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On Behalf of Moxie, Blackie and Myself
By David Glenn Cox
I would like to thank everyone for their care and concern on behalf of Moxie, Blackie and myself. If this country were governed by the people, this country would be a different place, but that really ain’t no never mind. I didn’t write it for me, I wrote it for the others.
You see, during the last depression my grandparent’s marriage fell apart. The old adage is true: when money goes out the door, love flies out the window. My own mother never forgave her father, but she was too young to understand that when you cannot provide for your family you not only lose your pride, you lose your self-esteem and the respect of your spouse. Unemployment is personal, and even those as close as a spouse cannot understand. It tears asunder the bonds of friendship, companionship, and finally, love.
My wife and I separated without a cross word between us. The pressure of paying bills and trying to keep the house was finally too much and she suggested that I go. The pressure, the pain, and the guilt left me numb. I asked my son if I could sleep in his shop until I could get on my feet. He buys and parts out automobiles that he purchases at auctions and from the general public. I hadn’t been here for more than a few days when he took me to an auction. As we were examining the cars I saw a Dodge pickup, and in the truck bed were all the belongings of someone else just like me.
It hit me like a fist to the gut, and I understood just how widespread my situation was. A few days later I was at McDonalds, and it was early in the morning when I saw a Chevy Lumina with a man sleeping behind the wheel. All his belongings were in the back seat and it was obvious that this was his home. So when I say that I am at the top of the homeless pyramid, I mean it. I am far better off than others that I have seen. I began to see them everywhere, a man at Wal-Mart, unshaven and having obviously slept in his clothes. Returning from the scrap metal yard I saw a man my age hitchhiking on the on ramp of the interstate.
He had a black, plastic trash bag with the neck of a guitar sticking out of the top. I could relate to that. If I were in his shoes I’d take my guitar, too. It’s been my best friend in life, besides my son. But before I could say anything we had passed him and it was too late. I mentioned it to my son and he raised his eyebrows at the idea of picking up hitchhikers. I explained, ax murders usually don’t carry a guitar with them, and robbers don’t carry a beat-up suitcase and a plastic garbage bag.
For most of that night I wondered where that man was, as well as the man in the Dodge and the young man at McDonalds. I’m just a little uncomfortable but they are in the ditch. I wonder where they are still today, because each one of them is no different than me. Each with their own story, the young man had a North Georgia tag on his car; perhaps he had come to Atlanta seeking work and struck a disappointment. Either he couldn’t or wouldn’t go back to wherever his home once was.
I was the youngest child of the youngest children and my parents are deceased, and since they were the youngest I have little family left. I played music in bars and clubs when I was young and never made more than fifty dollars in a night. After a car accident I couldn’t play guitar for almost a year, and I figured that maybe God was trying to tell me something. I got a job working in a parts house, first driving a delivery truck, then working at the counter, and finally became store manager.
I was promoted to manger of the company's most prestigious division, selling industrial engines across a three-state territory. I did well, the company did well, and I was highly thought of and fairly well-compensated. Among my tasks was writing newsletters, business correspondence and claims for warranty compensation.
It was ironic because it was writing that got me through school. I learned that on an essay test if you filled up the space and then ran over you would get a B, regardless of what you wrote. I never considered a career in writing as my handwriting was terrible and my typing skills were worse. You see, when I went to school computers were the sole domain of NASA.
The company I worked for then sold out to another company as the market for American-made industrial engines disintegrated my employers decided to become a John Deere lawn and garden dealer and move the location fifty miles further up the highway. I was already commuting an hour each way, and this location was off the main highway so I would have been commuting two hours each way.
The economy was good then, and I decided to sell industrial engine parts on the internet and in six months I had paid down my bills, doubled my investment and had ten thousand dollars in the bank. I had been blogging for a year or two, and I was always political, always rabidly liberal, actually more socialist than liberal. But with all the time in front of the computer I began to take it more and more seriously. My posts began to rise in popularity and then my parts business just stopped, like someone turned off a faucet. It went from two or three orders a day to two orders a week.
I began checking Craigslist for writing jobs. I wrote “The Home Buyers University” and I wrote for a Ford Mustang website. Then, like my business, those jobs fell away as well. I had been working on my first novel for about a year. To write a novel you write for six months and then you edit forever. I began to circulate the manuscript and received basically positive comments but no interest. Finally an agent explained, “Your novel bites the hand it expects to feed it, it is totally anti-Republican and completely anti-corporate, and well, who do you think these people are that work for mainstream publishing companies?”
I was extremely fortunate to come across a very kind woman who edits my pieces for me. Her name is Dei Scott. She has believed in me and has aided me immensely, for while my ideas may be clever my grammar is not, but I’m getting better with her help. She is a true friend and I do not know what I would do without her help and assistance.
I guess that it is odd to say that I have been a writer all my life but just didn’t know it. I won an honorable mention in Warner Brothers American Song Festival for a song that I wrote. But I have advanced farther and made more money in five years of writing than I ever made in music. So I guess, now, I am a writer. It is lonely work and you never know if you're doing it correctly until kind people like yourselves tell me that I am.
To those of you who have offered to send money I thank you but no.
I am at the top of the homeless pyramid, give locally, take someone to lunch, buy your children ice cream do something to be good to one an other.
I thank you again from the bottom of my heart; it is your kindness and compassion that makes it all worthwhile. I’ll sleep on the floor if it will do some good because somewhere out there a man just like me is strumming his guitar alone as he plays an old Woody Guthrie tune called “I Ain’t Got No Home.”
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