Agnes and Henrietta encounter one another at the very intersection where Trump’s funeral procession was expected to pass by.
Agnes: “Henrietta, what are you doing here? It’s blazing hot!”
Henrietta: “Agnes, I could ask you the same question. Didn’t you
just visit the dermatologist? You are too fair skinned to be out in the sun.
And as you said, it is miserably hot. Most likely we’ll both suffer heatstroke.”
Agnes: “Couldn’t miss Orange Man’s funeral procession. Harold looked so
forward to seeing it himself.”
Henrietta: “Are you sad that Orange Man is gone?”
Agnes: “I’m sad that he didn’t die sooner so Harold could have seen the
procession.”
Henrietta: “I’m sorry about Harold. He was a good man.”
Agnes: “He was a good man, much better than Orange Man. Do you think his
hearse will be MacDonaldsmobile like the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile?”
Henrietta: “More likely a gold-plated Cadillac, a gift from Qatar.”
Agnes: “I think he should have been stuffed and put on a golf cart.”
Henrietta: “I don’t so. He couldn’t sit up. He was just a walking
talking blob of a man.”
Agnes: “Ha, ha, ha. We’re making fun of Orange Man.”
Henrietta “Mr. Misery deserves it. He said he wanted to make America great
again, and he made it worse than it was before.”
Agnes: “That’s pretty much what Harold believed. That’s why he so much
wanted to see Trump’s funeral procession. Hated the man. Thought he wrecked the
country, though he believed America was already in decline before Trump drove
in the final nail in America’s coffin, as he put it.”
Henrietta: “Why’s that?”
Agnes: “If the country wasn’t already a mess, then Trump wouldn’t have been
elected.”
Henrietta: “I’m sorry Harold felt that way. It’s a sad way to die
thinking your country is… I don’t know.”
Agnes: “Done for, finished, over with. But your George thinks the same
thing. He and Harold were always lamenting America’s decline and fall.”
Henrietta: “True.”
Agnes: “But they were right. You and I are old enough to remember
when America was great. It wasn’t great in the Trumpian sense. His idea of
greatness is obscene. He was incapable of understanding that greatness had to do
with the people, not with things, money, or a big military. His idea of
greatness was the same as those black rappers with golden teeth and covered
with flashy big gold chains, diamond rings, or watches. But at least those guys
earned their money with their music rather than steal it from taxpayers who
actually work for a living. He was always rich enough to pay others to do his work.”
“Our parents lived just getting by during the Great
Depression and World War Two with dignity that was noble. That was America’s greatness,
desperate individuals enduring hardship heroically. They simply struggled when
the government had abandoned them as it has under Trump. He knew nothing about
greatness because he was a small-minded man who never knew hardship and
struggle and who really never worked for a living.”
Henrietta: “He was all about his legacy by building an ugly arch and
garish ballroom and putting a gold veneer on everything in the White House like
he was King Midas, which was his dream. But his legacy is already formed
forever. And all those sycophants who served him will live in infamy for the rest
of their lives like those Nazis who served Hitler. He’s not only the worst
president ever but is just an awful human being. He is admired by Americans who
think MacDonalds and Las Vegas are signs of greatness, but like Trump they’re
fake and ruinous to the human body and soul.”
Agnes: “No, doubt about it, Henrietta, America has changed. It’s not the
same place I knew growing up.”
Henrietta: “No, it isn’t. You know my George considers Harold his
best friend. They would talk about the old America that they knew. Hot rods, great
movies, and rock n roll music. Even the old America was a golden age during
hard times. It’s gone. George got real depressed when your Harold died. He felt
all that he had left from the old days was gone. Yeah, he had the kids and me, but he
really enjoyed talking about the old days with Harold. I mean Harold was ten
older than George and a Vietnam veteran.
“Harold hated the war and LBJ for allowing it. But when he
was called up he went. And I think he did so only because he had uncles he
liked who served in War War Two. Harold did say that he admire the men he
fought with. Most believed they had been thrown into stupid war by a stupid
president, but once in Vietnam they did their duty the best they could. It was
an awful war for everyone including the Vietnamese. He didn’t hate the people.
He admired their toughness. He did hate the government. And that stayed with
him the rest of his life.”
“George once said that when he and Harold lived they were
surrounded by heroes. He meant the Great Generation of his parents and aunts
and uncles. Then out of nowhere came
those BLM rioters whose hero was a criminal who threaten to shoot a pregnant
woman in the stomach. They burned cities and were allowed to. Then came those
strange cults of Antifa and the Wokes and the MAGA cult, Trump’s thugs who
invaded the Capitol January six, which became a symbol
to George for what America had become—a nation with a few American heroes but with
too many America-hating MAGA thugs. How could such villains make America great
again? Their idea of greatness was fire, violence, and destruction. That attack
was the beginning of Trump making America a global villain in the image of Putin’s
Russia, whom he admired. Watching the firefighters in France and Spain, George once
said some countries still have heroes. Ours is like Russia where the people
serve a twisted man with twisted narcissistic ideas.”
Agnes: “But that sixteen year old lifeguard who rescued that kid from a really scary ocean showed us that there are a few heroes left in the country. Tears came as I watched that boy struggle against a monster of an ocean to save a kid from drowning. But that hero used to be the norm; now he’s the exception. Why else was he so greatly celebrated? Because the likes of him are so rare in a nation awashed in corruption, violence, anger, and despair. Trump and the MAGA cult are all about letting people suffer and die or just killing them outright. No heroes in the White House. Just Sickos, like some Charles Manson cult! Harold said America used to be the world’s hero in the way that young lifeguard is a hero. How I wish Harold could have seen that boy hero so he could believe there’s still hope for America. But he died too soon to say good riddance to the Orange Man and ‘god bless you’ to the young lifeguard. It’s strange that I felt so much love for that young man saving a child’s life. He was a teenage Good Samaritan who outshined the adults.”
Henrietta: “And a black guy went in to help. I bet the Orange Man
hated to see white, black, and brown trying to save a Hispanic kid’s life.
Can’t feel any love for the Orange Man, only disgust.”
Agnes: “I hated the man, more a simpleton than a man. I suppose partly because
he ruined Harold’s love for the country. Harold once said it would be better to
die during the Great Depression or during the war when America was still great
not knowing how awful the country would become. The country had its flawed then
certainly, but it was still magnificent in so many different ways. America’s
rapid decline set in when men like Trump—greedy for money and power and distain
for real Americans—took control of the county. Trump never understood greatness because he
never had to struggle. Struggle is what make a person real—rather than fake or
simply a nobody—like the pioneers who crossed the country in covered wagons,
leaving a trail of graves that would be washed away by time.”
Henrietta: “Trump’s America is certainly no country for old folks
like us who remember that Greatest Generation that produced us. My mother grew
up on a farm and plowed with a goat plow. No phone. No washing machine. The
family celebrated when they got electricity and the phone and a radio that came
with it. For the longest time they went to town in a wagon. They were real Americans living the hard life,
like those folks in that movie Grapes of Wrath. Today, the country has
become fake like a national dollar store. I mean the suburbs seem fake to me.
I’m glad we live in the city that’s full people coming and going. Maybe the city
is fake too but it doesn’t seem so. It’s just too full of life and small businesses
of all kinds. Still, American life has
become awfully commercialized. It’s all about buying stuff and being
entertained. George said Americans have become like the people in the movie
about Martians invading and taking control of people’s minds. I mean everyone is
connected to their smart phones, TVs, and computers. I have all three, but it
does seem strange being plugged in to some kind of electronic device. George
said the minds of Americans are being controlled by technologies operated by
what he called billionaire Puppet Masters. I asked George if he wanted to come
to Trump’s funeral procession. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I’m glad he’s dead. It’s
like finally having a painful rotten tooth removed.’ George and Harold both
hated the Orange Man.”
Agnes: “Does George believe the country will get better without the rotten
tooth?”
Henrietta: “Don’t think so.”
Agnes: “Why?”
Henrietta: “He said a culture isn’t like misplaced car keys. Once
you find your keys you can start you car and get on with your day. But when you
lose a culture it doesn’t get lost. It disappears and a new culture has to be
build. But if the materials with which to build a new culture are all rotten,
then the new culture will be rotten. He believed that’s the situation America
faces.”
Agnes: “Yeah, Harold always said George was really smart and had become
very cynical about America’s future. Of course, Harold agreed with him. And I don’t
think Americans today really care because not knowing the America Harold and
George knew, they don’t know what was lost. And that goes as well for idiot
Trump who never knew America because he was raised in a bubble of wealth that
isolated him from the real America. His vision of America is represented by McDonald’s,
a garish big business that sells assembly-line fast food. He doesn’t
understand that MacDonald’s food is cheap and filling but not great.”
Henrietta: “Well, George would say that Trump couldn’t know what
made America great because he really never was an American. Like you said he
was raised in a bubble of wealth, which would be like being raise in a Macy’s
department story. He was created as an artificial person, a product of wealth
and privilege.”
Agnes: “Harold said a man wasn’t a true American without have gotten his
hands dirty with soil or grease or both. True Americans have known hard work
and hardship. Harold once said that black people are truer Americans than the white
Americans who hate them because they’ve known hardship their entire history.
Trump was no more a real American than a manikin is a real person. Put an
expensive suit on a manikin and what you have is a manikin wearing a expensive
suit.”
Henrietta: “Here comes the Trump’s hearse.”
Agnes: “Good god! It really is a gold plated Cadillac that looks like it
was designed by Liberace. Oh how I wish Harold could see this!”
Henrietta: “And the dead Trump sloshing about in his coffin. They
couldn’t pour him into his grave because he’s toxic waste.”
Agnes: “There are people applauding, Henrietta.”
Henrietta: “Why? Because he’s finally dead or because they really
admired him. Even men like Hitler and Stalin always had admirers even after the
harm they’ve caused.”
Agnes: “Members of the MAGA cult applauding their former leader.”
Henrietta: “It is all kind of sad.”
Agnes: “Fucked up, Harold would say, even though he knew I wish he wouldn’t
use that word.”
Henrietta: “And burying the Orange Man isn’t going to make things
better. He was rotten but so is the country that produced him. It’s like in
Russia. A healthy country doesn’t produce a man like Putin. The rot is not just
at the top, as George would say.”
Agnes: “The change has been harder on our husbands than on us.”
Henrietta: “True. Why is that, do you think?”
Agnes: “We stay focus on the family, on our husbands, our kids, our
grandkids, and on our neighbors. They keep us focused and happy even when
everything outside is rotten.”
Henrietta: “I think that’s it. The crowd is breaking up.”
Agnes: “Another Trump spectacle over with.”
Henrietta: “Maybe now the media will shut up about him and talk
about something else. Something less nauseating.”
Agnes: “Like the fires?”
Henrietta: “Yeah. The fires are sad, but at least they are being
fought by heroes. We’ve been without heroes for a long time, like those ICE thugs
terrorizing communities.”
Agnes: “Certainly no heroes in the White House or anywhere else in D.C.”
Henrietta: “Come on, Agnes. Let’s have tea at my place. I made a
delicious lemon cake, if I may say so myself. Most likely George will be at Harry’s Place drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. You know George never
wanted to use a computer and never watches news on TV.”
Agnes: “Fake news?”
Henrietta: “No, I don’t thinks that the reason. I don’t think he
ever made the transition to the new world order. That’s why he misses Harold.
He and your Harold love to talk about the old days.”
Agnes: “They did didn’t they. America changed, but they didn’t. Kind of sad
really. My Harold died a sad man.”
Henrietta: “But he had much to love, you and the kids.”
Agnes: “That’s why he was sad. He believed we deserved a better America.”
Henrietta: Come on, Agnes. Let’s have a cup of tea.”
Agnes: “Okay.”
