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Small towns tend to be overstocked with colorful characters. Dunsmuir is no exception. One of the “customers” (scare-quotes denoting that she never actually purchased anything) with which we had to deal was a paranoid schizophrenic woman that the people in town called “Whoopi.” Whoopi would engage anyone in conversation, though her favored prey were shopkeepers. Shopkeepers cannot leave the premises as a general and simply walk away as can people on the street. Also, the option of raising a voice in anger is seldom available to the shopkeeper. Whoopie would come into the shop, and start up a very normal conversation. The weather, how’s it going, that kind of thing. Then she would notice something in whch her interlocutor was genuinely interested, like clothes or old building. Then she would get progressively more paranoid in her references. Invariably, Whoopi got more paranoid and upset and in the process upset both shopkeeper and any customers that happened to be present.
The cabbie who drove us to the airport tonight reminded me of Whoopi. He looked like a cross between Michael Moore and Dennis Franz. Like Whoopi, the cabbie started off reasonable and inquisitive. He asked what someone with a degree in political science could do with such a degree. He claimed that his self-effacing ignorance was a result of his eighth grade education. By the time he told me that conservative groups were banned from college campuses, I protested. When he got to the part about how the Somalis and the Hmong immigrate here for the welfare benefits (“30 years ago, it was other groups coming up from the South to places like Gary Indiana and Chicago ‘for jobs’. Now they are all on welfare.”) When I mentioned that 75% of welfare payouts go to whites he responded that, on a per capita basis, more blacks than whites are on welfare. This was a debate I was not prepared to have on the way to the airport. It was obvious to me from the conversation itself that the spirit of racism is still alive and well in St. Paul.
I like cabbies, as a general rule. I knew several in San Francisco, and some even in Dunsmuir (these hacks would work like devils for three or four days and then make their dollars last much longer 260 miles north. Truth be told, I prefer the Somali cabbies that work for the airport cab companies to the racists at the local fellows. As much as I like to give my money to a cab company that is right around the corner, I think I will be calling the Somali cab companies from now on.
Posted by Underblog at March 12, 2005 9:17 AM
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