walmart and guns

I’m trying to avoid spending the night in the walmart parking lot which I’ve only had to do once over the past 16 years and that was when parking on the street in Wildwood NJ the police banged on the door at 2a.m. and told me to move. I had my grandson with me at the time so we shuffled off to the Walmart parking lot where dozens of campers were spending the night.

I considered parking in front of the venue where I’m to do a reading tomorrow or Sunday, but big “No Overnight Parking” signs dot the avenue. I decide to check out the state campground a couple miles down the road. I would especially like to plug in if it’s available to keep my fridge on all nite, something that is no longer happening. When I get a minute to troubleshoot, I’m going to have someone test my batteries and then my inverter.

I pull up to the kiosk at the campground and jump out my truck, batting away an avalanche of mosquitoes, and approach the tall, skinny white man in a long-sleeved ranger shirt and pants despite the lingering heat, a hat on his head and full long beard covering almost every inch of his face, neck plunging into his chest.

He tells me I have to pay $26 plus cents for a campsite as I’m out of state. I ask first for a senior discount and then an in-state rate, both he denies me claiming his job would be on the line. Before I can leave and get out of the cloud of mosquitoes, he first tells me he’s dyslexic (so he can’t really read my missives) but then brings up guns and how he’ll never give them up.

I silently thank the many folks that have provided me with love and support and energy so I can confront this young white man.

So before he can get too descriptive about gun control people, I tell him I don’t believe in gun control, I believe in gun elimination, which prevents him from launching into a disparaging attack on whimpy gun control peeps.

He states unequivocally that he will NEVER give up his guns and from his litany of AKs and ARs and pistols, I get that he has an arsenal. I tell him of course, he’s a white man and if white men didn’t have guns – plus the willingness to take human life – they would not have been able to wipe out almost all the indigenous people on this land, nor go to another continent and enslave African people nor keep people enslaved on this land. White men need their guns because their character is not strong enough, they are not human enough to go through life without using violence to dominate others and seize what they want.

My exit into my truck and from the park is delayed by many more minutes as he digests this while I urge him to look at guns a little differently. He wants me to understand he’s been raised here in northern Maine with a rifle over his shoulder and a sleeping bag tucked under his arm, going hunting to provide food for his family.

After bonding with him over  guns for food and not for sport, I attempt to then separate elimination of the guns for killing humans. He of course sneers as he repeats the ‘guns don’t kill people’ mantra that I scoff at and say sure, neither does poison or radiation or propane explosions. Puleeeeeeze. I think he gets the connection but then brings up his dad, the one who didn’t spare the rod.

His dad is a disabled Vietnam vet with a litany of injuries from agent orange to napalm to shrapnel.  And those are just the physical ones. He is also mentally and emotionally fucked, his 29 year old son claims. I can’t imagine what his life must have been like trying to embrace life while living under the same roof as a father fucked by his participation in war. But I see the impact of war decades after the fighting has ceased.

When I finally extricate myself from the conversation, Bryan grabs me in a bear hug as he exalts my courage, asking my permission to take photos of my truck and to post on facebook.  I’d like to be a cambridge analytica spy on his fb page but I jump in my truck and try to leave the mosquitoes and Bryan way behind.