Though I had flipped my position on the proposition, Lila, who had been kept in the dark about my defection, still expected me to go out on the hustings every day wrangling signatures while she did her turn at work. She’d take me with her when she left, and drop me off at the designated strip mall or shopping plaza for that day. Unless we arranged for her to retrieve me on her return trip I would call a cab to come and ferry me, and my clipboard, and my folding chair back to the country house. Naturally, it was rarely that I would screw my feet into the parking lot or the store entrance for so many consecutive hours, since the collection of signatures for liquidation was now moot. This gave me the option each day of assigning the ratio of time to be spent doing the Lord’s work: retailing the sins of 909; and also roaming the valley, which some days entailed an occasional drink. Whichever way the two activities ended up divided, I would get home earlier than if I waited for Lila.
While the cool mornings with their brilliant sun made reading way too irresistible, I sometimes would allow duty to propel me toward one of the riper looking shoppers in order to convey the substance of Proposition 909, and to delineate its ramifications, after which, if the listener was not stunned by boredom into quiescence; or out of reach on a cloud of indifference, or twitching with annoyance, or tangled in perplexity, he or she might ask me why I was out there doing what I was doing. At times their glimpse of a petition fastened to a clipboard caused them to ask for a closer look, discovering upon inspection that the desired goal of said petition was in fact the opposite of my reverberating spiel. Of course, when Lila dropped me off I always had the petitions with me, seeing as how the nullity of my money making endeavor would have been exposed had I failed to bring them along. If the button-hole-ee asked for an explanation, I would elaborate some of my personal circumstances and advise them not to sign a similar petition at another store, or discount hangar. In some cases, they wished to sign in order to help me out financially, but vowed to vote against the proposition if it made the ballot. In these instances, I cheerfully accepted the generosity of their collusion.
One day as morning was closing in on noon, a van from Channel Seven entered the shopping center at Verdugo and Hollywood Way and began to cruise slowly around the parking lot. My sole activity at that exact moment was staring into the parking lot. I was in my folding chair, the book in my lap. There had been a strong, loud harrowing wind the previous night and throughout the day, powerful Santa Anas, surely. I had stopped reading in order to just simply look at every object not thoroughly fastened down blow all over the shopping center. My reading concentration had been interrupted countless times before by bings, bangs and gongs, from things blown over, or else crashing into other things. At times dirt and sand from the residential neighborhood across the street would be blasted sideways at a high velocity, strafing me and everyone else in the open, with small caliber mineral fire.
The news van pulled to the curb directly in front of me, and a baby-faced woman with a pug nose, and wide-body hair asked, “Are you collecting signatures for the lumberyard workers initiative?” As soon as I said “yes,” the woman’s door popped open, as did the driver’s. While the driver went around to the back of the van, the woman, by now standing in front of me said, “I’m Megan Molloy from Channel Seven News. What would you think about me asking you a few questions about the signature gathering process, maybe get you to relate a few reactions to the proposition from people you’ve talked to so far…for Seven’s evening news programs?”
“Go ahead.”
From the back of the van, two men, one with a camera on his shoulder, the other holding a sound boom advanced on my position. After some jargon-laden jabbering among the three, the woman planted her feet beside me and said, “Ready?”
“Ready.” I answered amiably.
She primped for a few seconds before she signaled, “okay” to the cameraman, as the soundman hovered the boom above our heads.
“I’m here at the Albertson’s on the corner of Hollywood Way in Burbank, with a gentleman who is asking for signatures for petitions seeking to place Proposition 909, the lumberyard workers initiative on the ballot next fall.” Turning to me, she said, “How long have you been out here collecting signatures?”
“At this specific spot?”
“Well, altogether, and at this specific spot.”
“About a week altogether. This is the second day I’ve been here.”
“Have you had much success getting people to sign the petitions?”
“Some.”
“How many would you estimate have signed so far?”
“Twenty-five, maybe.”
“Really? That doesn’t sound like a lot.”
“I guess it’s not.”
“Why do you favor putting Proposition 909 before the voters of California?”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t? But you’re out here asking people to sign petitions for the purpose of doing just that, putting Proposition 909 on the next ballot. Why?”
“I need the money. I’m paid by the number of signatures I get.”
“So, even though you’re opposed to the proposition your collection of signatures would put on the ballot, you have a job collecting signatures that will put that proposition on the ballot?”
“Right.”
“That’s interesting. Do you find it at all difficult trying to persuade people of something you don’t actually support yourself?”
“No, because I’m not really trying.”
“You’re not trying? But you’re out here.”
“Yeah, I’m out here.”
“Then what are you doing when you’re out here?”
“I tell people I think the initiative is a bad idea, but that if they’d like to sign a petition it would help me out personally. They can always vote against the proposition if it makes the ballot.”
“Well, since you are against the proposition, maybe you could tell us the reasons for your opposition?”
“All right. If you can’t find a cheaper surfboard built with cheaper lumber imported from another state, a lot of people of modest means are going to have a difficult time affording a board. The law this proposition would create only helps one small sliver of people, people who are members of the lumberyard workers union. That group is at the relatively high end of wages and benefits already. So, basically, surfing low-income workers who for whatever reason don’t have union representation, and the people with less money in general who surf, end up subsidizing a small minority of surfing and non-surfing union workers who already make more money than the people who are subsidizing them. Understand?”
“I believe I do,” she said uncertainly, and a little glassy-eyed.
Unprompted, I continued. “Just think if it were cars instead of surfboards. If the United States congress did that with a necessity like automobiles, made a law requiring that say ten percent of every car had to originate in the United States, so that cheaper imported cars suddenly became more expensive, some of those lower on the economic food chain would have to fork over a larger portion of their income in order to drive; or perhaps, end up unable to afford a car at all. It doesn’t seem fair that lower income, and lower middle-class people should be put in that position in order to sustain high wages, and high benefits for Detroit autoworkers, who have a great deal more income than they do.”
“Yes.” the reporter said “And a car really is a necessity here in southern California,” winging it with a hopefully strategic smile.
Unprompted again I added, “I thought in parts of Orange County a surfboard was classified as a necessity. In those places it might be more necessary for survival than an automobile.”
I was thanked for my cooperation, though hardly anyone likely would have described the thanks I got as profuse. Nevertheless, I told Megan Molloy and her crew before they left that Bob’s in Burbank was the place to be.
Tucker saw the piece when it ran on Channel Seven, o
r someone else saw it and told him about it. A meeting was called at Bob’s for Wednesday night, the phone call giving notification coming to Lila Monday evening. Tucker and his female cohort Freely, condemned my transgression from the moment they sat down. I explained I’d had a change of heart, but thought it would be easy enough to kill two birds with one stone: making money, and providing dead-on political insights at the same time. Their point of view was that the commitment to the mission must be one hundred percent or the cause abandoned. Besides the ideological imperative, any lessening of focus could put the acquisition of a maximum number of signatures in certain jeopardy, the two complained. I reminded them of the cause at hand: “I’m trying to protect surfing for the workers, boards for the people.”
The gist of their challenge to this rationale, in a nutshell, was that the capitalist imperatives of the signature gathering company and anyone working for it, trumped any and all socioeconomic and political goals. As the result of our exchange they deemed it best that I take an early retirement from the company to be effective immediately. This was fine, but they exceeded their quotient of good will, and the protection they derived from it, as well as their better judgment, when after I accepted their accelerated retirement program they continued to quibble with me about politics in general. At some point Tucker said to me, “You don’t have any understanding of how politics work.” I told him that I knew twice as much as he ever would, after which Lila began to remind them of my employment with the Encyclopedia of American Political History. This failed to cauterize their disputatiousness as thoroughly as one expected, so Lila summoned an example of an Encyclopedia entry. Called back into service as a historical condenser, I smilingly and dutifully accepted pen and paper from her purse.
Monday had been the day of reckoning with her, when I confessed the meager number of signatures that would be forthcoming, and the meager pay. Lila was not easily surprised when it came to me, and presented with these facts, she wasn’t. I explained my political reasoning, with which she found no condemnable flaws. Besides which, for as long as I had known her she had been an exceptionally good sport. It was a relief to have her taking up the cudgel with our argumentative tablemates while I was left alone with my composition. Refueling, by way of a fresh beer, and a pack of soda crackers was required for me to complete the task, but when I was done I made the announcement, Lila having explained the nuts and bolts of the Encyclopedia already. All that was left for me to do before reading it was to introduce it: The Michael Dukakis Campaign.
The Michael Dukakis Campaign