An Impressionable Young Mind

Long ago, in a place far away, a clever young fool took to the adult section before he had a grain of sense.



In those days, the library had a fairly complete selection of Giovanni Guareschi's Don Camillo series. BFD! you say. And you're right, so don't try and deny it. It's a pretty insipid series about a communist mayor and his frenemy, the village priest. But to a bloody literal minded 11 year old, the whole angel/devil thing meant that one guy was good, the other evil. Never mind the constant silly tricks with the reserve tank, or even that the 11 year old was already a bit of an agnostic. Righteousness! Good days to be 11.

Then puberty & doubt hit. Many reversals of course. Guareschi was rejected, not for what he was, insipid, but for what he was imagined to be, fascist. I think Don Camillo took it well.


So after all the reversals, maturity, aging, doubt, & approaching senility, what stays the same? The need to maintain a coherent self image. Fortunately, part of this image has always been stinginess. Cheap bastard, never knows when to pull out the wallet,a step behind- fought it at times, but usually lost. One way to fight the cheapness has been to take vacations and try to relax. Trouble is, when you're on vacation and need a cap, or oranges, or something to slide down sand dunes, and you're in a small town, where do you end up?



That's right. The axis of evil in the modern world. And to drive home the evil, there's an old man near the back, who will smile at you and patiently get you a fishing license.

Figuring out how to disapprove of the corporate evil behind WalMart, while embracing the splendid, horribly underpaid, people who work there (and the low priced stuff! made in China) is the key to our times. Give me a call when you figure it out.


Barbie knows,but she's not talking.