Welcome Back to the States

I've just returned from a nice long holiday in the tropics (about which, however, nice it was, I suffered reservations about which I'll write later), and, newly relaxed, this morning I actually enjoyed my commute into work, forgiving even the most stupid of drivers their manifold sins.

Over coffee, our maintenance man began his usual incessant and meaningless chatter with A Tale of Weekend Heroics. Normally I'm able to tune him out just like a bad pop station, but this time our hapless protagonist told a telling tale (I always did want to write, "told a telling tale." I suppose I'm definitely going to hell now.)

Anyway, Sunday, our hero, our Patriotic Maintenance Man was out with the missus at the local petrol station to pick up some smokes and noticed a man he described as an "A-rab" filling up two 50 gallon drums in the back of his minivan with gasoline. A third man, helpfully described by our Patriotic Maintenance Man (himself a self-described "Wop") as a "Big Fucking Mick" looked over to our hero, who said to the BFM, "That can't be right." Our hero then had his wife call 911 as the BFM and the A-rab argued about whose business it was that the A-rab was filling up unapproved containers with gasoline. I think perhaps the BFM may have let slip the rather indelicate phrase, "fucking terrorist." I got the impression from our hero that the three of them nearly came to blows.

Thankfully, the Yonkers police showed up post haste, and our hero related he heard one of the cops say over his radio to the dispatcher that they needed Homeland Security immediately. Apparently this stopped traffic on one of the main roads through Yonkers for some time.

I wonder if the the local cops had any idea that you can't use regular petrol for bombs of any appreciable scale and that gasoline, contrary to what the movies would have you believe, doesn't just explode or catch fire with the first hint of a spark. I wonder if my co-worker can discriminate, say, someone from Egypt from someone from India - or for that matter a Pakistani from a Mexican with a lot of Native American blood. I wonder if that poor guy was just another of the thousands of freelance gardeners working in Westchester county trying to fill up his equipment for the first time of the year. I wonder if he's been allowed to contact a lawyer or if his family has any idea where he is.

We are all good Germans now.