Day 249: February 5, 2010 (armed robbery, cowboy greg, and the great big wallop)

Position: Unemployed

Days Officially Unemployed: 22 

Life looking for work isn't going well. I've applied to everything from local restaurants in Encinitas to teaching gigs in South Dakota and a beverage rep job in San Francisco. The search continues as the economy sags. I have about exhausted all my contacts and filed for unemployment. After wading through the bureaucratic paperwork of the Economic Development Department, I now find myself in Fresno, where I grew up. The bad economy has intensified the violence in this town. Right near Fresno State's campus, where I write this post, there were three cases of armed robbery in November, one on January 7, and another two weeks later. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I think I'll be moving in with my brother in Clovis at the end of the month, where I'll squat in his soon-to-be-foreclosed house with him.

My main reason for coming to Fresno, besides dropping of a resume at Fresno City College, doing book research and testing the job waters here, is to offer emotional support to my mother, who placed her husband and mother in an Alzheimer's care facility in the past week. I spent the day over there today, and we sang songs with Cowboy Greg, an old, tall, slim country singer who is unapologetically patriotic and very Christian. 

Before Cowboy Greg showed up, we warmed up our vocal chords with some sing-along Karaoke, while the Black, short-haired, bubbly activities director bounced around the room, encouraging the residents to sing while offering them warm hugs. She's great. Once Cowboy Greg got going singing classic country songs, he told corny jokes––"I was driving with my wife and we saw a jackass out in the field, and I asked her if it was one of her relatives, and she said, 'Yeah, through marriage.' Ha"––and ended by singing hymns ("Amazing Grace" and "Can the Circle Be Unbroken?") before walking around the room and thanking each resident with a handshake or hug. It was a gesture that made up for Cowboy Greg's simplistic insistence that we "wallop" our enemies in the current wars and pay for the damage later, like we did in WWI and WWII. 

The point is, Cowboy Greg was a first-class entertainer for his elderly audience. And during the show, several of the workers circulated around the room and sat or held hands with residents. There was a sense of family and safety about the place, especially since most of the residents were homogeneously white. The world outside, rainy today, didn't exist, and we were all going to a perfect heaven that Cowboy Greg painted for us with words and obscure John Denver songs. But if you knew what the monthly rent was in this wonderful place, you'd wonder what kinds of hell on earth other, poorer people with this same disease end up entering Heaven from. I'm thankful my family has the resources for this kind of care and entertainment; I just wish everyone could hear Cowboy Greg and buy into his vision, by and by, Lord, by and by.