This Placid, Pleasant Town

Today I went up to Walmart's gas station to buy a pack of cheap cigarettes.  One walks between rows of shelves up to the glassed in booth, there you pay.  Lot's of male enhancement pills and faux amphetamines are displayed for the impulse buyer who doesn't know how to score the real thing off the street.  This place is always busy, but today there was only one man waiting at the booth in front of me.  The clerk is a large black man, probably over 50, who I like and enjoy talking to.  He is exceptionally courteous and that sort of thing brings out the best in my public behavior.  I heard him tell the waiting customer that he had to close for a few minutes for shift change, which is mostly counting the money in the till.  The man in front of me was probably in his mid to late thirties, he was wearing knee length shorts and a t shirt.  This left a lot of skin to display his homemade tattoos.  On the back of his right calf he had a 3 leaf shamrock outline with SS bolts in the middle and the numbers 1488 at the bottom.  The tats, all of his tats, were crude and very obviously not designed for any sort of overall effect.  Prison, methinks, I didn't like the look of this geezer anyway and the blue ink was a very obvious warning.   The guy decided not to wait and as he passed me he looked at me and said something that I couldn't believe.  It was the most serious of racial epithets, I was floored to hear that.

Rockport is a retirement community and fishing village on the Texas Gulf Coast.  We have our trashy elements, but this took the cake.  I'm still not sure that I heard what I thought I heard.  The shamrock is a symbol of the Aryan Brotherhood, and the 1488 stands for the 14 words of a popular racist rallying phrase, the 88 stands for Heil Hitler.  Since I had this clown sized up as a loser coward I did not react with the usual fight or flight posture I would have normally taken, not to mention that brawling in gas stations at 2 in the afternoon doesn't hold a lot of appeal for me. 

I wonder that some people get out of prison and just cannot wait to go back in.  Had he said that to the clerk he might have gotten beaten to a pulp, but I bet that clerk would have just sent him on his way.  He seems very together and is certainly no one to antagonize, heavyweight contender size and obviously intelligent.  Intelligence was developed to improve fighting and hunting ability.  I am no angel but I cannot imagine making enemies where I did not have them before.  And why did he say that to me?  Do I look in the least like a hater?  Maybe it was the engineer boots, or the ragged clothing I habitually wear, or (gasp)! my Marine tattoos.  Dear me.  Gee, you would think my 20 year old Toyota negates any hint of the slightest remunerative criminality but I guess not.

Life has it's ways of keeping you on your toes.

 Photo property of https://living.alot.com/entertainment/heres-what-42-common-prison-tattoos-really-mean--17777/6?multipage=2

'Many animals that are poisonous, bad tasting, or both are clad in warning colors.   The most widely used warning colors are red, orange, yellow, black, or a combination of these'.

 

Biocyclopedia.