Something to Confound Rush

I sat in the waiting room, waiting. For the bill. Parts had again fallen off my old car, and when the dealer went to replace them, he found oil squirting out of places it ought not squirt. So I read Women's Day or some such while a clerk added up columns of numbers for me.

Not normally an eavesdropper, I couldn't tune out the two men waiting across from me, one a pale, 60-ish snowbird newly arrived, perhaps from Michigan, the other a 50-ish Latino, maybe Cuban, maybe South American: an alien, presumably legal, although that hardly seems the presumption these days.

The two men talked thoughtfully about cars, weather, generic politics. The Latino punctuated his opinions repeatedly with the phrase, "That's what I love about this country...," and rattled off some commonly overlooked virtue - cars with a history, northern winters, retribution that eventually visits crooked politicians. He seemed to love everything about this country. I was proud.

Newt