Pass the Syrup

I was a football star in high school in Ohio; went to the local college and starred again, and then had the luck to be set up with a successful car dealership in a nearby city. From there I was solicited to become a state senator, ran against an evil character named McCarvey and beat him, and went off to Columbus to serve my term. In Columbus I was the darling of the Senate, being famous already, but also being young and naïve, and I was courted heavily by lobbyists of all varieties.

The car dealership was fine in my assistant's hand, but the race against McCarvey had been tight, and I knew he was plotting against me back home in Union City and the area, hoping to beat me again in two years, as soon as he had the chance. I was a Democrat, champion of the poor, the minorities, the working person and the unions, housewives, and the educated professors in Union City, the college town. McCarvey got his support from big business, the farmers, the money interests- you don't want to hear me slander those folks, but you get the picture. Let's just say he was looking for a wedge to drive between any possible segment of my support base, as I would surely would have done to him if I could. And he found it with the big Wal-Mart issue.

Wal-Mart, unable to expand in Union City, had made a deal with a nearby town, Jacksonville, which was to annex land right up near Union City, and allow Wal-Mart to build there. Opposition to Wal-Mart's new SuperCenter came from the academic, anti-growth crowd, and the unions- and I have to say, these were some of my staunchest supporters. But old Walter Cockwiler, the Libertarian free-market capitalist, was right when he said Wal-Mart was the best thing that ever happened to the poor, the underclass, the people living from paycheck to paycheck. Now which was my true base? Where did my loyalties lie?

Every time I went back to Union City or Jacksonville, people would ask. And these were not gentle, friendly questions. I was surprised by the tenor of the discussion, the intensity of the debate. I suspected that McCarvey was planting some of those questioners in the audience, just to trip me up, make me take sides, alienate one camp or the other.

A pure opportunist at that point, I remember not caring much about Wal-Mart itself, whether they got their new store or not, whether the town could annex all that land legally, whether they could move in, drive all those local shop owners out of business. I could see both sides. Frankly, I cared only about beating McCarvey, who was a snake in the grass, an evil man, as I've said. I had to speak carefully, not take sides, or rather play both sides, defend the right of the poor to have cheap prices, while defending the right of the country people to not have that traffic out there, and the right of the traditional businesses to not be blown out of the economy by the megamonster, union-busting, chiseling big box. You get the picture. Sure, businesses have the right to buy land, do as they want, undercut everyone. But do they have the right to move in and destroy a downtown? Everyone wanted to know my stand.

I got nervous and began to avoid Union City, although the campaign was coming up and I would have to show up eventually. At a Lions Club dinner the leader of the anti-Wal-Mart camp, one Jackson Bales, a history professor, cornered me and told me all about the alliance of the country people, the small shop-owners in Jacksonville, the enviros, the local student activists, blah blah. I got worried; this was my constituency. Would I now have to come out against the mother of all stores, America's discount shop? I was sweating bullets. Before I even left town, I encountered the mayor of Jacksonville, who also ran the local bank, Arch Porter, an old friend of mine from football days, but a rich and arrogant bastard, Republican all the way. Of course I should know where he stood- of course Jacksonville needed the business, needed the shot in the arm…of course they had the right to annex the land, and would do what they had to do to survive as a town that needed to attract a few visitors. Yes, the small guy downtown might take a hit, but they'd find a way to get by, they'd adjust, having a little competition was good for them. It was the American way.

I didn't have to worry about what some banker thought, since I knew he'd be voting for McCarvey anyway, but I could tell by his swagger that he had a lot of support; people in this area liked Wal-Mart; they looked forward to a new one; they'd gotten used to cheap prices and getting your towels while you were getting groceries. I couldn't attack the underhanded way he'd pulled off the annexation, or even the legality of making the taxpayer foot the bill for power lines, new roads, new sewer, all that stuff the new SuperCenter would require. And they asked me every time I turned around: Where do you stand on the Wal-Mart tax? The illegal annexation? I felt like saying, let's talk about school funding, or something I'm familiar with, like football.

As I said, I had mixed feelings about the issue personally, but I was beginning to lean against Wal-Mart, and I'll tell you why. Among my constituency, there were far more poor people than anyone else, but they barely read the paper, barely kept up the legal ramifications of annexation and tax law; they were too busy making a living, or putting food on the table. The unions, on the other hand, were the people who went out and got my constituents to vote, every time, and the union guys, my best allies, were beginning to look at me funny. I also figured that the small businessmen, loyal Republicans in the past, might come over to our side if I spoke up against the new store. And finally, there were enough shady deals in the thing- the annexation, the utility taxes, the Union City-Jacksonville rift, that I could probably make it sound like I was on the side of justice and the forces of good. I'm coming out against the new store, I told Wilson, a union ally of mine, who ran the electrical union, and served as precinct captain for years. Just wait a few days, and I'll come out against it.

But two days later, a madman rode a pickup truck right up into the entryway of the Union City store, and actually killed an old woman who was unable to jump out of his way. Orville Tate, the driver, was a 37-year-old ex-union man, carpenter's union maybe, out of work, wild-man look to him, well known in the bars around Union City; nobody knew what had gotten into him. What was that all about? I asked Wilson, a few people I knew; the story was just coming out. I was on my way to Union City at the time, about to speak out against Wal-Mart, but now it was impossible- the poor, the common man, everyone whose grandmother shopped there, was united in grief, horror, anger, and rage. This was an attack against the decency of civilization!

My political instincts kicked in, and I spoke out against wanton attacks against the public, against lawlessness, and for the right of ordinary people to come and go, minding their own business. As long as they had a store here, I said, referring to Union City and leaving Jacksonville, annexation, backroom deals and tax levies out of it, as long as they had a store, they had a right to have normal people come and go without fearing for their lives. I went to the lady's funeral; I grieved with the family. I demanded justice; there wasn't much Wilson could say. The out-of-work carpenter was a dog, a murderer, a madman, and a scourge, who stained the good name of all opposition to Wal-Mart.

Everyone was reacting to the incident. On the campaign trail, McCarvey laughed, said I was trying to sound like him, and what was some Democrat talking about security and safety for? Jackson Bales, the anti-Wal-Mart history professor, was really steaming though, angry as a bull, unable to disagree with me publicly, but outraged that Wal-Mart was again the good-guy, on the side of the old ladies of this world, the victims, the honest local store just trying to serve the people. Everywhere I went, people spoke up one way or the other. Somewhere in there, at a Kiwanis pancake breakfast of some kind, while I was stuffing myself with pancakes and a liberal helping of syrup, I heard Walter Cockwiler, the free market man, explaining that Wal-Mart had kept the American economy afloat all through the nineties, by giving everyone goods at lower prices, and putting money back in the pocket of the poor, the very people who would take another walk down the aisles and spend it all, thus keeping the green flowing even at times when all the manufacturing was moving to China, and there was less and less money floating around the ordinary person's budget. Blah blah. He went on and on about business as survival of the fittest, those who have the best inventory system, keeping things on the shelf, providing what the consumer wants, a veritable Wal-Mart cheering section. Another guy started up with him, saying that Wal-Mart had lousy health insurance, that his second cousin was working there but needed state aid to get her kidney surgery. To tell you the truth, I was glad to get out of there and back to Columbus, where I could schmooze with insurance executives and stay up until all hours of the night, talking insurance riders on obscure education bills, all the while drinking martinis and not missing Union City a bit.

But on the campaign stump back home, McCarvey was hammering away, talking security, freedom, prosperity, your usual Republican issues- he was more or less blatantly for the new Wal-Mart, and didn't care if he lost a few Jacksonville mom-and-pop store owners along the way; he figured there were dozens of free-market pocketbook voters like Cockwiler for every little guy who would lose from the deal. He badgered me, implying that I was against prosperity, against opportunity and even against security; when he mentioned Orville Tate he'd be sure to use the word "union" as if mad pickup-truck drivers, wanton murderers, unions, and Democrats were all synonymous. I had no choice but to come out squarely against murderers and people who threatened the stable life as we know it, business as usual.

But I got an uneasy feeling in my stomach as I saw the new Wal-Mart go up on the farmland between Union City and Jacksonville, and saw them widening the road and preparing to pave over a huge field of alfalfa, where the old Adamson farmstead and a historical cemetery used to be. Jackson Bales and his people could have fought Wal-Mart on the grounds of the cemetery alone, I thought, but apparently the deal was too sweet for the Adamson clan, and they just moved the cemetery to some adjacent land. The annexation had been shady, I heard, and not entirely legal, but Arch Porter was a powerful man these days, rich and powerful- his bank had their hands in all kinds of deals, and those hands and their funding would be yanked right out of the land or the project of anyone who objected publicly to the new store. He was putting his economic power, the power of the bank, to work for him, in the interests of getting a new SuperCenter in his town, where people would come and shop from all over, or from Union City at least. He and his banker friends, the Republicans with their McCarvey bumper stickers, were all about prosperity, new business, new parking lots.

And there was Orville Tate, up for involuntary manslaughter, mumbling into the television cameras, sounding like he hadn't spoken to anyone in weeks, deranged-looking in his orange prison jumpsuit, a living symbol, a representative of the idea that opposition to Wal-Mart and the forces of progress was, at its core, flat-out insane.

I won that election, but I still say, looking back, that it probably had more to do with football than with finessing poor Orville Tate and the Wal-Mart problem. It also had to do with finding McCarvey's wedge issue, which was abortion, and sending some helpers to his speeches to badger him with hard emotional questions, make him squirm, damned if you agree, damned if you don't, damned if you stammer. It was immensely gratifying to pound old McCarvey, if only by 1632 votes, and accept his concession call on election night, smugly packing my bags to go back to Columbus. The whole election had got my competitive juices flowing, my football blood, and McCarvey was history, a loser, going back to his investment counseling. I myself had been lucky, I think, that Orville Tate had come along, so that I wasn't able to, didn't have to oppose Wal-Mart's move. I was lucky, and I was here in Columbus, watching the Rose Bowl, a winner.

Looking back, trying to oppose Wal-Mart in that climate would have been political suicide, although, as it happened, I wasn't long for politics anyway, trading the whole election-circuit schedule for a job representing Ohio soybean growers' suppliers in Brazil and South America, not long after I'd been caught accepting tickets to the Ohio State football games from an insurance lobbyist. In South America, they had never heard of the Ohio State-Michigan game, but countries like Brazil and Argentina had a burgeoning taste for soybeans for their cattle, that would keep me on Varig, Brazilian airline, for over two years. On all those long plane flights, I came to realize how naïve I'd been back there in Columbus, how I hadn't been prepared at all for the big-city cut-throat political scene; I'd been had by sharks, I'd been cut to bits.

But, speaking of naïve, what happened to me in Columbus was nothing compared to what was happening in my own Union City, where business as usual meant a lot of new concrete on one end of town, an empty old box on the other, only a memory of what Orville Tate had done with his pickup. Though of course I could never prove it, little by little I heard stories connecting Arch Porter with Orville Tate- Tate had owed Porter a favor, big time; Porter had taken over one of Tate's big loans, had used the influence of his bank; Porter got Tate out of jail early, and then whisked him out of town to someplace he wouldn't be an embarrassment, and on and on. I came to believe that it was no accident, and I was appalled. Sure, I'd taken football tickets, but I never killed an old lady. My best explanation was that they meant it as a diversion, to take people's minds of the real issues- and it had worked, me falling totally into the trap- and they hadn't planned on the old lady getting in the way and actually getting killed. Either way, Arch Porter was a huge power broker for years, and now even Wal-Mart owed him in a big way, for making their move possible, and allowing them to come into his town. Wal-Mart itself didn't seem to be guilty of anything, of course, outside of just wanting to expand, move into new territory, and keep the money rolling in. But I myself avoided the new store, avoided the entire social circuit, even when I was in Union City for extended visits. I didn't want to make small talk at the registers, didn't want to run into old acquaintances, didn't want to relive those times in any way. I'd won the election, two of them, in fact, but I'd lost my taste for Kiwanis pancakes, and the syrup, not to mention the kinds of stories you heard while you were eating them.

6-07