Two conversations with strangers tonight, both while out seeking refreshment after bicycling from Neola to Storm Lake, Iowa, today:
1. As I walked up a residential street, relaxingly on foot for the first substantial amount of time today, a young white dude with a light bushy beard rode past me on a bicycle. I appreciate a good evening bicycle rider. I nodded, and he nodded back.
A couple minutes later, as I retraced my steps, having discovered the street dead-ends and that I had to go back to the main drag to get down to the gas station where I might find some supper, whiskered white dude rode up behind me, this time with his very large flip phone out. I generally discourage biking and phoning, especially in town, but I said nothing about his lack of caution.
”Hey,” he said, “you’re not one of those … leftists, are you?”
The ellipses there represent some adjective. That was the only part of his question I didn’t catch. But my ears are a little slower than my mouth, and before I processed his statement, I asked mildly for repetition: “What’s that?”
Pedaling slowly, Whiskers paused, started to repeat his query, but then said, “Ah, don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it. I’m not gonna bother you.”
We went our separate ways without further words. But as I went to the gas station to resolve the great debate of pizza versus hamburger (hamburger won; I had Pizza Ranch for lunch, in Denison), I wondered two things.
First, what about my appearance might have prompted Whiskers’s question? My circular eyeglasses? (That’s how the Khmer Rouge identified the intellectuals they needed to exterminate out.) My REI workout pants, not tights, but sleeker than Whiskers’s baggy tan work pants? But how do pants of any sort signal political inclination? The only explicit political statement on my person was my blue and yellow “SLAVA UKRAINI” bracelets, which land closer to the hawkish Reagan side of the political spectrum, calling for a Ukrainian victory and for the United States to use its might to secure that victory over the evil Russian invaders.
Second… really? This dude thinks it’s his prerogative to decide which strangers shall be bothered and which may enjoy a Sunday evening stroll unmolested through the balmy streets of Storm Lake? I recall from my conservative days, when I praised Reagan and Rush Limbaugh, probably before Whiskers was born, that one of conservatives’ motivating ideas was the notion that we should leave other people alone.
2. When I got back to the motel without further bother (contrary to his generous release, Whiskers did bother me, just a little, thus further exemplifying contemporary “conservatives’” annoying habit of doing exactly what they say they won’t do), I walked toward the pop machine at the far corner of the parking lot. A bulky Hispanic man in a light T-shirt and plaid pajama pants waved to me, and I saluted him back. I’d never seen this man. I proceeded to the pop machine, considered the options, then settled on tap water from my room.
I heard someone shout at me. It was the Hispanic man, now up on the balcony above my room. (This is one of those great old motels where the rooms open to the great outdoors of the parking lot, making it blessedly easy for me to roll my trusty bicycle into the unparalleled safety of my room.) He was asking if I wanted a pop. He said he seen me looking at the pop machine.
I shrugged and said, “Not really.”
”I have one in my truck!” the stranger shouted from his balcony.
I turned back to scan the lot. It’s filled tonight with over a dozen white pickup trucks, obviously all a big work crew in town for some extended project. I pointed at the nearest truck. “¿Eso camion?” I shouted in my bad workplace Spanish.
”No, ¡eso!” He pointed me to the truck beside it, to the cooler in the open bed.
”You want one?” I asked, somehow thinking it slightly more plausible, not to mention less embarrassing, that he was asking me to do him a favor rather than that he would do one for me.
But no, he said, “for you!”
I opened the cooler and found it full of ice and bottles of water, plus two bottles of Coke sitting on top. “¡Gracias!” I shouted, raising the red bottle. “¿Tu trabajas aqui!”
”Si,” said the trabajador. “On the turbines.” He waved toward the south, across the lake, in the direction of the wind farms I rode through this afternoon.
“¡Muy alta!” I said, looking up to this brave worker. “Muy peligro.”
My benefactor shrugged.
I raised my bottle again. “Ten cuidado,” I said to this stranger in pajama pants, who evidently just wants to buy the world a Coke.
Ah, one of those kind of leftists.