The old man stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and smiled at me. It kind of creeped me out.
“You German?” he asked.
His voice was raspy?years of smoking, I guess?and his face looked hopeful.
“A little,” I said.
“What are you?”
“Pretty much all Dutch. But that country was made up from a bunch of people from other European countries so who knows for sure, right?”
He looked disappointed.
“The other day,” he said. “I saw a half Chinese girl and her parents having a conversation in Chinese and English.”
I was about to point out to him that China didn't have a language per se, but rather a bunch of dialects, the most common of which was Mandarin but he didn't look like the kind of guy that would give a fuck. Though, in his defense, few Americans do.
“And I got to thinking,” he continued. “That there ain't nothing pure anymore. All our water, all our food, all our industry, hell even all our people are just one big global hodgepodge.”
I shrugged. I'm that kind of guy.
“Used to be, a man knew what he was, and he did his level best to make sure that everything stayed that way.”
I wanted to tell this guy that we're all human and that essentially, as long as we keep fucking humans, a man would still know who he was and would still have a good grasp of the way everything stayed. But this old redneck hardly encouraged such a discourse, so I just nodded.
“Now, everyone's all mixing together. Everything's a mess. Hell, we may even have a half-black President. The world is going straight to hell.”
I nodded.
“A black man owns the home run record, a black man's the best golfer in the world, a black coach won a Super Bowl? the list is endless.”
I expected him to go on, but I guess the list wasn't as endless as he thought.
“You married?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“You should settle down, find yourself a nice white girl, make a lot of children. We're gonna need 'em.”
“Who's we?”
“Shit boy,” he said. “I thought you was one of the smart ones.”
“Man,” I said. “Ain't nobody ever accused me of being smart.”
He laughed.
I left.