The stock market plunged last week, and there is a spring in Lars’s step. We met for coffee outside Target Field in Minneapolis, where the Twins play. “Finally,” he tells me. “Our prayers are answered.”
“What prayers are those?” I ask.
“We’re praying for a recession, of course. Aren’t you?”
Not really.
“Look,” he says. “The chances of deposing Trump are slender to nil. Unless there’s a recession. In that case, Porky the Pig can win.”
This didn’t make much of the democratic hopefuls. I kept my mouth shut.
Lars works as a columnist with a local news outlet. In public, he abides by rigorous standards. In private, he is nearly unhinged with hatred. Issues are unimportant. “Trump,” he tells me. “Is a flat-out racist.”
Ah, race. That dreariest of subjects.
Getting Lars away from race is impossible. He sees bigotry everywhere. He is an expert, even though his workplace, social circle, and neighborhood are monochromatic.
We stood by the Kirby Puckett statue, close to the stadium entrance. A rabid baseball fan, Lars studied a program of coming games. A recession will hurt those he most wants to help, I remind him. Stubborn advances in income and home ownership will be wiped out.
This is far outside Lars’s strike zone. “Short term pain. Long term gain.”
It made me wonder whose pain. The stock market might slow his 401k. But Lars, like so many in his crowd, sailed through the last downturn undented. No one lost their job. The better neighborhoods increased in value. Lines grew short. Vacations cheap. Nothing is likely to change in the next recession. Not for the well-heeled. The only thing missing is a bland-speaking, heartwarming president. Someone who can make them feel good.
“Anyway,” Lars says. “The season starts in one month. I can’t wait.”
“They got a chance to go all the way.”
“Yes, they do.” He looks up. “Have you picked any games?”
It’s a tough call. Tickets and parking push the price beyond what I care to pay. Walking up Fifth Street, we leave Target Field behind in the February sun. Before long seats will fill with a vast sea of the worthy. The comfortable. All alike in dress, speech, and thought.
“I’m looking into it,” I say.
“Atta boy.”
Whenever the market drops I kiss my wife, putting my arms around her. “Good thing,” I say. “We don’t have any money.” She is not amused.
Richard Donnelly lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Classic flyover land. Which makes us feel just a little… superior. He publishes a weekly column of essays on the writing life at richarddonnelly.substack.com