence too—along with the unions. They were in love with the war of all against all, no compromise. I went back to the empty office and angrily pounded out my piece. “City to Working Folks: Drop Dead,” I called it. Neville had never come in that day. Nobody had heard a word from him for three days now. I emailed the story to Neville and hoped he’d be able to run it. Who knew what was happening?
At home, I was greeted by a message from Shane on my answering machine. The collective had a new venture: an internet magazine. They wanted to focus on local, national, and international politics. The idea was to make connections between people’s lives as workers and consumers and the larger world. How could we connect what we ate and wore with the lives of distant others? It all sounded a little vague to me and, after the carnage I’d just witnessed, painfully naïve. When I called back, he didn’t pick up, so I left a cranky, ungenerous message about how I was skeptical about the financial viability of internet media. I made myself a can of chili for dinner and ate it with some old bread and a Dos Equis. The news had Antonelli’s smug face on all five channels. I went to bed and slept with no dreams.
11
The next day, I woke up late and headed into the office to see if Neville was there. No luck. I sat at my desk for a moment and watched the music reporter—Vivian was her name—cleaning out her desk, taking the “fuck work” magnet off of the metal filing cabinet next to her work station and pulling down the Coachella poster on the wall.
“Giving up?” I said as she headed down the stairs.
“Good luck, Jack,” she said. “You’re alright.”
“You too, Viv,” I replied. “Hang in there.” It didn’t look good, but I still hadn’t given up. When I turned on my computer there was an email from Neville. It said, “Great piece. Will run it next week. Will explain everything. Take a day or two. See you next Monday.” I knew things were weird but I willed myself to be encouraged by the note. Then I looked down at my desk and there was an envelop with my name on it. It was my pay—in cash. Very strange, I thought as I counted it out. There was no note either. Well, at least for the moment, I was still employed, technically. I was being paid, right?
After I sat at my desk for a bit longer, I thought I would use my unexpected time off to follow up on my ever-changing family history. The uncertainty at the office and the horrible Antonelli story had distracted me for a bit, but now the potential enormity of my discovery hit me with full force. I decided I’d call Sandy on Neville’s dime. When she picked up her voice was odd, husky as if she’d been crying.
“What’s wrong, Mom?” I asked her.
“Nothing,” she lied. “Why do you ask?” After a long period of annoying denials, she let loose the fact that her latest boyfriend had left and she didn’t know what she was going to do. I spent about an hour bucking her up and was just about to give up on inquiring about the family stuff when she asked about my work. I told her what I’d discovered with no details spared and plenty of enthusiasm. When I was done there was silence for a long time and then I heard Sandy crying.
“Why are you crying now?” I asked, genuinely puzzled.
“I was so bad to you,” she whimpered. “I just thought I could start over and give you a new life. Please don’t hate me for it. Please don’t,” her voiced trailed off and I spent quite a while assuring her that I didn’t hate her—I loved her and knew that life wasn’t easy. It all seemed like empty words somehow though. Somewhere in the cold hard center of myself, I knew she was heading downhill and might never recover. I felt utterly helpless in the face of this bitter realization.
“It’s all gonna be OK, Mom,” I told her. “I love you and I’ll always love you. You’ll get over this. You’ll find someone new.”
“You’re too good to me,” she said. “But I’m an old woman now. I might just be out of chances. But that’s enough about me.” I assured her that she ha
d plenty of life left and tried to see if she remembered anything about Dad’s family. Nothing. She did, however, think she still had my grandmother’s information somewhere.
“Let me go see if I can find that old number,” she said dutifully. I listened as she dug around in a dresser drawer for five to ten minutes. I wasn’t counting. Finally, after several, “are you still theres?” she found a phone number and an address for my grandmother in LA—Santa Monica, to be specific.
“Be careful with her,” Sandy said. “She’s a mean woman. At least she was. It’s been years. Who knows if she’s still at that address or even alive?”
“Thanks, Mom,” I replied. “That’s a nice thought.” After I hung up, I took a minute to get myself together. Sandy was always a disaster, but somehow she kept at it. Who knows, maybe she’d find some rich old codger.
I dialed the number and, after many rings, a frail voice came on the line. I introduced myself to my long lost grandmother and told her my story. After a long pause, she told me how odd this was to hear from me now that I was a grown man. Maybe it was God, she wondered; it was like a miracle. I held my tongue about God, but told her I was pleased that she was happy to hear from me. I would love to come see her and talk in person.
“I just might have something for you,” she said tentatively. “I’m sure I’ve got it somewhere still.” The possibility that she had something from Bobby Flash made my heart race with anticipation. I couldn’t quite believe it was true, but it appeared it was. I thanked her and asked when I could come get it. Anytime was fine, she said, she didn’t go out much anymore.
I got off the 405 and drove down Santa Monica Boulevard and turned onto my grandmother’s street a few blocks from the ocean. It was a nice old craftsman. I knocked and waited. It took her a long time to get to the door, but she answered smiling, leaning on a walker, and looked me up and down with wonder. I strolled into her living room and saw a picture of someone who had to be my grandfather in his army uniform set to head off to World War II. It was Herman. After he died, she’d remarried another soldier who’d been with her all her life until about ten years ago when he died. I looked at Mrs. Betty Johnson, formerly Mrs. Betty Wilson, daughter-in-law of Jack Wilson, AKA Bobby Flash. She had to be in her nineties. Her long white hair was in a neat bun, and as we sat down together on her couch, I looked at her rheumy hazel eyes and wondered what it would have been like to grow up with a grandmother. I started slowly and asked her why she and my mother had stopped speaking. Betty explained that she and Sandy had never seen eye to eye. She blamed Sandy’s leaving for my Dad’s “getting into drugs”—that and the fact that Joe and her second husband, Mr. Johnson, had never had a good relationship.
“Being a military man, he expected more discipline than Joe ever had,” she began. “Back in the sixties, when Joe grew his hair out and started roaming around the country, they fought horribly. Stanley, that was my second husband’s name, used to say cruel things to him when he got angry. ‘You’re just a bum, like that bum of a grandfather you had. Do you want to end up like him?’ Well, that really got to Joe because he’d gone to see his grandfather before he died and really held his memory precious as one might expect, but Stanley could be hard and he just expected Joe to follow orders. That was what he was used to, I suppose. Well, when your father died, Stanley felt responsible. It hit him hard and he wanted to maintain a relationship with you, to make up for it in some way perhaps. But Sandy wouldn’t have it. She thought we were trying to take over. After a while, she wrote us and told us to stop writing you. We had a terrible fight and then she moved and we lost track of you all. I’ve always regretted it.” I looked at her and her eyes were moist, so I put my hand on her shoulder, comfortingly, and said, “It’s alright.” Then she told me how Stanley had never liked Bobby because he thought he was a drunk and a communist. He’d fallen into the bottle up in San Francisco and, before that, he’d been involved in “terrible things.” I looked over her shoulder and noticed that the Fox News Channel was on in the other room and repressed a smile.
“Anyway, Joe had looked up your great grandfather and gone to see him and he used to say things about what a great man he was. So it was a point of contention between us. I thought it was important for Joe to meet his grandfather, who’d stopped drinking by then, but Stanley didn’t like it. He’d been the one who’d raised your father after your blood grandfather died in Europe when I was still pregnant with Joe and he thought your father was disrespecting him. So, Stanley felt betrayed. Maybe he felt like he was never really accepted as your Dad’s father. We weren’t able to have any children of our own, so I know it troubled him deeply.”
I didn’t care about Stanley, but I nodded along politely until she stopped herself and said, “But you came for this.” Then she reached over to the end table by the couch, picked up a shoebox, and handed it to me. I opened it and found a picture of Bobby Flash standing in front of an I.W.W. headquarters with his arm around Gus Blanco. There was another of him as an old man with a big scruffy white beard, beaming from behind the counter at a bookstore. On the back of the first it said, “Your grandpa as a young man, solidarity forever!” The back of the second picture read, “Your grandpa as an old man, solidarity forever!” Underneath the pictures was Jack Wilson’s little red card. Finally, I picked up an old letter addressed to Joe Wilson. I pulled out the yellowed paper, unfolded it carefully and read:Dear Joey,
I am writing you this letter knowing that I won’t be here when you read it. I went to the doctor a few weeks back and found out that I have cancer in my liver and not much time left. Before I go, I just wanted to tell you a few things. The first thing is for you to know that you had a grandpa who was proud that he had such a fine young man as a grandson. I only got to meet you a few times, but that was enough for me to know that you are destined to do great things in the world. As one of my favorite poems says, “Be a bold swimmer.” Don’t let them make you dream contemptible dreams. Do what the poem says, “Wash the gum from your eyes” and “habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.” Never take shit from anybody, son. Life’s too short for that. On your deathbed, you’ll never be sorry that you stood up for yourself. Be kind to your comrades in need, and find a good woman when you can. Women are better than men, son. They are one of life’s wonders. Never worry about how much money you’ve got. Home is everywhere, son. When you’ve got nothing you still own it all. It belongs to all of us. As I said, be kind to your comrades when they need it too. You never know when you’ll need a hand yourself. And if you get lonely, remember, there I am in your blood, a little bit of old Jack will always be with you. In your heart and in your blood. Goodbye, my dear grandson.
With love and solidarity forever,
Your Grandpa, Jack Wilson, who some called Bobby Flash
because he got to the ball in time at short and the sidecar in
time in the yard
P.S. I have left a note for a friend to send you a few small things to remember me by. I hope they will find you well.
I looked up at my Grandmother, still amazed at what I had just read.
“Your father kept those things in the dresser drawer by his bedside,” she told me. “You can keep them if you’d like to.”
“I will,” I said and thanked her. She asked me if I wanted to stay for some tea and I did.
“Let me make it,” I told her. “Where’s the kitchen?” She told me, and thanked me “for being so sweet.” As we sat down with the tea, she asked what I had done with my life, so I told her my story, cleaned up a bit. It was the story of Jack Wilson, reporter, and his son Hank. When I took out my wallet and showed her his picture, she smiled with amazement at the first sight of her great grandson, all grown up. When I left, we hugged each other and I told her I would write her and let her know when she could meet Hank.
It was rush hour when I left, so I drove over to the Santa Monica Pier, parked the car in a lot nearby and walked down past the carnival games and
the restaurants until I got to the end where I leaned on a rail above the ocean. I mulled over the letter that Bobby had sent my Dad, and the deathbed advice he gave him. Looking out at the Pacific glittering in the late-afternoon sun, the words came back to me. “Habit yourself to the dazzle of the light,” I thought, “And every moment of your life.”
12
Back in San Diego, things just kept getting weirder. I got into the office on Monday and it was empty. Neville was nowhere to be seen, but I noticed that copies of the New Sun were ready to hit the streets just as Neville had said in an email he sent me from his undisclosed location. I emailed him back and told him I thought I should start on the Wobbly piece on Bobby Flash. “My Great Grandfather, the Wobbly” I’d call it. I went down to a café on Fifth Avenue and ran into one of the part-timers, Matt, who helped with advertising. He’d gotten a second check, which was good. Most of the staff had split, but he too had gotten an email from Neville urging him to soldier on with no explanation. He did have one new bit of news for me, but it didn’t bode well. We’d lost several advertisers who were cutting back on their budgets, and they were some of the biggies—weekly ads that catered to the La Jolla opera crowd. I held out hope that my Bobby Flash piece might live to see the light of day if we could squeeze out a final issue. It would be my San Diego swan song. Then, who knew?
