Hello, It's Me ©

Well that’s done, I hope those of you who read the Red Clay posts enjoyed them and if I ever decide to write another 21 post story just shoot me.
But, I did owe many of you an ending since I had abruptly stopped writing them so now that is done.
My head hurts.
I will leave them up until the end of December and archive them after that.

So what have I been up to for the last um three weeks?
Well, the porch is done and paid for.
That was fun.
Paying, what an adventure.
To avoid paying double taxes we paid for materials cash and the labor by cheque so that meant we had to go to the bank to get some money.
This is where the fun starts.

We needed seven grand and my parents didn’t feel it was safe for my father to walk out of the bank with that much cash on him so they wanted me to go along for protection; after all I am the gangster in the family according to my mother.
I look at my mother and enlighten her a little.
That was 25 years ago when I was younger and more flexible or at least didn’t creak and crack when I moved.
At my current age I’m scared the next fart might spit out a vital organ.

So off to the bank we went.
Over the years the area has changed a lot.
The branch my parents have been using for the last forty years is now in what is called China Town, an area that once was mostly inhabited by Italians and other southern Europeans.
Most have of them have moved out to the suburbs but some diehards like us have stayed and more or less blended in.
That’s what been North Americans should be like.

That’s what we are right?
Descendants of a bunch of interlopers who came over the oceans to impose ourselves on the native population by either killing them or cheating them out of what is, was rightfully theirs.
We got them drunk and stoned then empties their pockets.
But you got to give the natives credit, they learn real quick.
Today they're killing us back with cheap smokes after they give us free booze at their casinos as we loose our houses at the crap tables.
That’s one way to get the land back.

So we walk into the bank and there isn’t one person in there that isn’t Asian.
Not even the token teller.
Me I don’t give a shit but my father he’s like.
“They’re all Chinese”.
Me I say, “No, some are Vietnamese, Korean, yeah some are Chinese”.
He looks around and says, “They’re all Chinese to me”.
I tell him, “The teller on your right, she’s Vietnamese, and the one over at the other end, now she’s Chinese”.
“How do you know that”? he asks.
“Well it’s obvious”, I tell him ”The Chinese chicks have bigger tits”.
He gave me a dirty look ”You’re a Malaka, that’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard”.

We stood there in line for about five minutes waiting and he says ”How do you know she’s not Korean”?
“They have fatter nipples”.
He turned his head towards me and shot me this sharp look, I thought his eye was going to pop out, it’s a good thing a teller opened up before he could say anything.

At the booth the teller asks him to slide his card in the slider but my father doesn’t have a bankcard.
He refuses to own one.
He doesn’t trust computers so, no card.
The teller punches in his account number and brings up his info.
My father passes him a paper showing how much money he wants.
The teller looks at the computer and turns to my father and says he has to fill in a request for this amount and it would take two working days.

My father asked me what he said and I told him in Greek. “She said you can’t have your money”.
“What”!!!!
“Why”?
“It’s my money”.

I explained to him that the bank didn’t keep umm $7000 in the bank any more.
My father stood there in a trance for about thirty seconds.
“No money”?
The teller shakes her head at him.

He looked over at me and in Greek says, “The Chinese took my money to China”.
I told him “No they didn’t, this is the Bank Of Nova Scotia, they just bought the province and moved your money over there and invested it in golf courses”.

Imagine that, once you could go to the bank and draw out ten, twenty grand, now you have to make an appointment two days in advance to visit it.
I told her to put the request in and we’ll be bake in two working days.
As she is filling in the form she looks at us and apologizes first but says she has to ask by law, “What do you need the $7000”.
I translate to my father and we talk for a second then turn to her and say,”There’s a sale on chicken” and I made her write it down.
It’s our fucken money so the government could go screw themselves.

It’s bad enough they are in our pockets as deep as they are, they have no business how we spend the pennies we’ve managed save over the years.
They’re probably pissed off they didn’t get it all I guess.

With the paper work done the old man and I headed for the car.
On the way he says, “She was half Korean and half Chinese”.
“Yeah, that she was”.

Have a nice day

Walker