Eric Bannerman thought he was a pretty ordinary guy who wanted pretty much the same as anyone else. He’d worked hard on his family farm until he was old enough to leave home, then his uncle had got him a job working for the town on the road crew. That had been OK until that dam n*gg*r supervisor had caught him syphoning diesel out of his grader into his pickup. Everyone else did it---or would if they were smart enough to think of it. It was practically one of the benefits of the job. That damn idjit should have known that. Would have known it if he’d been hired from the drivers instead of being transferred from city hall. He’d obviously been part of a quota hire---all he knew about was working spread sheets and enforcing the rules. Damn sp**r ch*ck*r had never gotten his hands dirty in his whole life---he always wore a suit and tie, for shit’s sake. Damn his black hide.
After he lost the job working for the township, he’d had a Hell of a time trying to find another one. The mine had closed down because the damn tree-huggers complained about the tailings killing all the fish downstream. Yeah, he missed being able to fish as much as anyone else---but “a job’s a job”. That was something both his mom and dad pounded into his head from a very young age. As long as the money comes in, you get’r done! He got the odd day or two of work helping out on farms and little moving jobs with his pickup, but that didn’t do much more than pay for beer and gas. He’d have been SOL if he hadn’t been able to stay at the parent’s place.
His older brother had taken over the family farm, and he helped out with the chores and such---but there really wasn’t enough coming in to support two families. That meant he was welcome to stay when he had too, and his help was appreciated---but it was no substitute for a job and place of his own.
The only thing that really kept it together for him was the Dancin Folz. He’d been at a flea market where a fellow selling guns out the trunk of his car got talking to him about hard times. When it came out that he blamed a n*gg*r for getting fired from his job, the fellow asked him “Why get upset about the n*gg*r in the road crew office when we had one in the White House and still have lots in Congress?” Eric admitted that the fellow had a point, but opined that there was bugger-all hard-working ‘fly over’ types like the two of them could ever do to change things. “The elites on the coasts run everything---people like us haven’t got a chance.” The fellow understood the sentiment, but asked if he’d be interested in learning how he could get involved in something that really could make difference? If he did, he wanted Bannerman’s name, address, and, cell phone number. The idea was that there were a group of people working on changing things for people like him, but they wanted to check him out. If he seemed OK, they’d text an invite to their next meeting.
On a whim, Eric said OK and gave him the contact info. He must have ‘checked out’, because a month later he got a text invite and met some other guys at an abandoned one-room school house off a back side road. There was a short talk about how the country was going down hill, but mostly there was just a rifle range out back that people used for a little target practice. After that, there were some burgers on a barbeque and a case of beer. After this first introduction, Eric decided that he liked these guys. The feeling was mutual. At the next meeting they told him that they were the local chapter of the Dancin Folz, and they’d be happy to have him join. Again, the feeling was mutual.
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