Culture Chronicles — Saturday Morning

Yesterday, I was running errands in my 2005 Volvo station wagon. It was Saturday and the weather was mild. I had my window down, enjoying a mild breeze.

Montana has been forgiving this winter, one might say. The temperatures have been gentle, in the 30s and 40s. On this day, it was downright balmy.



I took a left turn off of Prospect onto Montana Ave, and I heard a man yell, “Go back to California!” I turned my head. A man in a pickup truck was yelling from his open window. I caught his eye. No time to react. I just kept driving.

Immediately a series of thoughts went through my head.

1. Ok, now I have to change my license plates. I have new Montana plates, but the California ones are attached with rusty screws and I’m not sure how easy it will be to attach the new ones. So I’ve been putting it off. My husband and I have talked about how unsafe we feel riding around with our California plates…we get many unsolicited comments in the Winco parking lot, while packing our groceries into the back. There are places we’ve driven not far from here, where we literally don’t feel safe. Like something out of a movie, where a giant Tundra comes up behind us and runs us off the road….we watch too many movies.
2. “Go back to California!” — too bad, I’m here for good. Deal with it. I have as much a right to be here as anyone. Besides, my husband and I have brought our talents and our money. You should be grateful we’re here. You should be welcoming. What the fuck.
3. Gladly. I’ll go back gladly. To get away from shits like you. To enjoy the life I had in a flawed but beautiful place. To have great and healthy food, abundant variety (you have to understand, my husband and I are food folks and we are suffering here…), to have diverse cultures surrounding us that bring richness to our lives. Yes, there are shootings on the freeways, and homeless people living in tents. All of that makes me more aware of the struggles of others. It makes me more compassionate. I see my neighbors suffer and I want to ease their suffering.

The man in the pickup truck was white. He was older, like my age. His outburst was an expression of his frustration with change. He wasn’t a migrant to this state, or so he perceives it that way. (Can you imagine how the Blackfoot or Salish people felt when they saw his ancestors? “Go back to where you came from!” was met with a bullet from a Winchester rifle.) At some point, all white people were migrants here. He is afraid of the erosion of his way of life like my presence means that his way of life is threatened.

These are the times we live in. Or is this the way humans have been since the beginning? This resistance to change is a constant throughout human existence. Sometimes it is silent, like a snake hiding underground, waiting for the dark when it can come above ground. Sometimes, it becomes a raging dragon and kills millions of us. Then our humanity gets the upper hand, and cuts the dragon’s head off, only to find it has grown a new one, just as vicious as the one before.