Doubting Thomas' COVID-19 Be Damned Nutrition Plan

Many thanks to my loyal readers who have called, emailed and texted to find out how I'm doing during the global pandemic.

I am happy to report that, as of this writing, I'm fine. That could change at any time but for now, I'm virus-free due to: 

A)  social isolation. I've left the house only to walk the dogs and, twice, to pick up food at the drive-through windows of restaurants when I got tired of eating out of the fridge or pantry. 

B)  the proprietary diet plan I have followed for the last seven days. I'm sharing it here in the hope that you, too, can remain healthy so that you can also spend this pandemic watching back-to-back episodes of “90-Day Fiancee” instead of doing all the stuff around the house you always swore you would do if you had the time.  

Ready to learn my secret plan? Read on!

MONDAY

Breakfast

1 cup Dunkin’ Donuts coffee with 1% milk

2 Oreos cookies

Lunch

2 bowls Honey-Nut Cheerios with 1% milk

Dinner

6 White Castle Cheese Sliders (microwaved)

1 750 ml bottle Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc

TUESDAY

Breakfast

3 cups DD coffee with 1% milk

1 36 oz. tub Nestle Toll House Ready to Bake Cookie Dough

Lunch

22 1 oz. snack portions Tillamook Extra Sharp White Cheddar Cheese

2 sleeves of Ritz crackers

1 5.3 oz. box Ferrero Rocher Fine Hazelnut Chocolates

2 12 oz. cans Miller Genuine Draft

Dinner

1 20.5 oz. box Fruity Pebbles (dry)

2.5 cups Maker’s Mark Small-Batch Bourbon Whiskey with splash of water

Snack

7 Ghirardelli Milk Chocolate Bunnies from grandkids' Easter basket 

WEDNESDAY

Breakfast

4 cups Irish Coffee ( half DD Coffee, half Jameson's Irish Whisky)

Lunch

1 17.89 oz. Red Baron Brick Oven Pepperoni Pizza

1 2.5 lb. jar Kirkland Cashews

1 12 oz. can Diet Coke

Dinner

1  52.7 g package Ptasie Mlecsko Dark Chocolate Covered Marshmallows

1 50 oz. box Marie Callender's 3 Meat & 4 Cheese Lasagna  (Family Size)

Rest of 750 ml bottle of Maker’s Mark with splash of tap water

1 750 ml bottle, Joel Gott Cabernet Sauvignon

THURSDAY

Breakfast

1 Wendy’s Breakfast Baconator Combo  (sausage, American cheese, applewood smoked bacon, fresh cracked Grade A egg, Swiss cheese sauce)

1 senior Seagram’s Diet Ginger Ale*

Lunch

1 box Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies

2 orders Taco Bell Nachos BellGrande  

1 Taco Bell 7-Layer Burrito

1 pint Jeni’s Gooey Butter Cake Premium Ice Cream

Dinner

Finnish Bloody Mary — six airplane-sized bottles Finlandia Vodka mixed with 32 oz. bottle Heinz Ketchup

FRIDAY

Breakfast

3 cups Dunkin Donuts Coffee with 1% milk

1 box (6 ct) Little Debbie Honey Buns

Lunch

1 large Wendy’s Taco Salad 

3 bags Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn

1 9.3 oz. container Market Pantry Rainbow Sprinkles

17 12 oz. cans, Miller Genuine Draft

Dinner

8 Fat Boy Jr. Premium Ice Cream sandwiches

1 11 oz. pkg. Stouffer’s Creamed Chipped Beef served over large bag Fritos Spicy Jalapeño Scoops

Mongolian Bloody Mary — 750 ml bottle Bacardi Silver Rum mixed with 14.2 oz. bottle P.F. Chang’s Mongolian Style BBQ Sauce

SATURDAY

Breakfast

3 cups DD Coffee with 1% milk

Lunch

12 oz. box Velveeta Shells & Cheese Sauce prepared according to package directions with one can Chicken of the Sea oil-packed tuna and liberal amount of fresh ground pepper

1 can Dasani Lime Sparkling Water 

Dinner

8 Publix Blueberry Toaster Pastries

1 16 oz. Bottle McCormick's All-Natural Pure Vanilla Extract

SUNDAY

Breakfast

4 cups DD coffee with 1% milk

16.2 oz. jar Trader Joe’s Pitted Amarena Cherries with Stems

Lunch

7 oz. jar Pastene Monzanilla Olives

1 can Reddi-wip Extra Creamy Whipped Topping

1 1 lb., 8 oz box See's Peanut Brittle

Dinner

1 Scoop Purina Pro Plan Salmon & Rice Formula

Jemima Cocktail: One 24 oz. bottle Aunt Jemima Pancake & Waffle Syrup mixed with 16 fl. oz. bottle Walgreen's 93% Isopropyl Rubbing Alcohol 

2 Percocet tablets from 2011 wisdom tooth extraction

Be strong. Be well. Be brave.   And remember: That which does not kill you makes you stronger.   

*Free for those 65 and better with proof of age

Other than that pesky global pandemic, how has your week been?

Yeah, mine too.

I’ve been home all week with the dogs while my wife has been in Washington watching the grandkids. Our son and daughter-in-law flew to Ireland Monday night to attend a wedding that’s supposedly taking place as I write this (Saturday). Great timing.

They were scheduled to fly back to the U.S. Monday but their flight has been moved up a day. Judy was going to come home Tuesday, but I’m hoping that if they arrive tomorrow and don’t have to be quarantined she’ll be able to catch an earlier flight. I looked online and JetBlue’s three nonstops from DC to Fort Myers appear to be basically empty. She'd pretty much have the plane to herself.

I’m on the board of our 3350-door homeowner association. We’ve canceled all upcoming events for the foreseeable future and hope to stream our annual HOA meeting, scheduled for March 26.  By law, we must hold it no later than March 31. Representatives of our 49 neighborhoods are supposed to attend. Last thing anyone wants at this point is to gather in a room with a group of older people who travel constantly. Neighbors left earlier this week for Argentina where they were to board a luxury cruise ship. They're back. The cruise line cancelled all its cruises.  

This morning, I went to Publix to buy necessities we will need to survive the coming weeks including chocolate chip cookie dough, Bob Evans Farms Mac & Cheese, and L'il Cesar Filet Mignon dog treats. It was bedlam. I had to wait for a shopping cart, they were all in use. My fellow shoppers looked purposeful but displayed no outward panic. There were no fights over TP or hand sanitizer or bleach or alcohol or peroxide — there wasn’t any to be had. 

I had to laugh when the PA system started playing Paula Cole's "I Don't Want to Wait … For My Life to be Over."  

I’m not keen on waiting for my life to be over because of some stupid virus, but I can at least take comfort in the gigantic bag of Chili Cheese Fritos I added to my cart at the last minute, which I intend to consume this afternoon as I watch Netflix.

The way I see it, there's no need for anyone to worry about calories, fat or salt any more, so I might as well eat them all while I can.

Stay well. And stay away from me please,

Another reason millennials love Sanders

I read an op-ed on cnbc.com the other day written by Jake Novak headlined, “Bernie Sanders is the front runner because of how we raised our kids.”

Novak opines that the reason so many millennials support Sanders is because their parents, my generation, told them they needed a college education to get ahead. So, the kids went off to college, and now millions of them are saddled with massive student loans.  Sanders promises to wipe out those debts using money taken from the billionaires he despises so much he convulses when he talks about them. 

No wonder so many millennials feel the Bern. Who wouldn’t support someone who says he will wave his magic wand and make their debts go away using other people’s money?  

But Novak missed something else we parents of millennials did that has resulted in millions of our spawn enthusiastically supporting a sputtering, screeching Marxist: We gave them trophies just for showing up. 

At some point in the late seventies or early eighties, some well-meaning parent in California or Kansas or Georgia decided it wasn’t right to give awards only to top-performing children. Maybe his kid wasn’t a star on the soccer field. Maybe her kid was only an average student. This parent, with the best of intentions, stood up at a meeting and said that every kid on the team or in the class should get the same trophy the top kids did. The policy was adopted and, like measles, spread nationwide. 

I coached my son’s soccer team in the early nineties and the league organizers required me to hand out trophies to every six-year-old on the team, including some who rarely showed up and others who had no interest whatsoever in playing and were only there because their parents insisted. The kid who scored three goals in every game earned the same trophy as the kid who squatted in the backfield and picked dandelions. The trophies were meaningless to me and, I suspect, the kids. 

It should come as no surprise to any parent of millennials raised to believe they are entitled to awards they didn’t earn, that their kids are supporting a candidate who claims he wants to level the playing field for everyone. 

Sounds good on paper but what Sanders and his supporters fail to take into account is that, even if the playing field is somehow leveled, there won’t be equal players on it. Some will be smarter. Some will work harder. Some will have more natural talent. Some will take risks that others can’t, don’t or won’t. Those are the players who will change the world and make the future possible. Those are the ones who deserve the trophies. 

You reap what you sow. Those who sow a lot deserve a lot. Those who don't, don't. 

That is a lesson Sanders-loving millennials who grew up thinking they were entitled to trophies their above-average contemporaries actually earned will eventually find out for themselves regardless of who wins the White House in November.

Folk songs of the '60s, updated for the 21st century

I grew up listening to folk music.

My sister, Judy, went away to college in 1960, when I was 8. She returned home with albums from the era’s most popular folk singers including the Kingston Trio, Limeliters, Odetta, and Peter Paul & Mary, which she would play over and over until our mother ordered us to turn the damn stereo off. 

I spent hours mooning over Mary’s photo, taken in the rathskeller of some Greenwich Village club, that appeared on the cover of PP&M’s first album. With her straight flowing blonde hair, I was convinced she was the most beautiful creature on earth. I mourned when she died in 2009 and like to think of her in heaven, singing protest songs to stir the angels to revolt for better conditions. 

Unfortunately, most of the folk songs of the sixties make little sense to millennials, whose hippie parents' and beatnik grandparents' embrace of the genre helped pave the way for the socially aware, hyper-sensitive society in which they live today. So I’ve taken the liberty of updating the lyrics of some of my favorites, in an attempt to add some relevance that will hopefully strike a chord (pardon the pun) with the younger generation.

Take a quick look-see at the titles below and if you don’t know these songs, you can skip right over this post. But if you know them, I hope you’ll enjoy this trip back to a kinder, more hopeful era before we all sold out. 

Peace and Love. 

PS: Vote for Bernie.

This Land is Your Land

This land ain't your land,

This land ain't my land.

First and foremost it belongs

to native Americans from 

whom we stole it which 

is why we have no right

to prevent illegal immigrants

from crossing our borders today

and voting in our elections.

Blowin’ in the Wind

How many roads

Must a (choose one) man/woman/ trans

Walk down? 

Before they call that person a

(choose one) man/woman/trans?

Tom Dooley

Hang down your head Tom Dooley,

Hang down your head and cry.

Hang down your head Tom Dooley,

Poor boy you’re bound to get life

which, on appeal, will be shortened

to 25 years and that, thanks to our

overburdened penal system populated with

people who shouldn't be there in the first place,

means you’ll be out in 12 and free 

to murder more innocent young women.

The Times They Are A-Changin’

Come gather round people,

Wherever you roam.

And admit that the waters,

Around you have grown 

Thanks to global warming and 

Trump’s rebuttal of the 

Paris Climate Agreement.

500 Miles

If you miss the train I’m on,

You will know your alarm didn't go off

because you forgot to recharge your iPhone. 

Puff the Magic Dragon

Puff the Magic Dragon

Lived by the sea.

And frolicked in the autumn mist

In a land called Hohnalee.

Little Jackie Paper,

Loved that rascal Puff

Which he can now buy legally in 11 states

and in 25 more if he can find a doctor to

claim he needs it for a medical condition.

Where Have All The Flowers Gone

Where have al the flowers gone?

Long time passing.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Long time ago.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Gone to landfills every one where,

because they’re plastic, they’ll remain

for thousands of years after the young soldiers whose

graves they once adorned have been forgotten.

Cruel War

The cruel war is raging,

Johnny has to fight.

I want to be with him,

From morning to night and now,

thanks to the Obama administration 

which removed the military’s ban on 

women in combat, 

I can be. 

Kisses Sweeter than Wine

When I was a young man,

And never been kissed,

I got to thinking over,

What I had missed.

I got me a girl, 

I kissed her and then,

Thirty years later when I was nominated for the Supreme Court

she showed up but couldn’t remember

when or where it happened.

Lemon Tree

Lemon tree, very pretty

And the lemon flower is sweet.

But the fruit of the poor lemon

Is impossible to eat unless it 

is organic, free of synthetic or 

artificial fertilizers and pesticides

and grown on farms

that recycle resources while 

practicing ecological balance and biodiversity.

An old fogey's take on that offensive Peloton commercial

My mom, who lived to 102, used to say that the older she became, the less things made sense. It wasn’t that she was having difficulty processing information. Far from it — mom was laser-sharp until the day she died. She was referring to the fact that she had trouble understanding peoples’ reactions to changing mores. Behaviors her generation had considered good were now considered bad. Undesirable behaviors had become desirable.

Given the uproar about Peloton’s holiday commercial, I now understand what she was saying.

Peloton, if you haven’t heard of it, is an exercise bike that connects to the internet. The bike itself costs north of $2,000. Owners pay another $39 a month for unlimited online classes. 

The company created a :30 commercial that features a husband giving his wife a Peloton. Watch the video here. You’ll notice it is snowing outside. It’s not unreasonable to assume that one of his motivations is to enable her to ride in the comfort of her own home in winter. 

People couldn’t have been more upset if the commercial showed him dragging her into the bathroom and dunking her head in the toilet. The company’s stock has been hammered. The actor who plays the husband has been told he will never work again. The actress who plays the wife is appearing in a gin commercial that implies she left his sexist ass and is starting over (click to see it.). The ad was parodied (badly, as usual) on SNL. 

I spent my working life creating ads. A decade ago I would have written something like this and, silly me, been proud of it. Guess it’s a good thing I retired when I did because today, I’d be getting death threats. Perhaps I’ll get some as a result of this blog post. Go ahead, shoot me. I’m clearly too old to live in this mixed up, muddled up, shook up world.

I can understand why some might conceivably find the commercial annoying and/or cloying. But if you are one of the millions of Americans of any sex (notice how enlightened I am)  who are apparently enraged about it and can't understand the husband not only meant no harm but had good intentions, I suggest anger management therapy. It might do you good. At the very least, consider exercising your frustrations away on a device— not a Peloton of course -- you can buy for yourself. If you find the commercial totally offensive without an iota of redeeming value, I’d like to hear from you. And if you, like me, don’t find it offensive, I’d like to hear from you, too. Remember, I’m an old man. Like all old men, I am lonely so please, email me, write a letter, or dispatch a message by Pony Express or carrier pigeon. I will get right back to you. 

My dad, by the way, bought mom an upright Hoover vacuum for their 25th anniversary in 1958. I remember the day he brought it home. That afternoon, she drove to the nearest jewelry store, told the jeweler she wanted the biggest diamond he had in stock, wore it out of the store, and had the bill sent to dad. He paid it. 

If the same thing were to happen today and she shot him, a jury would find her innocent and she’d be hailed as a folk hero. 

Crazy but then, what do I know? 

Florida Snippet # 3423: An elevator conversation

I’ve always maintained that if you want to get rich you should study hard, become a dermatologist, and set up shop in Naples, Florida, where the sun shines brightly year-round on a sea of older folks with money and skin to burn.

As a blue-eyed person who never wears sun screen — I know I should, I always promise I will, but never do — I see mine every six months for a full body scan.

I had my regular appointment  this morning. Everything checked out fine but I did have had six of those brown thingies frozen off of various body parts. 

The elevator I was riding to the lobby from the third floor stopped at the second floor, and a well-dressed elderly gent wearing a straw fedora and oversized sunglasses stepped on. His skin, I noticed, was unnaturally smooth, almost translucent. Unusual for a man and a sure giveaway on a woman that she has had lots of work done on her face.

“That Dr. ____” saved my life," he said, indicating the name of one of the doctors who works on the second floor.

Wow,” I replied. “You must have had something terrible.”

“Oh no, I’ve never had any problems.” he said. "But whenever I find a new spot, I call and she takes me in the same day.” 

“That’s great service,” I said.

“Yes. I’ve been here 28 times in the last six months.”

The door opened in the lobby and and we walked to the parking lot together. Our cars were next to each other. His was a Maserati convertible. 

He got in, waved goodbye, and drove out ahead of me. 

A dachshund's plea

Me in happier days, before Tom Dryden tried to starve me
to death, with the stuffed dachshund Santa brought.
Even though he is stuffed, he is smarter than Billy Ray,
the Dryden dachshund who, without warning, disappeared.

My name is Rupert. I am, as you can see, a dachshund.

My biological mother was a bitch. My father took off before I was born.  Two-and-a-half years ago I was adopted by Tom Dryden and his wife. 

I am posting this message to Tom Dryden's blog to let his readers, who may be under the impression he's a nice guy, know that he is anything but. He is trying to kill me. Specifically, to starve me to death.

It started on Sunday and I can’t understand why this is happening.  I thought he liked me. Heck, he always said he loved me. How could I have been so wrong? 

Being of German descent, I am, I freely admit, a stickler when it comes to schedules. I like my life to run like the German Federal Railways — on time, to the split second. That’s especially true when it comes to mealtimes. 

Animal trainers and nutritionists say it is important for dogs to dine at the same time every day, to "stick to a schedule." I have always striven to do that but, being eight inches tall, I can’t reach the kitchen counter to fix my own meals and have to rely on Tom Dryden to  measure out the half-cup of kibble (Salmon & Rice) I eat twice a day, pour it in a bowl, take it out to the lanai, and place it on the floor. Tom Dryden was always supportive, serving me precisely at 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. 

But on Sunday morning, breakfast was served an hour late. To the minute. The sun was already up. My stomach, by the time the bowl was finally set in front of me, was growling loudly. I considered growling loudly myself but decided against it since I didn't want to be accused of being grumpy. I assumed Tom Dryden was having a bad day but made sure, when he tried to pick me up after the meal and place me on the sofa next to him where he was reading, that he knew my displeasure. 

The same thing happened later in the day. Dinner was a full hour late, to the exact second. I was so weak with hunger I could barely make my way to the lanai.

Yesterday was a repeat of Sunday. 

My fear is that mealtimes will become later and later and, eventually, stop altogether.  I now realize that is what must have happened to Billy Ray, the dachshund who was living with the Drydens when they brought me here. He kept getting thinner and thinner and one day, simply disappeared. Now I know why. 

I don’t have access to the phone and if I did, the person on the other end would most likely have trouble understanding me. Luckily, Tom Dryden left his MacBook on the floor, and is in the shower, so I can pound out this message and post it to his blog.

Can one of his readers call the ASPCA or some other social service agency and report Tom Dryden for animal abuse?

Thank you and God bless. 

Silence would be golden

On November 9, 2016,  I sneezed violently and my ears began to ring. That was nothing unusual. My ears often rang for a few seconds after a cough or sneeze. But the ringing has continued, nonstop, ever since. 

After undergoing a series of hearing tests, an ENT physician told me I have tinnitus, and nothing can be done about it.  Adding insult to injury, he said that people with chronic tinnitus (about 20 million Americans according to the Tinnitus Foundation) aren’t really hearing anything. The sounds we hear are auditory hallucinations. While we perceive we hear something, there is nothing there. But, because perception is reality, we are indeed hearing something, even though we aren’t. (Got it? Me neither.) 

Ringing isn’t the right word to describe the sounds inside my head.  Ninety percent of the time I hear this. The rest of the time it is this. 

And it's relentless. Every single sound  — every conversation, every TV show, every song on the radio — is filtered through those sounds. The volume varies. Sometimes it’s low. Sometimes it is so LOUD I can barely hear over it. 

It is hard to believe the sounds I am hearing aren’t being heard by people around me. For the first year or so, I would sometimes smoosh my ear against my wife’s ear and ask if she could hear the noises reverberating inside my ear canal. She never could. Which is hardly surprising since they are apparently real only to me.

The sounds are particularly loud late at night. I keep a whirring fan next to my side of the bed in an attempt to drown them out so I can relax but the fan doesn’t always do the trick and some nights I don’t get to sleep at all. Last night was one of those nights.

We had gone to dinner with friends. Across the room a one-man band was performing songs from the sixties and seventies. The songs he had selected were particularly obnoxious   — some of most annoying ever recorded. The amplifiers were cranked up so high I could barely hear a word anyone at the table was saying. I simply nodded my head in agreement whenever someone looked my way and said something, assuming I was participating in the conversation. As I lay awake replaying one of those conversations, it occurred to me that I may have nodded yes, I agree that Hillary Clinton should run again.

This morning the sounds I’ve been hearing for the last four years have been replaced by this God-awful song from last night. It’s as if the one-man band was somehow able to record over the magnetic tape inside my head that, for the last four years, has been playing a continuous loop of radio frequencies and chirping crickets.

If I am to be condemned to hearing music 24/7 for the rest of my life why can't it be something soothing like Pachabel’s Canon in D Major or St. Saens' Carnival of the Animals?  

Hell, “I Got You Babe” or  "You Light Up My Life" or “I’m Henry VIII I Am" or even "Disco Duck" would be preferable to what I'm hearing.

Don't you agree?

Jose's withered American dream

A withered magnolia tree in our front yard
with dead plumeria bushes in the background,
planted in July by our landscaper, Jose

Arriving home from a 12-day vacation last month, I was surprised to find our yard looking like a jungle.

Turns out that Jose, the landscaper who takes care of our yard and eight others on our street, hadn’t been seen for three weeks. A lapse of three weeks wouldn’t be much of a problem most places but here in south Florida where things grow super-fast — especially in the rainy season — three weeks of growth is equivalent to three months up north. 

Nobody knew where he was. Those who called Jose's cell phone received a recorded message it was disconnected. Those who called the number on his billing statement got a message the voice mailbox was full.

Rumors were rampant. One neighbor heard that Jose was at the bedside of his brother in Texas, who had been in an accident, but would be back soon. Another was told by one of Jose's competitors that Jose was in a coma, and his business was closed. Others heard that Jose was in jail or in an ICE detention facility.

A friend who has owned in the ‘hood longer than the rest of us said the same thing happened six or seven years ago; Jose disappeared and his customers had to scramble to hire other landscapers. Six months later Jose knocked on their doors and said he had been in the hospital. Feeling sorry for him, most re-hired him. I inherited Jose in 2014 when we bought our house. The previous owner recommended him highly and said Jose knew our yard and its convoluted irrigation system inside-out so I kept him on.

The latest story making the rounds is that Jose has been deported. Someone says he heard that Jose wasn’t hospitalized years ago as he claimed. He was in jail for driving under the influence, and was apparently arrested for the same crime last month.  Several articles I’ve found online say one DUI conviction isn’t enough to get someone sent back to his home country but a subsequent arrest is grounds for automatic deportation.

Jose was, as far as his customers knew, in the U.S. legally. He owned a big truck with a trailer, lots of equipment, his business was incorporated, and had a crew of blowers, edgers and trimmers who wore uniforms with the logo of his company. To have gotten through the gates of our community in the first place, he had to present proof of insurance to the homeowners' association. I can’t imagine any insurance company would have sold him a policy if he didn’t have a green card but I may be wrong.

In July, I paid Jose more than $5,000 to design and replant the planted portion of our yard directly in front of the house. He and his crew ripped out overgrown junipers, ferns, arboricolas and variegated gingers and replaced them with hundreds of colorful plants that Jose had recommended. I was impressed with his knowledge and creativity and delighted by the appearance of our new front yard. Jose promised the new plants would grow quickly and guaranteed he would replace any that failed to thrive. In the weeks since he disappeared, a magnolia tree, 40 plumeria bushes, and 30 blue daze plants have withered and died, and some of the others are looking iffy. They were doing fine when I left. I don’t want to think how much it’s going to cost to have them dug up and replaced with something else.

All of Jose’s customers have, by now, hired other landscapers. Tony, the guy I hired, is doing a great job. He has removed invasive Brazilian pepper vines that had overtaken the palmettos between our back yard and the golf course, fertilized and applied weed killer to the grass, trimmed palm fronds that were turning brown, and handled many other routine tasks Jose was supposed to address on a regular basis but rarely did unless I asked him to. I’m happy with his service, and Tony is thrilled to have the additional business. 

Whatever misfortune befell Jose, his behavior in the days since is unacceptable and if he was to show up today, I wouldn’t hire him back. He had all of our phone numbers and a service that sent out his monthly invoices. The least he, his wife, or one of his workers, could have done was to get a message to one of us so we could let the rest of his mystified customers know what happened. 

That said, I feel badly for him. Jose worked six days a week under the relentless Florida sun in steambath-like humidity. He always wore a big smile that displayed the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen and was invariably pleasant whenever I would flag him down and ask him to get off his riding mower to discuss something I wanted him to do. Jose wouldn’t have left Mexico if he didn’t believe he could improve his lot in America, but any hopes and dreams he had are now gone.  

And so is he.