No Parking

I own the building where my gallery and my wife's women's apparel shop is located. I will be paying an eastern bank umpteen thousand dollars for this privilege until the day I die, unless of course I sell it or lose it in some unforeseen confluence of fate.

I paid a premium for the space when the town and nation was trending upscale, back in the pre crash day when brick and mortar was still relevant.

Along with my building I purchased two parking spaces out back where my wife and I could park. And to be doubly secure that I could one day rebuild if any unfortunate fate would befall my store, I bought a share in the community parking lot across the street that was created back in the forties so that retail customers in town would have a place to park while they were shopping. Just to square it with the planning department incase something ever goes awry.

Many of my neighbors have no parking at all. One prominent land owner was supposed to kick in a share way back when but realized that she could survive just fine poaching parking from those who paid for the privilege and never did get around to it.

Where is this all leading? Yesterday I got back from a short trip to the mailbox and there was a large and nice SUV in my wife's space again. I waited for the owner to arrive from the County Welfare office, a twenty something latina as it happens, and asked her why she felt entitled to park in a space that was clearly marked private and tenant parking only?

"I am only parking for two minutes. You are being selfish," she told me. Now I used to summer in Berkeley. I know the whole rant - private property is theft. I tried to have a rational conversation about the propriety of mooching my wife's space but she was having none of it. I was being weird for being possessive of something she only needed to borrow for two minutes. My protestations about the need for respect for private property went right over her diminutive head.   I had something she needed, for two minutes, and if I couldn't understand that it was my problem. I shook my head and walked away. Maybe one of these days I will actually tow, and run the risk of full scale blowback.

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I have had a few interesting conversations regarding my recent Welfare Mom epistle. I don't like either the rich or the poor when they sponge off those of us who have to shovel the coal into the hopper. My friend B has a sister in Section 8 housing. He said you wouldn't believe the nice cars that the people in there are driving.

I asked K, a friend who has worked for the county for years and she gave me the skinny on the whole thing. Yes, they are driving really nice cars but they are all leased. They can't own property and get their free Medi-Cal so they lease everything, work in cash and keep the gravy train rolling. She recounted asking a guy his name and address one day and he withdrew a paper from his pocket that had both written down so that he could remember who he was that day. She says it goes on all the time, unquestioned.

I had friends in Hawaii many years ago who were raising three kids on welfare while at the same time growing serious poundage of gnarly bud. Very wealthy. When I questioned them about the propriety of their leechy actions I got some revolutionary humdrum about hating the politics and policies of "the man."

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B told me the other day that my thinking was simplistic because childbirth is too grueling and horrible to even conceive that women would make more babies to ensure more welfare checks. These women in my town with four surrounding the stroller and one in tucked away in the oven are obviously the chattel of dastardly men. I was informed that males have all of the power in the bedroom and women are merely unwitting victims of evil males or ignorant churchgoers in bondage to some papal edict. Where can I find some of this supposed power and why have they been keeping it away from me?

I saw a kid at the board of equalization yesterday, couldn't be much past 22, with her five children with her, all obviously out of the same stock. They all had fake right to life tattoos on their little arms. She looked terribly young. I hope that her faith and her god is strong enough that I don't have to pay the bill for them one day. I guess I should blame her husband, she is a woman and obviously powerless.

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I have lived in New York City, visited some of the worst neighborhoods you could imagine and seen multi generational welfare families. People get as institutionalized to relief as midwest corporate farmers get for farm subsidies or banks get for cheap government money which they use to swallow up smaller banks. I get disgusted by all of it.

I can't prove that women have babies so that they can get more money from the system as several of my friends allege. But I think that I am a pretty good judge of character. I see what I see and I know what I know. I look these people in the eye as they pick up their monthly checks. They are unabashedly entitled.

My friend B, who gets mildly disappointed when I fail to toe the liberal line, says that we should be happy to support these families and throw them a little extra, so what? Just look what we have given the oil companies and the war mongers. I get her point. But I still say that it's hard enough to pull your own weight without having to pull somebody else's, maybe somebody who was at least smart enough to know better.