When it's Christmas out in Ho Chi Minh

Robert Stanford reporting live, from the Modesto Airport Business District.




Thus the story so far….

So the flower shop across the street has now disbarred me from boutiqing1, I am quite sure. It is a combination of the words “kidnapping” and “extortion” that they cannot seem to get past.

Either that, or the older man of the shop is quite shaken, scared and all the more offended, after I chased after him one day, in a performance designed to dissuade those that would defecate along the back doors of the office. Perhaps it was a mistaken identity, but either way, a shortcut to where again?

But that’s just what happens when you walk out onto the stage of that kind of a reality. You just don’t know what you will find. What you will face. Many assumptions will be made of involuntary necessity of survival. Depending on the situation of course. Or not.

And in the seemingly newly dedicated way, the “Mission District” has set about building up within their few city block domain. King of the homeless problem. Expanding the detox center - new life for good people. Well “Praise the Lord”.

I wanted to get some pictures, but the abatement crew that came to abate the asbestos in the building ruined my best shots. Who do I sue?

Interesting, the struggles the Modesto Union Gospel Mission has endured under the felinity and circumspect attacks of the La Loma Neighborhood Association’s assault upon the homeless in a Melville storyline manner with Mike Moradian at the helm. No matter, though. Just another contestant for the Robert Stanford Local Celebrity Death Pool.

I even have it figured out what I shall stamp in blood red letters across his apple pie face. I was going to use it for Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Kenneth Tam, but thought better to bite my tongue for the time being, in favor of coming back later for Tam with some interactive video of a rape scene from the movie Pulp Fiction. Therefore, I find it comforting and satisfying to use it to brand Mike Moradian’s portrait - FAGGOT.

It would seem that the Voice of Modesto's very own Less Nesman, Emerson Drake, has left the building, never to be heard from again? It’s all hush hush and on the Q-T - like that police report the publisher filed on his laptop and precinct lists. I certainly hope that when I am old and decrepit, that I do not see middle aged men as nothing more than a group of juvenile delinquents that neer do well, not paying attention to me in my poli-sci class. Mindy should really put him in a home now.

And of all days to day. I cannot get the thought out of my mind of carmen, standing there, with the Modesto Bee in one hand and holding his weenie in the other.

Probably because he will be sporting a hot-dog cart at his makeshift Italian diner hustling for votes with party poppers and kazoos - complete with a coned party hat that is just 10 sizes to small for him……..it’s his birthday after all. Today is the day2.

Of course what do I know, if I were still in the running for mayor, I would probably be selling out gay hot weenies at the Brave Bull trying to makes sure the marriage equality vote knew I was firmly in their corner. I figure they would just go along with the rest. Especially after those weenies. I know Kasey would let me do a Donna Summer DJ session if I showed up in drag. Or not.

Walking around the corner the other day, suddenly everything became unfamiliar and dark as the wind blew about handbills of announcement that only jimson root could tell. And an old lady with large hairs growing from her chin looked up from the cumbersome misused baby stroller and cackled, “How cum yoo not in jaaayle?”

I said nothing. I just kept trying to wake up and then I saw him. The old man that had once been so friendly now peeked up and over at me as he scurried inside to the safety of his building to be warm and protected from two words - “kidnapping” and “extortion”.

To get to the Vietnamese refugee camp or home, I have to cross in front of the Modesto Union Gospel Mission. Tempestuous it is. Once having to walk home from work crippled by my very shoes, I limped across the fresh tarmac, yet stopped midway. I looked down and took off the shoes that tortured me so. As I looked up and over, I saw a young man grinning at me. Or so I thought. I did not have my glasses and he was far too away for me to see. There may have not been anyone there at all.

“You’re quite an interesting character.” The youthfully beaming apparition said to me. Or not.

“Yeah, why is that?” I asked sharply, as though I had several cars to be lubing in Brooklyn, all the while, proceeding to take off my socks.

“You just are. You work at that bail bonds place, don’t you?”

“Why?”, I hissed. “What do you want?”

“Nothin, I just….”, and with that I briskly stormed away from him, unencumbered by ill fitting shoes as though I was born to walk through the Modesto Airport District without fear of neither needle, metal or glass.

Tonight the Brown Shirt NAZI guards of the Modesto Gospel Mission were even farther away. To me it looked as though they were rising up, preparing to shoot me down with .22 cal. pistols and then proceed to call animal control for a “pick up”. Or not.

Maybe they would whisk my body into the building and feed me to the homeless. One could only hope, considering the five million dollars they brought in for the year 2010, the gruel they currently serve those unfortunate enough to have to endure the sacrifice of their very Constitutional rights for a partial portion of a disgusting meal.

Here. You can have mine.

No, no. I’ll be allright (live longer). Cigarette?

Ducking into the safety of the Vietnamese refugee camp, it is in and of itself, the perfect camouflage. The perfect cover. The perfect disguise. Where everyone knows your name. Well, my name at least.

“Pollo. So they away take the man and the girl?”

“Everyone is out now. Yeah. But it’s all political. You know. Like in Vietnam.”

“I not joking now. You need be serious. I worry about you. You be careful.”

“It’s all political. Seriously. Everything is fine - they are lying in the newspaper”

“You want coffee Pollo?”

“Yes, please. You know, I would love some coffee. Some coffee would be great. Thank you. Yes. Coffee. Coffee coffee coffee”

The Vietnamese Refugee camp is on the Yosemite Boulevard, which is just a fancy name for a short stretch of the 132 interstate.

And here, along that interstate in this God Forsaken valley is this place. A place where Vietnamese hospitality is taken advantage of as though it were franchised.

A refuge from the rain, the cold, your problems or the police.

Not from me though.

I saw her grinning twice as wide today, from in the back of the camp, in the kitchen. It was the Den Mother. “Hi Pollo!”. Obviously relieved that I was not arrested and taken to jail along with “the man and the girl”. “You OK?”

“It’s political. It’s all political. You know, like Vietnam.”

“Pollo!” The other one snapped, “We not from Vietnam. We Cambodian.”

“Same thing. I saw Apocolypse Now.” I said smugly, as though I was tossing imaginarily long locks of hair across my other shoulder.

“What? What Pollo?”

“It’s a movie. It’s about the war.”

“Oh, the war. I little girl then. That long time ago. You want donut, Pollo? I give to you.”

“He don’t need more donut. He get fat now!” The Den Mother said, upon coming across to the counter to join us. “You OK?”

“I’m fine. Really. And so are they. This is not what they tell you it is. It is totally different”

“You promise? You don’t want donut? I sorry for what I said. You not fat. You need more more donut!!!”

Our laughter chimed as a reminder to me that everything was meant to be the way it is today, despite how uncertain it might seem all too often. As though there is no use to resist and fight for the preservation of moments such as these. Right Here. Right Now - a refuge. A home. A place free from those that would enslave, imprison and kill us without any recourse to the law for us.

Just like Vietnam.



1. Sorry, it was unspellable.

2. Actually, I wrote that last week. So it’s really not his birthday today. And yes he is still alive. But I got fifty says he won’t make to election - ricket’s - they move fast.




Copyright 2011 Robert Stanford all rights reserved.

I Wish It Were Federal Friday

Written September 16th 2011 a couple of days after Aleo Pontillo and Janelle Llorens were arrested on charges of kidnapping and extortion by a rogue justice system in Stanislaus County

I Wish It Were Federal Friday

By

Robert W. Stanford

With nothing more than a glance across an empty desk I can see what intricate games she may be in the mood for, seemingly guided by the phases of the moon, they are only random to me when I don’t look up into the night sky to keep track of the astronomically astrological force that guides the ocean’s waves.

Familiarity breeds habits of escape. Especially at a time such as this, as my glace reveals who her real friends are. Me.

We use to sit closer, without the empty desk between us. She didn’t want me to go, nor did I as much care to, yet by the same worry and fret that had caused me to lose track of the paths of the moon, so too did I need to position myself for a secluded power base in the midst of Bad Moon irony.

Trading names like bubble gum cards, ours was the language of twins. Others that listened could not quite understand as we exchanged names, like machine gun fire – the ammunition jacketed in the details of a payment history, telephone record and residency report. Perfectly, we complimented each name by providing the date the other lacked. We had momentum. Ah, that’ synchronicity.

What better job could one have, then be able to work n a environment that is all too easily transformed into a Soho café?

With the chatter of nail paint and quaint experiences wrapped within moments of brief silence, only to be bundled among moments of what to others seemed like some esoteric wordplay – as though two detectives had been working the same case and began to compare notes from memory.

So hedonistic I had become while entrapped in the arrogant elegance that Soho café had offer. And then of course there was that girl. Suddenly she and he were gone. Leaving nothing more than myself and my twin.

We had lost our audience that had never once thought of walking out.

As though an era had ended somehow, it seemed, looking across the aisle, out of habit expecting a glance, or two, yet nothing. There was no one there. So discomforting, and it’s not even Federal Friday yet.

“You’re goin’ down Stanford!!! You’re goin’ down!” he said, his carefully fixed gaze of the board meeting mine. “I’m gonna crush you Stanford.”

Then pushing back a bit into his seat, he lifted his Herculean arms and said, “You’re white man.”

And then a bit louder, “Hey! Dumbass! It’s your move!”

Slowly I relaxed the dramatically acted squint in my eyes, “What?”

“It’s you’re move! C’mon maaan.” Rising his hand half way to his forehead as though he thought he was about to suddenly experience a migraine.

“Oh, ahem. OK. Here we go…” and it was King’s Pawn to King Pawn’s three. All within the motion of moving my piece, his palm began to be rubbed on his leg and become the tell that I was successful in my attempt to at least create an immediate distraction for him. Knowing that he would insist on wanting my attention on the game at least close to what his was. We both wanted a better game and we knew how to get it from each other if for no other reason than it was our one thousandth game.

Such a charming piece in my life it was. Another natural environment that I shall, for all my days, liken to a remote resort. Yet forever haunting me would be the inevitable public perception that I see to this day, is all too real. That rather than fancying myself having vividly inspirational and deep conversation with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, it would be more likened to H.G. Wells playing chess with Jack the Ripper, in grand revolutionarily debatable conversation of the siege of the New World Order – for us, as we are increasingly oppressed today by the same Police State as foretold by the most brilliant individuals throughout Americas history, today, the 4th Reich of the United States of America. Nothing more, than a forever burning red, white and blue flag, dipped in chocolate sauce.

And now that Federal Friday has come and gone, no longer do I bear the yoke of that despair. That anticipation of what others may think.

What others think of me is power that they believe they have over me, as well as others. Something to hang over one’s head as it were. Wisdom from the very sandboxes of kindergarten. If you do not believe as they wish, then they will subtly demonstrate the lack of their faith in your moral turpitudes. Birds of a feather and all that, you know.

But I am not so sure that applies to me. No. Not me. I am on the teeter-totter. It is nowhere near the sandbox.

My ride is much wilder.

So I try not play with them and just like unwashed hair, my image begins to look rather “rogue”. Which is OK, since many ultra-conservatives have assured me that they believe in me enough to wait and see if they believe in my cause. There is a God after all, I suppose.

Through the desperation of moments that test the very definition of my courage – many differences of opinion between myself and members of the community quickly dissolve like water into wine. Like darkness into light. The discovery of what is most important, without being so judgmental as to mock God himself.

It all started one morning in the Vietnamese Refugee Camp disguised a  remodeled Winchell’s Donut franchise – Ho Chi Minh.

Since I last wrote about the camp, many confused my reference to our Den Mother, as MA – the top of the Vietnamese food chain gang, borne of the necessity of years of genocidal warfare. The survival of refugees and lard. Having spent time in prison, coming away with a tattoo so crafted from generations upon generations of Vietnamese tattoo artists. So inked that it is disguised as a birth mark, just under her left eye.

A tattoo one gets for killing another in a Vietnamese gulag.

Or so, I delighted in teasing her.

“Oh, Pollo!” she starts out, gathering the other regular’s attention, “Yeah! I take a shiv. I stab him with a shiv, man!”

It’s the same joke told in a different way every day. This day could be heard Spanish translation of what we just said. And then more laughter. As each of the patrons throws out his or her try for a quick line to carry on the joke. Accept for the new customer of course, having not been in there at the 7AM rush, and if they be bold enough to still be there with us, they are nervously clenching their teeth, yet not laughing.

They inevitably do not understand our humor. It belongs to us, after all – They don’t live in the Airport District. It has been steeping for 7 years. The same joke – every day – like so many unfinished crossword puzzles.

The laughter from the half dozen Mexicans lulls the unsuspecting new customers into accepting the reality that this actually is, a remodeled Winchell’s donut franchise and not a Vietnamese refugee camp.

And then the next day everyone read the newspaper or had it read to them.

By a glance across the count, I could tell that Federal Friday had finally come. Chin wasn’t going to play the Vietnamese gulag killing joke today.

It’s just not funny anymore.

Pain, Suffering and Families Dying Out From Methamphetamine Abuse In the Modesto Airport District

By

Robert Stanford

For a sociological perspective, myself and Jorge Perez conducted a tour for the teachers of Modesto’s Johansen High School of the Modesto South Side, Empire1 and the Modesto Airport District.

Jorge Perez explained plainly to the school bus-load of teachers, the recruiting practices of South Side Gangs.

As we sat in the still hours of the morning, that time that the dew is just about completely gone, inside the school bus, pulled up along side the park, Jorge Perez unfolded, in no uncertain terms, the ongoing true reality of gang recruitment, combined with the seriousness of a matador facing off understanding with the Norteno Red Cape as an abrupt wake-up call. “This is where these kids are coming from.”

“Excuse me”, one of the teachers asked, raising her hand as though grandmother’s Kleenex was about to escape the comfort of her sleeve. “Did you say as young as sixth grade?”

Jorge stared from the steps of the forward door of the bus out into the South Side expanse through the back window  and in a surprising undertone answered succinctly and precisely, “Yes”.

“Oh my…” she said, through the fingertips rapidly forming a shield across her mouth to protect the outside world from the  shock waves beginning to ripple through her very being.

All from an experience of sitting where that sixth grader is going to sit while awaiting recruitment. Awaiting to be “jumped in”2 to a Gang to sell drugs for the gang - an instant Prop 21 gang enhancement for the sixth grader, who shouldn‘t have to know any better to begin with.

Of course, she had it well, as I had mistakenly prepared the teacher sitting next to me that this was more of a historical society tour, rather than a tour having really nothing to do with anything more than a dramatically infused experience of demonstrating the potential of youth in the ashes of suffering, pain, violence and death.

Reciting property titles of the local Empyrean bar and admission requirements according to decade, I became so caught up in my own esteem fulfillment of manipulating through over talking her to the point of relating anything that was said to the admission policy and era of the Empyrean bar.

All meant to be a grand platform to explain generational pockets of a 1.2 square mile area4 in which entire families are dying out due to methamphetamine use.

A deadly affliction that entered the family through the mother of invention during the war3. Something that began when their heritage first took up in the Modesto Airport District in the late 1930’s and 1940’s - Fathers absent due to hardships and war left single mothers to care for themselves at a time in which women made approximately half of what their male counterparts made in the local canneries all to support a household comprised of themselves and their children.

Children borne of a time of prosperity in their parent’s lives. Just a couple of years prior to the dust bowl that came to destroy everything they had worked all of their lives for. But those outside of the Airport District had not had the opportunity to see them before they became poor.


To work the double shifts, most of the working single mothers in the Modesto Airport District at this time, resorted to ingesting bennies5 to endure their sixteen to twenty hour shifts in a facility that in the summer, smelted glass and did not have the conveniences of the Gallo glass plant, today.

People from other areas of the town would look down upon these “Arkies and Okies”, calling them, “Down in the Gallos”.

In the 1930’s and 1940’s drug addiction was not widely understood by any means.

Most of the problems with drugs in the area had traditionally been opiate in nature, through opium used in the raw by the Chinese at the turn of the 20th century, to the injection of the plant refined as heroin. Some heroin imported in different formats of purities.6 However, speed was quickly becoming the acceptable drug of choice - “Mother’s little helper”. The one to be used before you completely give up.

Kids being kids, of course learn as they are imprinted in other ways7. Therefore, as these single working mothers adopted a lifestyle with other single working mothers in their “neighborhood” or “District”, as I like to call it, the children they were supporting understood all too clearly that to succeed down in the Gallos, or anywhere else, was to use amphetamines.

And, once again, there was little if any information at the time in any form that would educate them that this was an addictive method, saving their only experience being the likelihood that they would have been able to see after so many generations today what the end result was going to be - that this very drug was going to completely kill off their entire family line. Of course this is 2011 and that was in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.

Mothers and fathers living with their children and grandchildren, with the adults of the household working sixteen to twenty hours a day, down in the Gallos. All strung out on speed if they were old enough to pop the pills.

Especially affected as they were growing up into the Vietnam war and the plethora of drugs that dominated the hyper-epidemic drug phenomena throughout the world. Not that this was a new event, mind you.

And still to this day - families remain. Dying from the habitual use of what social speed freaking has become - Crack and Meth. A white line nightmare. Death. Death. Death. Then nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing but ashes and another generation of children in some instances, yet not in others.

But it was these children that remained which was primarily a part of my concern when it was suggested that one might care to think on those that might be saved in a triage sort of way in the Modesto Airport District.

Both Jorge Perez and I, Robert Stanford, valiantly proposed a single call to action for each teacher on the four hour cruise that day. A call to reach out and show caring. To mentor. Every child needs one.

Due to the jacked-up, white methamphetamine and heroin addicts that comprise a significantly large portion of the Modesto Airport’s demographic, their recent two decade die off combined with the housing foreclosure crisis has been filled with Mexican immigrants with different problems but identical needs.

However, during the migration of the Mexican population which occurred at the same time as the “housing foreclosure crisis”, they became preyed upon by PMZ8 affiliates preaching from the short sale scripture.

Re-Fi men and women in sharp business suits descended upon the historic properties like a plague of unwatched hyenas, luring poodles out into a trap through play, only to feed on the family pet. 

This was perpetuated by such as organizations such as El Concilio that had catered to building bridges between Re-fi cons (real estate agents) and the quickly in fluxing Mexicano immigrant population by taking healthy contributions from Wells Fargo, County Bank and other institutions while allowing Mike Zagaris himself to serve prominently on their board.

Not that Mike Zagaris speaks Spanish, but what business could be had from serving on the board of an organization that simply stated by their own declared charter and mission as a Civil service organization for the Spanish speaking?

Perhaps the same as Steve Madison experiences as serving on the Salvation Army board.

An organization that serves displaced families that have come in floods as though it were another migration similar to that which originally and still fills the Modesto Airport District due to the “housing foreclosure crisis”.

In short, what are quite simply, these displaced families that have worked so hard for nothing?

Steve Madison’s victims. As are anyone that can’t find work today in Stanislaus County.

But Madison will not elude to displaced families, the elderly or the disabled. It’s all about the homeless wino hobo for Steve - those are the only ones we need to care about.

And in the best interests of everyone involved in their existence (or around at the time) is to get rid of them and save yourself the trouble of picking up your own trash (again).

And like the asbestos ridden bricks secretly buried9 in the vacant lot of another bribe to me from down in the Gallos for a “Victory Garden” - what better way to cover your evil deeds and dispose of the soon-to-be bodies but by gifting them to you?  

I had spoke to a sociology class a few years before, in which the spot chosen was not ideal for me due to so many personal experiences of death, pain, suffering, joy, love, sunshine, children laughing, etc. for so long in Oregon park.

Yet at the time I just found myself there - words came quite easily to me then, as I was speaking in public at the very least a half dozen times every week and sometimes many more.

Not this time though. All I could think of was homicide. I felt that I had completely failed at what I was trying to accomplish by allowing myself to show that I was certainly not as emotionally detached from my cause as I should have been. For an overtly macho and non-effeminate male, such as I, it was quite an embarrassing episode.

Feedback that I received showed otherwise, however11

As it was with the sociology class before, though, so it was here once again as we arrived and began to pull up to Oregon park.

Jorge Perez introduced me as though I was the king of the Modesto Airport District, which I have no choice but to agree with, certainly having paid prices here no one else has, he still left me with quite large shoes to fill in my presentation.

A presentation I had not prepared for.

Rather, I had inadvertently wasted any preparation time that I had once possessed10 by trying to seduce the teacher sitting next to me into becoming fixated upon my historical observations of the die off occurring to the white population, that at one time, to a greater extent than now, dominated the demographics of the Modesto Airport District. But due their untimely methamphetamine fueled deaths - not any more.


Once again, I was overtaken by those things that men should never do. God’s mistakes, if you will. The tears brought by memories of joys intertwined with the most horrible of imaginable tragedies.

I thought, also once again, that I had failed, being unable to remember anything that I had said, due to having been overcome with the vapors of my own scarring emotions.

I asked the coordinator of the ghetto field trip, what she thought in a practically apologizing manner12.

To which she succinctly and surprisingly simply answered, “No, God that was great! I even wrote down what you said.

You said, “You can change someone’s life if you just show them you care.”





1. (Empire - out Interstate 132 toward the direction of what was once thought of to be Paradise, until it burned down by the power of the railroad and wheat Nero’s of the Stanislaus day. {Google this: PMZ Agricultural Heritage Killing Machine})

2. Jumped in - Usually in the Modesto South Side as well as other areas of gang influence, jumping in means to be severely beaten by several other “gangsters” for permanent initiation into the gang. The price of leaving ever, being that of death.

3. WWII

4. The Modesto Airport District

5. Prescription speed in table form. I.e. Cross Tops, later to come robin eggs and black beauties - speed.

6. And it was these formats of purities which changed somewhat the alignment of their ruling planets based on ingredients that may or may not have been added to the substance as a “cut” - (an ingredient to increase the drugs weight for sale) with it - but this is an entirely different topic of astrological drug recovery - similar to acupuncture in method and theory, except more “astronomical” from a Western imprinted human mind‘s perspective.

7. Hope you read the foot note, or you shall not be able to experience the brevity of the sentence that this footnote refers to.

8. PMZ - Petrulakis, Madison and Zagaris - The Overlords of the City of Modesto. What are they in all reality? Answer: Strip Miners.

9. Like so many forgotten septic tanks of 1968 through 1972 as the City of Modesto “sewered up”. KABOOM!!!! {someday - you watch!}

10. If one can actually possess such a thing.

11. http://www.scribd.com/doc/36874887/Airport-Presentation-2008-MJC-Sociology

12. Just in case, since I could not remember anything that I had said.








Copyright 2011 Robert Stanford all rights reserved.

Gentle Be The Night

On January 25^th in the afternoon, 3 people were shot in a Modesto Airport District Asian Market. That was a few days before the time of this writing. Spending long hours in the epicenter of the Modesto Airport Business District, I have decided to disclose some of the events and thoughts of the past couple of days. Just in case someone were to forget…

I inadvertently stole a set of keys last night as I left the Business District for the Residential. Yet another reminder of my state of mind as of late as I felt them inside my black leather pocket while pacing over to the Vietnamese mess hall. An illusion, as it were, perpetrated by a healthy need to run away from runaway thoughts.

With no pertinent song going through my head this evening, I hoped to look up from the antiquated sidewalk beneath my strolling feet to find old man Chino’s car in front of the Vietnamese Refugee Camp. Alas, no car.

“Hurray”! I thought, pedantically to myself, as the grape eating fox in an old fable of lore, as my mind took over my very spirit and replaced my present experience for no more than a split second. Enough time, however, to reminisce of another day.

A day I scanned the antiquated sidewalks of the Airport Business District in desperation. A keen eye on the outlook for a prized set of bottle caps for my collection. Royal Crown.

At the corner of Oregon and Benson, there was an antiquated car repair/tow shop, where old men would gather with their beer and hidden pint-whiskey bottles, speaking of what a bastard Nixon was. Some of the old junkies from the area would need a little nip of sugar and would purchase the only soda-pop that was stocked in the store’s vending machine – Royal Crown.

The pewter looking bottle opener, firmly bolted on one side to the front of the machine’s locked steel and glass door was inoperably broken in half. The owner of the shop was usually too drunk to find the bottle opener I had once brought to him. An offering it was, in exchange for his silence regarding my crimes of ditching and hitching the Pacific from Empire.

The junkies would venture to Yosemite with unopened bottles of RC Cola, and have them opened by various people in various places that happened to have bottle openers. Failing that, they would open them somehow from the Pool shop to the Iron Gate. And it was along this fascinating sidewalk path that I had built my colossal and prized bottle cap collection.

But that was more than thirty years ago now. A much more innocent time, when I was ignorant of all of the stress and suffering about me on the streets of the Modesto Airport District. My only concern being one of getting caught having stowed on the Pacific Railroad train and jumping off from Empire Elementary (now “Teel”)  into the Modesto Airport District.

Such a place in memory, cut out so perfectly for escape, until I can see my friend, cooking for the next day’s fare in the back of the Vietnamese Refugee Camp.  Another place to run to, away from those things too painful to remind myself are real for today. Swapping Menthol Kools for Cambodian cigarettes and back again, with experience and discussing proclamations about what is cool and what shall be cool. Rolling out the dough of tomorrow, dough stolen from the Americans.

I watched as the storm troopers descended on all that is now left for us of our extended family. A family that was a vital organ in the body that makes up the Modesto Airport Business District. Traffic everyone shared together as the Airport District has grown and evolved through it’s never ending quest for survival – and at times, even recovery. Again and again.

Urged on by others, I boldly jay walked across the street. Proudly holding my Bic lighter in my clenched fist I set at re-lighting the candles, incense and a couple of things I did not recognize back aflame.

The Security Guard at the Gospel Mission finally called me by my proper name again, “Mr. Stanford, how are you this evening?”

“Sad.”, I said.

And then suddenly some lady appeared out of nowhere. One had only to witness her clothes to know that she had probably never been on Yosemite Boulevard before, and had been, like so many others for the past 25 years, deceived by the outer appearance of the Vietnamese Refugee Camp. But we knew how to play our part. Besides, it was American dough – she would never even know the difference.

She did not want to partake of the stolen American dough though – that wasn’t why she was there at all. Just a small cup of Vietnamese “Cup-o-Joe” that within moments she was sobbing into, with her hands shaking out small amounts of the hot liquid, dripping across her fingers as her tears ran down her face, saying all the while, 

“I am so so sorry. This is so senseless. Oh God. I am so, so sorry. I put a flower and a little bear in front of their store….Oh God…..”

Our Den mother tried her best to comfort her, “It OK now. They in better place now. It OK.”

As myself and my otherwise giggling confidante looked deep into each other’s eyes, he said, “I don’t know. My friend he say he order some for us. It four dollar. we get five pack.  I like only one mint cigarette. I don’t know how you smoke those man.”

“I like the Cambodian ones. Not all the time though”

“Me no like either. The mint. One when you here. But that enough for me.”

The sobbing Lady from out of town looked over at us as though we were horse playing in the pews of her own mother’s funeral. So when she finally allowed our Den Mother to wait on other customers, I followed her out to her car.

“Excuse me. Um. Excuse me. Hi. My name is Robert Stanford, and I just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate someone not from here understanding us. I can tell you understand us. That is very special. I just felt like I should at least say that to you. Thank you. Thank you for caring…”

She looked at me with Betty Davis eyes and said, “What?”

Copyright 2011 Robert Stanford all rights reserved.

Suicide By Behavior - Terry Nicholson 1965 - 2010

People literally die every day. They have for some time now, but I could not quite tell you the last time in the history of the city of Modesto at least, that there has been a day without death of one cause or another.

Though there have been literally hundreds of days that people may have died, but not anyone that I had any type of connection with socially or otherwise. The days between those days have become fewer days in between as of late however.

A few of these days ago, it was Christmas again in the Modesto Airport District and other areas throughout the city as well. Tevan Nicholson, known to me and several others as Terry, was found mortally injured in a house not far from where we have chatted daily for approximately the past four months now. Long enough to offer up interesting anecdotes and stories regarding our time together, however briefly one may say it had a quality for me that was useful in describing the negative aspects of outreach advocacy.

In other words, Terry was the poster child of how useless and futile my progress has been in affecting lives and returning to another part of the city with methodology that can be counted on as effective in the solution of “poverty problems” for the “rest of the population”.

Terry was quite the challenge – every day – In the early mornings, 7 to 9 am, I could catch Terry sitting on an obscure curb in the Yosemite Jack In The Box parking lot, reading. We would discuss various authors, often trading several names in rapid fire succession, seeking for recognition within each other’s memory.

But after about 9 in the morning, the conversation would begin to change as a mutual friend of ours, Ricky, would rise from his “camp” slumber around 10 in the morning – every day, mind you. That was before the weather began to change to a tepid chill in the nights. For then Ricky and Terry had foregone their camps to reside in the mission. This would mean that they could not stay out until 9 or 10 o’clock at night, as Ricky normally camped at this time, with Terry following, if he had been lucky enough not to be arrested that day for public intoxication.

Both of them were able to take up residence at the mission, however, it was no more than a week at the most, that one of the Black Shirts (a term many of the Mission residents use to describe the staff) banned Terry from the Mission for six months.

It was far later than the 9 Am threshold for Terry. Terry was quite verbally abusive by this time to anyone he thought were not willing to either give him change for a beer, cigarettes or food. This of course was inclusive of everyone, except for “Mr. Stanford”. I had a free pass because I was a “beautiful man” and Terry would drone on and on how I was the only person that ever gave him two dollars. I didn’t have to, but I did. I did that for him. I am a beautiful man. But to everyone else, including our mutual friend, Ricky, it was, “bend over bitch. Let me fuck you up the ass. Shit if you don’t want to just give me fifty cent. Fifty cent. God damn, that ain’t much!”

It was that kind of talk that got him kicked out of the Mission. I did happen to catch the Black Shirt that had banished Terry into the cold, one night in the Vietnam Refuge Donut Salon, parked like a 25 year old RV right next door to the Mission.

Often the Black Shirts roam in, like eugenically rogue Modesto Police officers and order their sixty-five cent donut and eighty-five cent small coffee, making small talk with the frightened refugees behind the counter and saying ad-noseum, “praise God”. “Praise Jesus”. “Glory be unto him”.

It was during one of these “look how much I act like Jesus” diatribes of the Black Shirt, that I caught him off guard by actually making conversation – “Hey, there’s this black guy that you kicked out of the mission last night……”

“Hey, I know you have a heart for these people, but they gotta follow the rules.”

“I understand that, but look, what if I come with him and have dinner every night and stay until he goes to bed – I can keep him calm for you.”

“Sorry bud, no can do. He knows the rules. He broke ‘em. My hands are tied ‘brother’. Have you tried the other shelter at 9^th and D?”

“Yeah, I’m working on that – I hear they have a breathalyzer though – my guy’s not going to be able to pass that. Look, we’re going to have some freezes pretty soon and I don’t wanna to pick this guy up in a body bag along the river. Can you please, just let me come with him and stay with him until it’s lights out.”

“I gotta go bud. God bless you.” He summed up, extending his gritty slimy hand, like his shit didn’t stink.

“Allright, look”, I said, “ I will let you know about the Red Shield ok, but if I have to, I’ll go to the office during the day. I can’t leave him in the frost.”

I knew of course, how bad Terry got between the hours of nine to nine every day. Drunk. Belligerent and oh so verbally assaulting. Because, it was not more than perhaps a week before my plea to the Black Shirt that I had gone into the Jack In the Box to acquire some tacos for a junky senior citizen sitting in Terry’s morning spot.

But this was before the nights pushed many into the Mission. Several of us would converge at the same spot where Terry and me would discuss literature in the mornings. As I came out of the restaurant, I was consumed by a mother’s force of will to defend Terry from five white teens beating on him with their fists.

The automation of my actions took me almost as much by surprise as my sudden increased strength. So much so, that shortly after freeing Terry from this hate crime, the little Okie red-neck’s returned with their numbers doubled and wielding a machete during my ensuing 911 call.

After the dust settled and I spoke with the police, once again later that evening, one officer said, “Hey your friend got a free pass today, but we had to kick him out of Jack in The Box. He laid down and was going to sleep on the floor, right in front of the counter!”

For the next several days, my routine walks through the Airport Business District was comprised of scenery and reminders – SS symbols and White Power slogans. On telephone poles and crosswalk controls.

A few days after my altercation with the Black Shirt at the Vietnamese Massaged Donut Parlor, Terry boldly came to my work. And as I met him at the door, the first thing I asked him was, “So, what did you just get out of jail again?”

“No man. I’ve been sober for two days!”, he replied with his scrunched up eyebrows launching a celebration of sobriety. I was able to enjoy 3 more days of Terry’s sobriety after that.

Terry never wanted me to video tape him or take his picture, so I cannot show you what he looked like. Though it would be nice if the McClatchy Bee Pravda would take some sympathetic time to provide these things, it would probably not fit their “homeless elimination” agenda.

I could probably fill in the missing pieces that led to Terry’s injuries at the hands of this neo-nazi skin-head – but, even he has little to worry about.

No one really cares about Terry. Not even the false prophet Black Shirt that shrugged his shoulders in the name of God when he condemned Terry to die, if not from the freeze, then by the Nazi disease.

Rest in peace my friend, we will meet again.

In Loving Memory - Terry Nicholson 1965 – 2010

P.S.

Terry, God even loves the vacuum guy. I’ll tell him you said hello! Naw, just kidding!

Copyright 2010 Robert Stanford all rights reserved.

Recession, Depression and Correction

As one looks about themselves, as if anyone actually would, they see the plight that has been brought upon the working individuals and families.

It does not matter from which vantage point observations are made. All across America, it is the same. So many people losing everything they have worked for all of their lives to obtain.

Homes well into foreclosure, record numbers of individuals and families on food stamps and aid for dependent children. Charitable organizations are experiencing demand like never before with funding and donations at all-time lows.

Like the eerie creaks from within a building, on the verge of collapse, so too, is our socio-economic structure showing the foreboding signs of certain doom A catastrophe that very well may make stern separations between the strong and the weak. A rigid division between the rich and the poor.

In a desperate attempt to secure Western civilization’s standards to coincide with the expectation of American citizens, the federal government pelts funds on the local level with conditions of demonstrative need, hoping to keep the wolves of discontent away from the gates of the oval office for just another day.

And in so doing, it would seem, to many a conservative and liberal alike, that a grand conspiracy is afoot. A master plan as it were to harvest what toil is left from the American masses by perpetuating a dependence upon the American Government, from Washington DC to the local level. A direct refusal to allow the natural cycles of free enterprise to reinvent our socio-economic way of life through death and rebirth from its own ashes.

All counties throughout the United States are being infused with general assistance and food stamp funds. Unemployment, just a year ago was on the verge of insolubility, and now has now been unnaturally extended several times. And local law enforcement agencies across the nation have had a steady infusion of cash – million and millions of dollars funneled to them, causing fake prosecutions, planted evidence and what appears to many to be the granting of prematurely derived federal powers to local officers through spontaneous deputations.

There is a dependency that has weakened and threatens to completely annihilate the American spirit.

Already, most Americans today consider the proverbial American dream, nothing more than a cruel hoax.

Meanwhile, the American people become addicted to the blame game for emotional relief and as a way to preserve what little self-respect they still have left.

Immigration – both legal and otherwise becomes an immediate prime target. The concepts which become immediately acceptable are mostly comprised of generalizations that encompass all immigrants and for the sake of providing venting comfort, the negative aspects are singled out, embellished to an extreme and redundantly chanted through sensationalistic media and wide spread word of mouth, so that the definition of immigration and only it’s negative assets become common and collective knowledge.

The same begins to hold true for those that look down upon others that have fallen further down through the socio-economic ranks to a status of intense poverty. Compassion and empathy no longer stands on its own as a naturally occurring social value.

More and more we see that to be maintained, these values must be propagated by churches, charity groups and local community leaders. As though these groups and leaders were like coaches, pushing an exhausted sports team to finish out a losing game and remain respectfully good sports to the other side, regardless of the point – spread mentality of each individual player.

Since even before the technological miracles spurned by the tumultuous and now all but forgotten necessities of invention of World War II, contemporary American society still has yet to ask where all their time is going now.

With a third of everyone’s lives spent sleeping and another third spent with brain wave flattening television viewing, the other third is spent amongst fast food, star bucks, drugs and alcohol and these days, if one is so fortunate, under-paid and overly taxed labor generally for a corporate interest as opposed to private small businesses.

In the mid 1970’s it was found that many children in the urban areas of California (Bay Area and Los Angeles) believed that agricultural products were manufactured, rather than grown and harvested. This misconception was prevalent in the most disparate areas of the metropolises and occurred despite information that available to them otherwise via the sixty to eighty hours per week of television viewing informing them otherwise (PBS).

Since the 1970’s the urban areas have grown immensely throughout California, encompassing both North and South and our children born of generations since, have had even less exposure to information programming credited to the advent of redundant VCR/DVD/Tivo recordings and violent video games that glorify brutally criminal violence.

Diets of the masses that were still in the 1970’s at least partially balanced to adhere somewhat with Governmental recommended daily nutritional allowances have now become saturated with trans- fats, sugars and corn syrup.

As a rule, American civics and the study of what is arguably America’s most important historical lessons, such as World War II and the Great Depression are hardly even mentioned throughout the course of a students primary American education today.

American education has become a bureaucracy that has created a “teach to the test” type of an education and as a result, drop out statistics and general populace illiteracy rates have soared to proportions never seen before in contemporary American history.

All that the American people ask of themselves, their community and their Government today, is nothing more than immediate gratification, verbal reassurances for token ideals that reflect mocked values and stimulus funds aimed at cruel and unusual immigration reform so they might be able to acquire the easiest to be had jobs – food service and hotel/motel labor.

And for the news and other media on the television radio and major internet sites, there is nothing more than one huge distraction. A preoccupation of events much larger than ourselves and our individual lives despite the paltry taxes we pay, we constantly insist that all our needs be provided for us.

Our survival skills are now only honed to build a retirement to bed at the end of a look for work day or work day.

The prophesies set forth by Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World have already come to pass, though society at large still consider these concepts to be no more than extraordinary literary fiction.

Both of these works written in a story-like fashion and at a time when the only acceptability of concepts such as these could be had was through the subtle delivery of fictional prose.

So easy then today, it’s just a story. And even easier now, as such reference to ideology such as this provides comfort from the American Governmental storm as we turn a blind eye to atrocities occurring in our very neighborhoods and business districts all around us, while a handful of greedy autocrats on every local level clamber for United States Federal Stimulus dollars.

Even now, as our neighbors are taken away from us in shackles, accused of the most heinous of crimes and immoral turpitudes, we dare not lift our gaze in any demonstration of support for the innocence granted by the United States constitution as an inalienable right, lest we ourselves might suffer a similar fate and spend the rest of our lives in a prison, never to breath free air again.

Our journey’s to imprisonment are being christened by rogue cops, corrupt district attorneys and an ever-increasingly corporate government overseer.

God help us all, for we certainly seem entirely incapable of making a single stand for our brothers and sisters falling victim to faceless greed.





 



Copyright 2010 Robert Stanford all rights reserved.

Apocalypse of the Common Wealth Private Club

So now everything seems to be calm with a few strangler issues out there, ripe for speculation, but seemingly impenetrable to ay influences outside the current City of Modesto Mayor, Ridenour and the go along to get along, do nothing - Modesto City Council.

McClatchy Park is one of the hopeless causes of the day. An experiment as it were to circumvent possible ACLU intervention in their general treatment of the homeless, addicted, mentally ill and alcoholic that reside in the downtown area.

Like the dumpster diving ordinance, the open container in the park ordinance, and some others that have also been misused and enforced differently from what was promised by their sales pitch promotions put on by the Modesto Police Department, the La Loma Neighborhood Association and yes, even myself. Another tool in the belt of law enforcement to be used for good or ill against the impoverished that occupy many of the parks surrounding the downtown Modesto areas. This one is best called a park privatization ordinance.

The same instigators of this new park privatization ordinance also bring us via City Hall, the Common Wealth Members Only club. What better way to put lip stick on a pig and thereby beautify the City of Modesto, then to eliminate the “undesirables”?

Now there is talk of Modesto City Council member, Brad Hawn carrying the torch of Moridian of the La Loma Neighborhood Association and starting an Association of the Graceda Park and College areas of Modesto. A wise move considering that if they could get a newsletter off the ground before November, there would be one less voting base to worry about. Hence come the rumors over the privatization of Graceda park. Just as fresh and vibrant as the same rumors heard from the Moridian camp. If you listen closely, you can hear the wind between their ears howl - “At last, we have a way to get rid of these bums.”

We have two announced contenders for the upcoming Modesto mayoral race- Council members, Hawn and Marsh. Already it is easy to predict that the Vache Bee is already backing Hawn, since they have changed the stock photo they use of Marsh and have replaced it with a picture of a man that looks like he is about to plunge a steak knife through his carotid just to end the pain of being a Modestan.

A good choice for the fat, old bigot – Hawn is strong with the development community and as far as the PMZ machine is concerned, Marsh has not been turned to the dark side long enough to be quantified as of yet.

And it matters. The Bee's endorsements are the strongest, considering that the average voting age of the largest percentage of Modesto residents that will cast a ballot, easily places them, even by AARP standards, as at least on the verge of dementia, therefore, they just cut out the recommendations of the Bee and place it side by side by their ballots. That is how Modesto's fate is decided. Mostly by a whole lot of people that the DMV should take a closer look at.

But then again, even in Modesto there is the motivational factor of candidate outreach. Marsh excels at that. With the precision and fortitude of a Civil War general, in every campaign, his troops leave no stone unturned when it comes to getting out the vote and getting the voters to not only vote for him, but to lobby others to vote for him.

What about a third contender? I guess that John Michael Flint, long-time columnist for the Bee knows better now than to speculate if Carmen Sabatino is going to enter the race, since his last piece on the former mayor was the only one of a few hundred pieces that the Bee rejected from him outright.

That coupled with several unprofessional jabs at Sabatino and the withholding of several letters to the editor in support of his recent supervisory run makes association with the “Target Redux” a wee bit dangerous if you want to score points with the Bee.

But when all is said and done, you are either a sold out whore or not. So Hawn will definitely have their endorsement and Marsh will not be able to sell out fast enough to get it. Besides, he is already showing weakness over his latest land use voting dilemma. May as well have Denny Jackman enter the race, now that his Shopping Cart Princess has taken her fill of the very local politics. This time around, it will probably be Marsh that will get the endorsement from Jackman.

After the Shopping Cart Princess steps into the land of milk and honey, I am sure that Jeremiah Williams will play the game just right. At least I will have an anchor on the council the next time I read off the dozen or so new names of victims of gang violence in the Modesto Airport District.

Nor will we have to worry about the stray whiskey bottles or having to stay late helping Steph sop up the vomit left at the center of the dais..



Copyright 2010 Robert W. Stanford, all rights reserved.



Copyright 2010 Robert Stanford all rights reserved.

Percentages of Interest

Percentages of Interest
By
Robert Stanford

Much of what I write is written for a specific audience. A reader that I hold in my mind as I write. Someone that I am speaking with. A generalization of a certain percentage of the people that will read the article that I create.

Seemingly going through phases, a certain percentage of these percentages go through my mind as I prepare to write and write on whatever topic I deem is so important to communicate to a certain percentage of the percentages of people that will read it at all.

A certain percentage of everyone that reads the title will read further.

A certain percentage will read the first paragraph and another certain percentage will read the first two, and so on.

Of the total number of people that will initially read the title, further percentages are assured. Such as a certain percentage of people that despise me, know me, follow my work, are investigating me for whatever reason, had been looking for another Robert Stanford, either a WWII pilot or a multi-million dollar con artist, or even perhaps a UK based Real Estate Firm. Or simply found it by accident most random, it could not possibly be called a coincidence.

Some of these percentages I am aware of and of course, some I am not.

A certain percentage are law enforcement, social service personnel, elected officials, activists, and some are just people that find my writing intriguing, interesting, or utterly ridiculous and fun to read.

Of the total number or people that will initially read the title, there may be applied a very crude scale that could demonstrate in generalized terms, the amount that people are aware of who I am and what it is exactly that I do. From wherever people fall on this scale, say a scale of 0 to 100, is from where my image in these people’s minds are formed as though the gauge was at 100, no matter what approximate area of the gauge is an accurate representation of each individuals knowledge of who/what I am.

Some of these percentages fall into specific categories in which I can speak with a select demographic – and only to them. Often this does tend to infuriate other audiences I have addressed before, yet their confusion becomes quite evident when my writing to them is basically nothing more than seemingly contrived far side one-liners strung together and broken up in paragraphs in sometimes some rather odd places. My run on sentences suddenly become an irritant to them, when before, when they read what I had specifically written for their percentage category, they were not. The piece you are reading now, however, is intended for a much broader audience. So it will not be as funny.

And beyond the target audience, of course, falls other percentage categories of people that read the entire article.

This contemplation of interest and the percentages of the whole that are involved in some way, and the way that they may be categorized can be applied to many things that plague our very lives and quality of life itself.

For instance, if we were to take the entire population of drug addicts who reside as citizens of the County of Stanislaus (at least 30 days of some type of residence in the county). From this group, several categories can be identified as so probable it would be easy to arrive at a general consensus that they were in fact, facts.

Such as a certain percentage would be able to successfully overcome their addiction if they were in an NA (Narcotics Anonymous) program. A percentage would overcome their addiction if they had a sponsor in the program. Further percentages of this selected population could be broken down by success factors, such as the dedication of the sponsor and the branch meetings of the program itself.

To actually act upon concepts such as targeting and identifying sections of the population as a whole to recruit into these types of programs would warrant a study and speculation of interest and percentages. An identification of their categories, such as a poll to determine the difficulty of convincing the general populace that this is an effective approach to lessening the levels of drug use in their community – decrease demand and you decrease supply.

It’s the law of prohibition. A legal state of affairs that affects every single drug addict residing in the United States today. Percentages of severity could be applied through consideration and practice, which would show, most definitely a pattern of the suffering caused by a specific stigma American society places upon drug addicts as individuals as well as a generalized population – particularly during their consideration of assisting them with their illnesses of drug addiction. So much so that interest in their percentages and corresponding categories are, as a rule, taboo discussions in many communities, including Stanislaus County.

Such a large percentage of the community that comprises Stanislaus County are so quick to be cold and judgmental in consideration of the stereotypical image they hold in their mind when they consider the drug addict as an individual. It becomes for them an immediate representation that speaks to them on behalf of all drug addicts that comprise the entire drug addict population. Such a broad stroke they make. And for the greatest percentage of the people that make this stroke, this mental brush leaves in its wake the outline of absent responsibility. A responsibility that was long ago abandoned and is continually abandoned throughout the life of this drug addict individual – the assumption that their grip on reality and enjoyment of freedom of choice is just as strong as that of the individual that has created this spokesperson image.

Stigma takes over and drug addicts become their own hated race. The greatest percentage of any drug addict population is constantly faced with their cries for help falling on deaf ears. Banished they are. As if they had forsaken their own souls, they are left to their own devices and every mistake they make under the shadow and fog of their drug affliction becomes a crime because it is assumed that the line that divides right and wrong is just as clear for them as it is for those that are free from addiction.

Certainly that would apply to a certain percentage of the drug addict population. But not to all of them. And of those, why do we as a society find ourselves to be so apathetic, insensitive and lazy that we allow these people that can be healed of this disease to suffer so?

Perhaps it is because we do not realize that they exist and we allow our mental image of the drug addict spokesperson to cause by its sole image, for us to bask in the warm glow of yielding to apathy – a human tendency to wither back when faced with adversities or their very consideration. A comforting sense that all we can ever possibly do is shrug, roll our eyes and shake our heads, safe within the comfort zone of “knowing” that every drug addict has the freedom to choose and that they choose to be the mental image we have created to appease ourselves.

It is what has prompted me to point out and illustrate why would someone choose to wake up in the gutter with a needle sticking out of their arm? Interest and percentages. What percentage of the drug addict population choose to actually do just that?

At what point do we dispense with the technicalities of chain-linked events resulting from a decision that was under the duress of drug inducement and look upon these individuals as though they were inflicted by a disease rather than bad morals? Would it perhaps be at the same point that we accept responsibility for our fellow citizens with a healthy respect rather than fear and disgust? Or does it go deeper than that?

Are we perhaps afraid that we as non-addicted individuals could suffer the same fate as the mental image we have painted? Are the defining features of this image a result of our subconscious knowing that it may have in fact only been a matter of lots in life that could have lead to ourselves being represented by this image?

An image borne of stigma. The stigma of a horrible disease that in most cases can be cured. One of the few diseases in the world that can be cured by a neighbor’s love. At least a certain and definite percentage.

Interest and percentages conveniently forgotten by us all through our own design. The design of an image to hold in our minds as irrefutable proof that by cowering in fear and recoiling from the true drug problem, we do not have to fear becoming a part of it, though most certainly, it would be of no real fault of our own.

How can it be so much easier to lash out and condemn those that we fear to become?

Because when we look at them, we are truly looking at ourselves. Therefore, through no choice of our own, we already are – them.

And as drugs continue to destroy the very fabric of our society, at what point will we realize that we do not have to resign ourselves to the oblivion that drug abuse is pushing us toward – we need nothing more than community supported programs and warm extended hands that are outstretched to our neighboring Stanislaus County citizens, despite whatever mental image we have painted to protect ourselves from them.










Copyright 2010 Robert Stanford all rights reserved.