Today's MOSTLY TRUE SHORT STORY: Back to the Pilgrims

F LoBuono

While taking one on our daily sojourns into town, Rexie and I ran into one of our favorite couples: Toma and her hound, the mighty Yogi (he's about 4 lbs., Rexie is about 110). Toma is one of my favorite people on the planet. She is a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, seamstress, designer, business owner,  activist, and, quite possibly, Bodhisattva.

As is our custom, we great each other warmly with gentle hugs and kisses on the cheek. Toma usually begins our conversations in Italian. From there. our topics can be wide ranging and usually include some type of discourse on the day's political scene. Today was no exception.

I asked her if she had seen the President's address this morning to the Values Voter Summit, a conservative Christian organization. She replied, unfortunately, yes. I told her that I had also watched it and was disappointed, but certainly not surprised, by the content of the speech. In my mind, he could have boiled the whole thing down to its simplest terms: LET'S MAKE AMERICA WHITE AND CHRISTIAN AGAIN.

Toma took it one step further saying, this is bad for us - anyone like you and I with a little more melanin in our skin. These people want to take this Country back to the days of the Pilgrims when everyone was WHITE, ANGLO-SAXON, AND PROTESTANT. And, we were slaves. We're not moving forward. We going backwards!

And, she couldn't be more right. The crowd, most definitely the President's base, i.e. white, working class, roared with delight on almost every word - no more so then when Mr. Trump said that he was "putting the word Christmas back in the Holidays" (like anyone every prevented him or anyone else from doing so).

It was, for anyone not blessed with fair skin or so-called Christian values, a message: get with the program - or, get out.

Well, you get what you pay for. And, we bought a bilious, bellicose, bully.

Toma and I hugged again, kissed, and pledged to keep up the good fight wherever it might take us and went our separate ways - for Toma that meant getting a empty jar so that she could fill it with donations to send to Puerto Rico. That's something we all can do.