Meanwhile, out here in the real world

SOMEWHERE IN A RED STATE - Election night, a shot of Jim Beam within reach, 24-inch television casting a blue glow to anyone driving by, and my black cat Pippa is curled up, paying no attention to the results rolling in from the fifty states and I envy her as she sleeps, one black paw covering her yellow-gold eyes, oblivious to anything not directly affecting her.

A few days later, trying to place a finger on the quickening pulse that is America and I really can't find it, though experts claim some knowledge and I don't so I work in the woods mid-November with a bow saw and an ax on a downed elm tree, sans jacket, a smiling Jimi Hendrix on the front of my tee shirt and man this weather feels all wrong and maybe it's global warming and maybe it's not, but I'm beginning to believe that this old guy with his Medicare card back at the house maybe shouldn't be doing this.

Incomplete Sondheim runs through my head as I work so I sing out loud, making up lyrics to 'Being Alive” and ‘someone to hold you too close' has become ‘someone to sharpen my saw' and it all works out just fine, thanks for asking.

Mr. Hendrix's face is damp but it's my sweat not his because he checked out about the time I stumbled out of an average high school in an average state and anything different wouldn't have changed me, at least not in this life. We become who we were, even if we've never heard of Jimi.

A Trump presidency won't affect me much but many of my friends have stood along the sidelines, arms hanging limply at their sides, watching someone else's parade drift by for more than forty years; they've clenched their teeth, worked construction, prayed for the factories to open again and this time they seem to have found their candidate and my goodness I hope they're right, because I know these people and, with few exceptions, there is nothing deplorable about them.

Around here the old farmers trade in their Fords for Buicks when it's time for the world to know they've succeeded but now I read that Buick has opened a sport utility vehicle plant in, of all places, China and oh geez this doesn't play all that well and complaining about unions in Detroit only makes it worse and the blood of fairness once again flows elsewhere and good folks in places like Ferguson, Missouri and Moline, Illinois can only sit back and watch, helpless, angry, and willing to try something else which might help their children because it's too late for them.

Pippa joins me every evening, not just election night, and tonight she curls up in front of my stove in the living room. She whistles through her nose as she breathes contentedly, confident in the belief that whichever God is running the universe is running it just for her benefit and maybe that's where we get it wrong. She thinks it's all about her and I believe it's mostly about her, but our tribe is small.

Out there in the real world it's about others; and about food, clothing, heat, income, and a million other things we hold dear and necessary to get by each day and Lord help us if the new guy in the White House doesn't understand this, because it's been a long parade and it keeps getting longer.

' Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County.