-- Matthew 6:28
Willie got straight A's, was a Jehovah's Witness and wore a hearing aide, and so even though they were archrival footballers, the boys in Silas accepted him whereas his homefolks in Butler rejected him. Willie has twenty seven stories, at least, about life two feet above ditch level, where sanity is only accepted on faith. Willie relates to the kind of situation where it's about taking all of the bullets out of the gun but one and hoping that's a mitigating circumstance when you're looking for the man who beatdown your cousin. He never had to shoot because they couldn't find him. He was hoping they wouldn't find him, but it was that close. Willie tells the tale of that redbone college girl who invited him to study in the dorm but turned out to be wearing daisy dukes and a halter top that Friday afternoon. He's not ready for a brew yet, so the Mountain Dew was on me.
It took 87 minutes for the chicken wings to thaw and get cooked up and so it was past midnight and the Iggles loss before I hiked back to the Marriott. I never expected to wait that long for some hot food, and I didn't expect anybody to walk up to me for any either. But I know the feeling of walking around downtown Cleveland pissed off and looking for something to eat, except Willie wasn't pissed off.
As usual, some folks will size me up to be a Que dog or an Alpha, depending on my attitude. Willie said I fit the Alpha profile when we got around to that part of the long conversation. But it took a long time for him to get past the immediate past which for my man was a hard knock life. I'm happy to fit my profile, but I get the feeling that it's hard for Willie to get other folks to deal with the fact that he's something other than an ex-crackhead. He just turned 33 and hasn't had a taste in two years. He has been a dental assistant and an auto mechanic, 'strictly blue collar' and tells tales of legendary BBQs and his fool friend Chuck who didn't realize what a good woman he had before they eventually got married and moved out West.
Willie's a peasant of the better sort. One who doesn't pretend to be anything more and yet knows the transformative power of God. I asked him how old his father was, knowing I was ready to say something pithy about how young 33 actually is. He has three he says. the one we all have, the Heavenly Father, his biological father and the man who raised him. The man who raised him is 83. The man who keeps him putting one foot in front of the other is infinite and Willie is full of acknowledgement. The third man is available via Facebook and things are getting better, step by step. Willie is figuring a way to share his story of redemption with the knuckleheads he's accustomed to being around, especially the younger ones. It's easy to see him as that kind of counselor, just as soon as he can turn his inner conviction into inner strength, and his outer expression into one of evident socially redeeming purpose. But today Willie is a man whose good times are tainted - too tainted for funding by my interpretation of the eyes that fund. But I know something about American men that I don't think too many men bother to find out.
Unemployment is going to 13%, according to the latest experts on Bloomberg Surveillance this morning, and as Tom Keene puts it, there's something wrong with the term 'small business'. Officially, small business means less than 500 employees, and those are all the companies that are getting no bank loans these days. So there's a class of financiers in America that can't even be bothered with 'small business', so what are the chances for peasants like me and Willie?
Take a look when you have a moment, because even the Google VW has been to Silas, Alabama. Right in the middle of town, there's not much of a town. And good kids come to big cities like Cleveland, where the regional banks are failing left and right, and sometimes it gets down to taking crack, or taking down scores, or as in the case of the Imperial Murders, just taking other people's lives and dignity. There's still not enough bandwidth to get all those stories out. They are born on the tongues of men like Willie. There are some towns that reject you for your differences, even if those differences are character strengths. There are some towns that accept you, and there are others that ignore you altogether.
Where do you go when all the things that are too big to fail actually fail? You go where things are too small to succeed but actually succeed.
My mother is sending me Bible verses, and I know a third of the famous ones. So I'm thinking of King James, the only version I remember. This is the story of Christianity that stands when other institutions fail. This is the story of faith in mankind that transcends market fluctuations. This is a story of the power of redemption - of something that works for the peasants even when the royalty stands wealthy, illiquid and clueless. I can give it a Deist name or not, but it is the divine that resides in our souls - that thing that tells us right from wrong in all circumstances - that thing we try to suppress intellectually or self-deprecatingly.
There's a lot of small business around this land.



