The Mexican Bible

This was written by my father in 2006. It's a true story and it reflects some of the issues Arizona's latest and greatest fascist stupid law, SB 1070.

Someone left a Bible in the back seat of my taxi recently.
I know he was an illegal alien because of the nature of how the book got left there. It was Halloween night, and I received a telephone call from a colleague of mine. There were three Hispanic men standing outside a convenience store. They spoke only Spanish. He spoke only English, and was not going to take the trip. Maybe the trip would be worth something. Would I like to talk to them?
I hate to turn down an opportunity without at least looking at it. And besides, I have learned enough Spanish to get by. I drove up to the convenience store to see what I could do.
Three young Hispanic men stood in the shadows by the pay phone. As I eased my taxi to a stop, one detached himself from the shadows, and approached my car. We greeted each other in Spanish, and he proceeded to tell me that he had to get to Los Angeles to see his fiancé.
I know enough about the law to know when to ask questions and when not to. Plausible deniability is not just the prerogative of presidents. I could surmise why they were not taking a bus or airplane. I named a price; they agreed. The trip was uneventful until we got to the Arizona California border. The three men were nervous about the border check point. I told them to relax, the authorities were only checking for fruit coming across the border. I don’t know if it was true or not, but it sounded good. They relaxed.
We swung into a gas station outside of Twenty-nine Palms to fuel up. There was a police cruiser in the parking lot, and once again, the three men in my cab hunkered down, and tried to stay out of sight. I filled the gas tank, and shook my head. My suspicions of their immigration status had been confirmed by their behavior. I didn’t tell the cop. I’m not that kind of person. Besides, I didn’t want any trouble for myself. It might not be legal to cross state lines in a taxi with a cargo full of undocumented migrants. I was not really in a mood to find out.
A few miles away from the gas station, we witnessed a bad car crash. I dialed emergency services on my cell phone, but did not stick around to see the police show up. Again, the less trouble the better.
The rest of the trip was uneventful. I left them at a house in Los Angeles. It wasn’t a real upscale neighborhood, but it wasn’t a slum either. Sort of a middle class home that everyone in America dreams of owning some day.
I was home before I noticed the Bible.
The bible is a Spanish version, small, with a battered black leather cover. Inside it had a few notes on small pieces of paper. The New Testament was heavily thumbed through, and the pages of Mark and Luke were rather dog-earred. Many verses had been underlined. The Bible has sat on a shelf in my bedroom since the day I found it. I had not even thought about it until I was tidying up today, while a talk radio station played in the back ground from my clock radio. The host was on some rant about W’s new immigration policy.
I wonder if the talk show host realizes that these illegal aliens have lovers? That they have expectant, future father in laws, who are glad to see their new son in laws, yet somehow apprehensive for the future of their daughters? Does the radio talk show host know the fear these men felt waiting in a gas station for a cop to leave? Does he know the joy on the faces of these men as they stepped out of the taxi in Los Angeles? Does this same radio talk show host that almost every day claims to be a good moral conservative Christian know that an illegal alien left his Bible in my cab? A Bible that had been studied, and marked by some one just as devoted to the same faith as he? Or would such thoughts put too human a face on the issue? Would thinking these things mean that we have to deal with real problems involving real people, not just abstractions of law breakers?
And am I the only one who finds it ironic that the very Bible that both the radio show host and the young Mexican man read says to be kind to the strangers in your land?

Fruits

It is the end of the semester here, the tests are over, the shit is done and now I am packing to go home. To burn some stress, my roommate and I have indulged in chaos and also caused some of our own.
On Monday, there were some candles lit in bags for a mile around the university. A months ago, I had found a giant PVC pipe candy cane in a dumpster and left in my roommates car until I found a use for it. Suddenly I had an idea.
Yes, Kyle drove down this stretch of road and I leaned out the window with my giant candy cane and bashed every single candle I could, leaving a trail of hot wax and torn paper bags. We laughed until we cried.

That's the magic of dumpster diving. You find incredibly useless shit, but if you're openminded, you can find a use for anything. So since this is the end of the semester and since many people are leaving for the semester or for good a lot of useless shit was thrown out. Kyle and I drove around and took as much as we could.

Here is a short list of what we found:

a hooded vest (I don't understand it)
biodegradable tampons (not just any tampons, mind you! These make mother nature proud!)
Vans skates shoes, mint condition (gave to Kyle, they were his size)
First Aid kit (very old)
design DVD
sunglasses
a nice thin jacket from Target, great condition
skirts for an anorexic girl
a nightie
a Target shopping basket
an exit sign
a Renaissance costume w/ shoes and a tiara
prescription eczema shampoo
a Bible
a baseball bat
a pro-life v. pro-choice poster

We divided up the goods among us, threw away the useless crap (such as opened food) that somehow got inside our finds and donated the rest. We found a use (or will) for everything most people found useless.

Each dumpster we visited made me more disgusted with this campus. At one dumpster, we found an entire slab of ground beef with a $9.19 pricetag. I found an entire waredrobe worth of Abercrombie and Fitch clothes, which is inexcusable. In each dorm there is a box for people to donate clothes to the homeless. If you're going to spend $60 dollars on a t-shirt, not to mention a boring t-shirt that makes you look like a preppy douchebag you should at least have the decency to give it to a needy family or shivering homeless person. I was seriously mad, very mad that someone would do that.

But then I remembered the discarded Bible, brand new, barely even cracked open. I wonder why that didn't upset me so much. I have plans for it, I guess, I'll give it to someone because it's very nice and it's small. Still, maybe I need my priorities straight.

We were taking in our fruits, our arms full.

"You better hold that bag better," I said. "Or those tampons are gonna spill out and someone's gonna say, what the fuck."

He laughed, but ignored my advice. Sure enough, when we reached the door the bag split open right in front of several guys.

"Hey," one asked. "Why do you have a baseball bat?"

"Um," I said. "I found it."

"No, dude," another said. "What I want to know is why do you have tampons?"

We laughed, but couldn't think of anything to say.

"Hey, one of you," Kyle said. "Say what the fuck."

"What the fuck."

"Awesome."

As I was taking out my own trash an hour later, some punk rockers came up to the dumpster with flashlights. We talked about dumpster diving, one of the three dudes was from the local band the F-Holes. "Yeah, we were just doing that."
I watched as they went through the shit I tossed out, including an old photograph and some papers that said "Deface please".
One of the guys held up the photo and said, "Dude, how could you miss this?"
The irony was killing me, so I said nothing.
"I'm gonna take this home and frame it!"
"And look at this! Some papers that say 'Deface Please'. What does that mean?"
"Dude, it's poetry."
I smiled, still silent. It was an awesome night.

You can watch the terrible video I made of the candy cane v. the candles here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSWWakfZXOU