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Only in Bakersfield?
This morning I drove to the local WalMart to pick up some maintenance supplies for my pickup truck. (Boy, does that sentence place me in a cultural niche, or what?) As I was going to the automotive cashier I saw a white couple get in line. She was clad in a jacket with a Confederate flag on the right sleeve. He had a NASCAR hat and a Confederate flag belt buckle.
Right behind came two African-American men. One of them was wearing a Lakers cap and a shirt with an image of Snoop on the front. The other one had a shirt commemorating Huey Newton. As the line progressed, the four of them got into a friendly discussion regarding whether or not synthetic oil is appropriate for an older Honda Civic. All four seemed to have opinions on the subject. They then exchanged numbers on their cell phones, made their purchases, and went their separate ways.
Any watcher of cable news would think this scene impossible. Is it only Bakersfield?
Published in General
It’s more common than you’d think. Why, the other day I drove my electric car to Whole Foods in Venice to pick up some organic parsnips. On line, we had a lively,cordial conversation about whether a transgendered wiccan can have bilingual communication with empowered house plants. So you see, it’s pretty much the same all over.
@garymcvey: “Empowered house plants?” I think I dated one of those once.
I was at a gun show in Orlando a couple of years ago, and saw three guys in the middle of a major argument. One big Hispanic guy, one medium-sized black guy, and one skinny little white guy.
Arguing about the virtues of 9mm vs .45 vs .40 pistols.
Where is the video? My KC Chiefs star running back gets videoed misbehaving in a hallway front of his own apartment. That is on screens all over the world.. It has cost him his career and probably cost the Chiefs any chance at the Superbowl. Your tremendous eclectic foursome is in line at a Walmart…and nada.
This could happen in Charleston, SC for sure, though after the oil argument it would move on to lift kits and tire sizes…
Cracker, “King of Bakersfield”, from the album Berkeley to Bakersfield
That this sort of ordinary, friendly interaction between people with supposedly wildly-different and incompatible “identities” is repeated in so many ways and so many locations… is one of the many reasons I find myself wondering whether leftists (my loved ones among them) ever actually go outside and look around?
Maybe it’s that they don’t go to WalMart? All normal people go to WalMart and so it is an excellent place to witness the way Americans who live in real life behave toward one another. And the news is—barring the odd robbery, an awful lot of shoplifting, and the occasional public “domestic” —generally good. People are kind to one another. They chit chat. They accept all sorts of “marginalizing” variations on the theme of human being. It was a Maine game warden who introduced me to a very large black man wearing a dress, high heels, full makeup and the apron required for his job minding the vegetables at the warden’s local grocery: neither the man in the uniform nor the man (?) in a pink-and-black backless seemed inclined to “Other” each other.
@cirby: And nobody got shot. (By the way, you know why you should carry a .45? Because they don’t come in .46.)
@dontillman: My old office building is in some of the video scenes. How cool is that?
You *are* the King of Bakersfield.
I really like the shot of the Granada Theater; “There’s A Wurlitzer Here”.
You can get a .50 if you’re desperate. A little big for concealed carry, though.
Stop poking fun at Rob Long.
Hey, one day music-historians will speak about Bakersfield (and Memphis) they way they speak today about Vienna in the 1700s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjXebFnWy98
@dontillman: Just to be clear, Bakersfield is not really in California. We are surrounded by California.
I knew I wasn’t normal; now I have proof. ;)
I don’t shop at WalMart because the one closest to me is one of their super-sized stores, and I hate how large it is. I just don’t like shopping in very large stores – I feel lost in them. I do shop in Target and Kroger (a regular-type grocery store), though. Does that make me mostly normal? :)
Used to…but haven’t [stepped] in one since April 2016.
Bakersfield sounds like it’s doing fine; News not so much. With a few exceptions, media is invested in making it seem America is having a melt down while much of everyday America is living life as the melting pot we’ve been for generations.
Thanks for the post, @michaellukehart.
Depends on which bathroom you use…I guess?
But . . . what’s the answer? I have a 2004 Civic with only 127,000 miles. . .
@paulerickson: Go synthetic. Use a premium brand – Mobil or Castrol are good. Make sure you get a good filter – it’s important. Don’t listen to the conventional oil cheapskates.
Word!
My primary conceal carry is a Smith and Wesson Performance Center Model 627-5 .357 Rem Mag, eight shot revolver.
Before I went to a wheel gun, I carried a full size 1911, in .45ACP, for about 30 year.
@Rōnin : Another nice thing about Bakersfield, a Second Amendment friendly Sheriff with good common sense re: CCWs. Not too permissive, not too restrictive, just about right. As to your comment, what’s wrong with a Kimber Ultra Carry .45? 30 ounces & ammo, 7 + 1, very intuitive sighting. Hard to beat. Though, I must confess, wheel guns are vastly underrated.
Depends.
If you car has reached the point were you are burning more than a quart every 1000 miles or so, then the longevity of the synthetic is not worth the added cost. Synthetics are good when you are going 10K per oil & filter change with out adding any oil, which is typical for tight toleranced modern engines. Non Synthetic oil breaks down faster, but if it heading out the tail pipe then it is not around long enough to be a cost value benefit.
It kinda restores your faith, doesn’t it?
Those folks haven’t read the current script… that kind of thing can’t happen in America.
Not a damn thing, carrying anything beats the alternative to not carrying. The 627 is my one and only Smith, I really had to save up my nickles and dimes to get it, but it’s a retirement gift from me to me (and my wife says I’m hard to buy for).
@Rōnin: It has been my observation that often the best gifts are the one’s where the card says “From Michael, To Michael. Love, Michael.” Glad you got what you wanted.
My daughter’s mother-in-law grew up next to Merle Haggard’s mother in Bakersfield, er, I mean Oildale.
I work for a national retailer on the edge of Indianapolis. We have clientele from the inner city to the farm. One of our largest sales categories is pet supplies. I see people of all stripes sharing information on how to take care of their pets from dogs to chickens. The best food, how best to combat a flea infestation or the most effective dewormer. What supplements to give their latest litter or chicks. Where the next dog show is. They come in looking like as if they’d been run ragged and put away wet. As if they might not have two nickels to rub together Yet I see a blend of races, genders, ethnicities, sexualities and on and on willing to share their lives with the others around them. They are the people that make America work. I would love to see our news commentators spend some time putting callouses and blisters on their hands and feet with this hoi palloi then comment on how divided we are.
It grounds me every time I am able to sit back and watch this world go round.
“On line?!?!”
Here in TEXAS We say “in line.” “Pretty much the same all over” My a$$. Care to make something of it?