white guy's day

How it went... We dropped the truck off at discount automotive. i guess i would have felt a little better if it wasn't called discount automotive. With my shopping fetish, it would have suited me more to have been called "high priced automotive", or better, "ambiance automotive". i pay a lot for ambiance and don't really even know what it is. Seems its an idea, once grasped, that changes in order to maintain it's ethereal value. So it isn't anything, really. For instance, i won't/don't/haven't shopped at Winco. i struggle with businesses frequented by Mexicans. i'm a southern Oregon white chick, racism embedded against my will. i live in an affluent all-white community just dying to be tolerant, if we could just get the right kind of black folks to move in around here.... i enjoy white privilege and endure white guilt. blah blah blah

anyway, we drop the car off at discount automotive and there behind a cluttered metal desk sit Omar and Mohammed, proprietors.... or so it seems to me. Omar takes my keys, and i notice a Tupperware container sitting on the desk. It is filled with rocks that share an alarming resemblance to crack cocaine. Now, from my experience (and i have some), that shit needs to be kept in an airtight container, so i consider first the wisdom of their open air storage methods; then, the probability that i am funding their habit with the eminent sale of my truck; and running a distant third, why would they leave it out in plain view. i stare and say nothing, swallow my suspicions, chase them with cold coffee. My companion is not so subtle: so whatcha got there? he asks... Then comes the answer: "incense." ah yes... That smell. Really good incense. So, i felt a little better leaving my truck in the hands of devoutly religious men. men of honor, no doubt. Iraqis. Sure. Why not. Then, i consider the bumper sticker in my rear window, recently acquired at a Molly Ivens shindig, it reads: "regime change begins at home" now... that could be good or bad, but it's martin Luther king day, and there nowhere else to get the truck fixed but Omar and Sharif.

my son had called that morning and asked, "when's white-guy day, mom?" again, southern oregon's finest. i tell him "every day is white guy day, honey. quit complaining." but it's there, the intrinsic racism from coming up in an all-white community. We just have it. Not much to do but be aware of it, and try not to let it drive the bus. Anyway... They did a great job on the truck, but in the end it turns out that they -- Omar and bro. -- are not the proprietors... When we picked up the truck, some white guy, some old worn out mechanic named Phil -- is making out the invoice and taking my credit card. So much for equality. But the truck runs better than it has in ages.

addendum... Called the ford dealership when i got home... They are giving me my money back for the work (not) done last week. i am woman, hear me beg.