I love North Korea (Michigan) – do not get me wrong – you could not meet families that are more loving. The problem is, we are the poorest community. People are hungry and have no money. There are no job openings. Those who work are working for “nothing”. Those who have anything to show for, other than a beer belly, are envied and coveted. Folks look up to them and secretly – sometimes openly – hate them.
For instance: Let me reflect on the other day when I went out to collect rent. Truly, it is not my place. They call me, Landlord. I am in fact, Consigliore. My orders are from others, on that level. I can usually tell when a tenant is getting ready to book on me. Usually they start complaining about cockroaches (I have a service that takes care of that), or something else; such as, the screen door they broke, or that broken window (that suddenly appeared). You get the idea.
Evictions used to be rare for me. I worked hard to keep places up. Inspections reflected that, as well as, customers’ comments.
That all changed when people all over began losing jobs, and nobody could claim steady work. The last good tenant that I remember, was an accountant who ran onto hard luck. The family was impeccably clean and well mannered. They were always paid up, either ahead of time, or on time. In fact, they were the only ones to send me money. I have always had to personally collect. They made their egress in the middle of one night, after paying their last month’s rent, and giving me a month’s notice. Someone from the county was looking for them.
In fact, I understand the resentment of a person who does not know where the next meal might be coming from. I grew up in Appalachia. People were always suspicious of strangers. We lived on a small farm outside town. I got whipped for things I never even did. Sometimes they beat me up, just for fun. I almost got killed a couple times. So, I learned to fight back.
I never enjoyed fighting the way some do. My knees nock when I think about it. My body trembles. I brace myself, and prepare to move forward.
I spend little time reflecting on the twisted part of my childhood. In short, it was not my fault. I learned to defend myself, organized and faced problems. I was very frightened. On several occasions, I found myself within a ring of guys, who organized the bull fight. I am a rather short person. Most people think of me in a diminutive way, until they meet me. Most guys I fought were much bigger than me. I got beat a lot, until I learned to fight back. I lost half my hearing, suffered headaches that persisted for months, and to this day, the ringing never stops.
The last time I fought with a person, he stayed down. I left that place, enraged. I wanted to kill everybody. It took more than a year to get back at everybody who was responsible. People quit bothering me.
We lived in a small town called, Pukrasnia Appalachia. Everybody had problems. We were living in a procrastinated, depression. Infant mortality was common. And, something else – we were being trained for war – or so it seemed. Visit our town today and read the names on our wall. The government did not put them there, we did. We built the shrine with our labors, and our lives.
Anyway, my real problem started several weeks ago, with the Constable. He came to visit me with a bad attitude, and started writing citations on my property, immediately upon entering the premises. That never happened in all the years I’ve been in business. I kept it up. The lawn has always been mowed. However, the city is hungry – real hungry – they call it, preying on, “cash cows”. Essentially, they make new laws and change old laws, to get the most fine money. And they add people to the cash cow list as needed.
It seems I had acquired a boat on my rental property. A tenant owns it. I am somehow responsible, even though I did everything I could to get the boat moved. There was only one problem. It had no trailer (or motor). The city passed a new law. They decided they could create a fine directed at my newly acquired boat, that I do not own.
I expressed my amazement and he physically pushed me, to get past. I seemed to be blocking his ingress. At which time, I expressed my desire that he should leave. He then decided that somehow this was abuse. Nevertheless, he left begrudgingly, with half a foot up-the-arse, leaving me with a dilemma of what to do with the boat.
If you ever tried giving something away, you may empathize with me. Craig’s List wanted to charge me and with all the lakes and rivers, there was nobody with a boat trailer. I spent several weeks calling and visiting everywhere. Nobody wanted to help. Finally, I called up J.C. Lord. He owns a marina outside of town. His service handles sloops and Boston Whalers, ferrying them between home storage and dockside. I paid him to move my newly acquired boat to a storage place in, East Gezus.
The funny thing about coprolite is it is valuable if you are paying someone to move it, and worth nothing at all once it gets there. That was my experience when it got newly dumped into the back yard to join a myriad of material that either decays and melts into the soil, or is cut up with a Sawzall and becomes scrap that gets buried in history.
The whole incident transpired over an extenuated time table, where I suffered through it. My tenant would have paid the bill, except he has no job or money. They might get food stamps, maybe. It does not help me. What can I do, kick him out? He is not lazy, just cannot find work. Part of the problem in North Korea, is that most of the people living there are either Marshalls, or felons. Marshalls are civilians who act like police, but really are not. Some carry guns, while felons are not supposedly allowed to have any. And we all have to take classes, once every three years. The nice thing about North Korea, there are no police, just Marshalls, laundry folks, and felons.
North Korea has a certain stigma attached to it. When people ask me where I live, I always mention, East Gezus. More people can identify with that and are more comfortable with the folks there, even though they have their fair share of problems as well. They are in fact, a part of North Korea (county); however they see it differently. Some people have jobs and others own businesses. Several real police live there. We never call them. They would not come if we did. Too many things happen in North Korea, they say. And, we have Marshalls, and a Constable.
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