The national economic meltdown was brought home to me this week. Uncharacteristically, my local Big Bank put a seven-day hold on a large out-of-state check I wanted to deposit.
Seven business days? Big Bank had never done that to me before. Those bastards. That meant it would be a week and a half before I could use my funds. So in a fit of financially ill-advised pique, I snatched back my check.Then I set off with the goal of finding a Cash America, or a Paycheck America, or wherever it is America goes these days to get a check cashed instantly (for a fee, of course).
As it turns out, none of those places are located near where I live, which is by the beach in Southern California. They are all, shall we say, inland.
I finally located a check cashing place. Inside the sterile-looking, cheerless lobby, the clerks were sequestered behind bulletproof Plexiglass. While I was waiting for my paperwork to be approved, I noticed a small coffee can on the counter. It had a picture of a man and two young girls on it. “Help the Masons”, the can said. “Every penny counts.”
“Who are the Masons?” I asked the clerk.
Mason was their coworker, she explained. He’d been gunned down in the parking lot. Five bullets. Now he was paralyzed from the waist down. He’d been raising those two little girls by himself, and now… her voice trailed off.
“The streets right around here are real bad,” she said, then named four streets, gesturing with her hands. “It’s like a shooting circle. Things are getting worse. Everyone around here’s out of work. Everything’s bad.”
I asked some more questions about Mason. He has no health insurance. Pretty soon, he’ll probably get kicked out of the rehabilitation facility he’s been recovering in. Right now his mother is in town from Wisconsin, looking after the little girls. After that, no one’s sure what will happen.
I shoved five bucks into the donation jar.
As I drove away from the check-cashing store in my “rob me” Z4, I pondered a sense of unease has settled over my hometown of Los Angeles. People are losing their jobs, all over. I read last weekend that the unemployment rate in this city is over ten percent. It seems to be getting worse by the week.
In the immediate wake of hard times like the ones we’re having right now, the circles of violence like the one that swept up Mr. Mason inevitably grow and invade into new territory. There was much wringing of hands in my beach city community recently about a string of robberies that had been committed by perpetrators from–quote–outside the community. In my own postage-stamp-sized town, we’ve started to have home invasion robberies. I used to worry about frat boys stumbling up from the bars on Pier Avenue at 2 a.m. on Saturday night. Now I’m worried about desperados seeking cash.
And violence is only the dark underbelly of the recession/depression/liverwurst, whatever it is we’ve got on our hands. Little stores are closing all around in my community, one after another.
What about you? Where you live, do you see any visible signs of economic hard times? Does it make you nervous? Do the incidents that take place around you impact or inform your writing?