Had to go to the store today

No choice, hate going into town but had to today, have to get water, eggs and maybe butter. Water store is easy, four five gallon jugs (water in NM is not safe to drink less purified due to old mines, etc) at $1.25 each, that just leaves some gas for the old car and… Walmart. Other stores short of Dollar Tree are too outrageously expensive to shop at, $6-7 a pound for weird looking “beef.” Chicken is usually cheap, only $3-4 a pound, sometimes it drops to $2. Well, the budget got tighter than ever this year, live with my mother and we keep the water, power and internet going, that alone just about zeroes out the meager budget, I work on her place and keep it held together, lots of repairs, etc since she bought it and more to go yet. TV last night (I got the old antenna that came with the place finally turned around and working three years later, not a high priority since we are not TV people, we always just used the internet) had something on the news about how the egg market crashed, eggs are so cheap they are throwing them away to save money, hell they might just give them away! Alright, that works for me! Let’s go to town today and take care of the monthly business and look for those cheap eggs that have been FLOODING the market for over six months.  

Head into walmart and as we took our time I took to watching people’s baskets and carts as we made our way around. A theme suddenly developed in the store: I did not see one white person with anything more than two small handbags worth of groceries anywhere, no one was buying ANYTHING else but food, young and old alike. Here in New Mexico we have a large hispanic population, almost everyone I saw were the old NM hispanics, they were getting as little as everyone else, little old ladies pushing big carts around the store just looking then taking one or two cheap pieces of UFO something and putting it in their basket and heading for checkout. Reach checkout, same story. No matter the line passed or even those “self checkout” places everyone was the same, handful of little stuff, all groceries and that was it. Now let me tell you all about the OTHER group in town…

First or last of the month is when all the Indian Dividend Checks go out, welfare, etc. We aim to avoid these times for the following: go to town anywhere I have lived in NM during these times and you will have to fight at the grocery store. The WHALES show up, I mean big, bloated, dead for six week whales ready to pop from all the lard on them. Indians, mostly Navajo and Apache around here, swarming the isles, they have two or three carts each as they waddle along, if it’s not them its Mexicans. There go the Mexicans, mile a minute blathering as they load their carts, Ching-Chong down the way loading up too or maybe (In Gallup when I was over that way) the Alah Ahkbar clan going down the aisles. All these groups are taking THE most EXPENSIVE meats and products, they do not buy the tripe, tongues, bones or anything else, they are all grabbing prime steaks or whatever has the highest price tag. Get in line to check out, wait an hour. Two or three carts to get unloaded, checked, reloaded then out comes a giant fistful of credit cards, WIC, federal indian handouts you name it. I have yet to see anyone of them use CASH. Beware of them, pushing the cart along and my mother once wanted a package of beef, well… Between the whales emptying out the isle and as the man pushes out the new rack to unload and them yanking it all off she grabbed a package of beef and a whale looked at her with pure rage and hate. Too busy to start a fight though, gotta keep grabbing. Guard your cart too! These monkeys will take things right out of your cart if you’re not careful! Push fast, don’t stop, don’t let them get their hands in because by god if they see something they want and you have it they reach into your cart and snatch it!

My mother made a jibe to me on the way out that they are all on welfare and everything else they can latch onto, my remark to her was this: “Yep, you could go sign up for it all too, were poorer than they are but we have a problem: were white.” Drive away in an old dusty car, banged up, worn out tires more than eight years old and no money to replace them and get passed by whales driving brand new 4×4’s or whatever is the most expensive car or truck on the lot at Ford, Toyota, etc. Careful though, they drive so batshit insane they might just sideswipe you like one spick did us or back into you (never could afford to fix that one) like a Navajo did before driving off, thankfully it was a small dent.

So wherever you are out there, just remember that this is how all that “hard earned tax money” is being spent, meanwhile where I live with the other poor as hell New Mexicans the carpenter over the way of us (Hispanic guy, handyman and ranch hand) was mighty happy and proud last year: The uber rancher could not pay them with much cash this year for some reason, but instead they would pay the ranch hands with one calf. He was tickled to death, they would have meat on the table once he fattened it up! God only knows how uber-rancher came up with that scheme though considering how much they get in government handouts. My god, one guy got over $200,000 because he declared what he had “was just not enough.” Other good ole boy bastard south of us set up a tax scheme for himself and some buddies, they make a profit from their produce anyway but now they get government subsidy because they have to hire “poverty stricken locals” to pick their beans and struggle to sell said beans because of said poverty. Maybe if they paid their workers that might change. They’re millionaires too now from the scheme.

This is a small glimpse of what New Mexico looks like, not the happy, shiny, tourist BS they put out, this is what NM is REALLY like, lived here just about all my life and it has gotten WORSE every two or three years. So don’t fret none while you look down at your bowl of beans or rice with a fish head, you’re not alone. We keep our luxuries on like internet or others around here manage to keep their satellite running (few do, most of us have antenna’s) while just barely making it. TV tells us the economy is better than ever, white privilege is everywhere and we must be punished for being white… Then I go to the store, stare at my two bags with two dozen $5+ eggs and one or two other items while knowing I’m dead broke again. Tell me again about “white privilege.”