One the Road 3

Part 3  

One of the first people I met as a driver was a gentleman who I enjoyed visiting with immediately.  He had come from California where he had once been a policeman.  We hit it off immediately because he and I shared a common distain for labor unions.  He shared some of his experiences and I shared some of mine.  We readily agreed that the bad employees thrive because the labor unions protect people that should have been fired long ago.  Yet they are insulated from the consequences of their mediocre job performance because whenever trying to deal with their incompetence a brick wall called labor unions protect them from receiving the disciplines and often dismissal that they deserve.  I have driven him a number of times and the minute he gets in the car we have a wonderful conversation on various issues.   

One of the sadder experiences I had was picking up a young woman.  When I asked her if she was comfortable or needed more air in the backseat, she replied that she was fine.  I recognized right away that she had an accent from another country.  She said nothing more the rest of the drive.  You can’t imagine how sick I felt when we arrived that her drop off destination which was a literal tent city just east of the Arizona state capitol.  I have heard about tent cities in California and have definitely seen homelessness in our area but nothing prepared me for hundreds of tents clustered together and the trash and filth that I saw wherever I looked.  It was painful to see the people that had made this their home.