I Could Be Wrong, But…

In the old days, when immigrants landed at Ellis Island, they foolishly believed that the streets of America were paved with gold.

These days, when immigrants land at LAX, they know better. American culture has been thoroughly exported through internationally televised re-runs of Dallas, the Super Bowl, and the Academy Awards. Everyone on this planet knows the streets of America are not paved with gold.

They are paved with food.

You may be a natural born American (your bicep may even be tattooed, Born In The USA), but chances are—unless you have no money, are desperately hungry, or are in the company of a dog—you may not be aware of the astonishing quantity and variety of food spread o’er the streets of this country.

When I walk my dog I am doing so for the recreation—and because of his steadfast refusal to use indoor plumbing. But to my dog, our walks are not about exercise—they are about eating. Every dang walk with my dog I spend half the time pulling him away from item after item on an eat-all-you-can-find smorgasbord.

A short list of food that my dog has found on streets and sidewalks(and that he has at least partially ingested before I could pull him off):
• A box of chocolate mint Girl Scout cookies
• A stack of pancakes on a paper plate (topped with butter and syrup, white plastic knife and fork on the side)
• A puffy bag of micro-waved popcorn
• Candy bars, chewing gum, doughnuts
• A cornucopia of fast food, from French fries and half-eaten burgers and hotdogs to nearly full buckets of grease-coagulated extra-crispy chicken

This is true: On three separate walks (two in Portland and one in San Diego) my dog and I came across uber-sized, perfectly intact, no delivery box in sight, pepperoni pizzas. The pizzas just lay there on the sidewalks, or in the grass next to the sidewalks, causing me to wonder, is there some kind of wormhole in the back of a pizza oven in Bayonne, New Jersey? Do random pizzas whiz through that wormhole and instantly appear on the sidewalks of Portland, or San Diego, or Kokomo? Is there a pizza on the roof of your house? (Let me know: PizzaOnMyRoof!@WritersMonthly.com)

Last week, while walking with my dog in Balboa Park, my canine gourmand sprinted ahead to dine al fresco on a mound of saffron-spiced risotto that some thoughtful person had piled at the base of a palm tree. Inexplicably, this made me think of the last time that some energy companies ganged-up to gouge their gluttonous customers in California. Which made me recall how the State of California attempted to protect its citizens from those rapacious energy companies by spending tax dollars to create television advertisements to convince citizens that electricity was truly in short supply, and that it was urgent for citizens to use less electricity, and especially, to refrain from using electricity during peak hours.

One of the State’s television ads featured a tow-headed toddler in a highchair anxiously waiting until one second past 7pm—then joyously throwing his bowl of food onto the floor. The child’s pretty mother—blissfully free of guilt, since it was after peak usage hours—vacuumed up the wasted food.

As so often happens when I watch the medium called television, I misunderstood the message. I thought the advertisement was an effort to brag to the world, to show off to everyone who doesn’t live here, how there is so much food in California that its citizens learn from an early age that food is for throwing on the floor. (This childhood training prepares us for adulthood, when we will throw food on the streets.)

America, with its well-documented epidemic of obesity, its all-you-can-eat buffets, its candy and soda vending machines in schools, offices and at the tennis courts, would be a tough place to go hungry in, wouldn’t it? And in California, everyone has more than enough to eat, yes? I mean, if those pernicious rumors of 40% of California’s school-age children not having enough to eat were really true—wouldn’t the State be using our tax dollars to create television ads to tell us so?

Once upon a time, long ago and far away, I had 32 cents in my possession and was in the middle of a thousand-mile hitchhiking journey. I was hungry. Really hungry. After just two days with no improvement in my economic or gastronomic condition, I was ready to do just about anything to get something to eat—beat someone up, steal their wallet, maybe even try to marry their unhappy daughter and get a cushy job in their fish cannery. I relieved my hunger by going into a grocery store and stuffing food down my jeans, then waddling past the suspicious cashiers who, fortunately, were not paid anywhere near enough to challenge a shaggy teenaged male with a lean and hungry look—not to mention a frighteningly large bulge at the crotch of his jeans.

My patron saint was not Jean Val Jean, stealing food to feed some hungry kids—it was Scarlet O’Hara—pissed off and determined never to be hungry again, and to hell with everyone else.

I know from experience that hungry people can be dangerous.

Still, I think that over-fed people can be more dangerous.

While hungry people will on occasion upset the status quo, maybe even misdirect their rage for food into storming an empty jail and inadvertently starting a bloody revolution, or stealing a package of hotdogs from the local mini-mart—they really just want enough to eat.

Strangely, it’s the over-fed people who want more, and who seem to never get enough. (You can forget about pacifying over-fed people with cake—they’ve got warehouses full of the stuff, own all the bakeries and patents on the recipes and trademarks on the brands.)

I could be wrong, but I think that the real foundation of all forms of wealth—and all forms of creativity—is simply having enough to eat. But just enough. When you have enough to eat, life is gravy. When you eat too much, life is without flavor.

Those who have enough to eat write novels, piano concertos, and computer programs. They design and build spacecraft and video games. They open vineyards and restaurants and feed other people.

Those who eat too much suffer from an endless hunger. They become obsessed with consuming, with getting, having and keeping more. Those who eat too much are creative, too, but they don’t create one-act plays or a cure for SARS. They create stock options for executives, and create PACs to strong-arm Congress to make sure no laws will require them to record these company expenses as company expenses. They create elaborate schemes to convince the State of California to spend tax dollars to convince its citizens that there isn’t enough electricity and that everyone needs to pay much, much more, for the electricity that they use to vacuum up the food that their kids throw on the carpet.

What?

I’m just saying that when I’m not getting enough, I feel like I’m in a hard-labor prison.

When I’m getting too much, I feel like I’m in a minimum-security jail— sure, maybe conjugal visits are allowed—but it’s still a prison.

When I’m getting enough—just enough—it’s like walking on the sunny side of the street, whistling that old Al Jolson tune, Sitting On Top of the World, and catching a winsome smile from the cute redhead pulling her chocolate Labrador away from the Big Mac and fries spread across the sidewalk.

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