Ghost

January 12, 2019 Jerry King Comments 0 Comment

Exchanged emails with a friend last night. He is a Trump supporter. I am not. I asked him how it is that he is such a Trump-man when his people were immigrants. Perhaps I will hear from him later this morning. We are friends so he will likely have some answer for my consideration. I speculate that the cause of his support for a President who has been a life-long con, a shyster, is the blowtorch of hatred, racism and Nativism that comes from social media. How can Americans be so confused and averse to their own interests? Do we not see what this man will do if he has enough opportunity?

I am more and more interested in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. I purchased a copy a few months ago and it waits in my “to read” stack of books. Steinbeck wrote about the great dust bowl and the migration west by farmers who nature and debt forced to give up their land.

A similar migration is taking place in my own lifetime. Impoverished families from Central American are walking and making their way north through Mexico by various means of transportation to the our border. They are turning themselves in to border patrol agents in order to ask for asylum. This has been normal until Donald J. Trump was elected President. By his word this is now pronounced a crisis, provoking an increased militarization of the border. He insists that a high concrete and steel wall be built from sea to sea to keep the criminals, drug traffickers, and murderers out. Moreover he is depriving 900,000 federal workers of their pay as leverage to extract the funding from Congress for his wall.

We are all in the hands of a criminal minded man.

All of this was brought home to me while watching Springsteen on Broadway which is available on Netflix. Springsteen’s song, “The Ghost of Tom Joad” is played acoustically, accompanied by Springsteen’s commentary, his thoughts on the present division in our country. I was moved by the music and the commentary. I’d like to offer a Youtube of “The Ghost of Tom Joad”

I will append the lyrics of the song after the Youtube. The highlighting of some phrases and lines are my own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyBfPzY6S7Q

The Ghost Of Tom Joad
Men walkin’ ‘long the railroad tracks
Goin’ someplace there’s no goin’ back
Highway patrol choppers comin’ up over the ridge

Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge
Shelter line stretchin’ ’round the corner
Welcome to the new world order
Families sleepin’ in their cars in the Southwest
No home no job no peace no rest

The highway is alive tonight
But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody about where it goes
I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light
Searchin’ for the ghost of Tom Joad

He pulls a prayer book out of his sleeping bag
Preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag
Waitin’ for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last
In a cardboard box ‘neath the underpass
Got a one-way ticket to the promised land
You got a hole in your belly and gun in your hand
Sleeping on a pillow of solid rock
Bathin’ in the city aqueduct

The highway is alive tonight
Where it’s headed everybody knows
I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light
Waitin’ on the ghost of Tom Joad

Now Tom said “Mom, wherever there’s a cop beatin’ a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there’s a fight ‘gainst the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Mom I’ll be there
Wherever there’s somebody fightin’ for a place to stand
Or decent job or a helpin’ hand
Wherever somebody’s strugglin’ to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you’ll see me.”

Well the highway is alive tonight
But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody about where it goes
I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light
With the ghost of old Tom Joad

CODA