FIDEL, LA CUCARACHA GRANDE

 

They used to squash cockroaches in Cuba, but now the cockroaches have stolen everything in sight.

Salaries of teachers, architects, office workers, public employees (well, everyone is really a public or government employee) are all fixed at, in exchange rates, the equivalent of U.S. $8.00 per month.

 

THINKING LIKE A SOCIALIST

 

Can you think like a socialist? Can you drive through a town here in the U.S., or a large city, look at all the homes and say, "Golly, if we became a socialist country, the government could take over all of these homes. The government would own everything. All the back yards would become common areas and anyone who wanted to play in anyone else's back yard would have the right to do so. The government would also own all the front lawns and they would have to mow the lawns, tend the gardens, clip the shrubs, trim all the trees, mend a broken fence, send a government employed plumber to repair a broken toilet, replace the floats inside the tank, fix the leading washer on the faucets, replace a broken window, give you new rugs if you had a flood, fix the driveway, and those who lived there would not have any legal responsibility at all! Wouldn't that be nice.

 

All you would have to do is to call up the City, the County, the State or the Feds, and ask them for help.  That's all. All the plumbers and carpenters would become government employees. You would not need any insurance adjustors, just call up the City Hall and tell them your kitchen faucet broke and flooded the kitchen. Bingo. A plumber would suddenly appear. The house needed to be repainted. Bingo, six painters would drive up in a government truck, take out their ladders and singing a solidarity song, begin painting the house.  Every week trucks would drive down the street and stop at each house while two men got out with lawnmowers, blowers, rakes and hoes and made your garden and yard look picture perfect, pretty enough for Good Housekeeping Magazine.

 

Like the Seven Dwarfs in the Cinderella movie, they would swarm all over and do the work, singing, in harmony, "Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off the work we go . . ." and like magic you would find yourself in a Fairyland. Yep, that's socialism for you.

 

No more taxes.  The government would own the house. They just send a man or a mannish woman to your house with a bunch of papers and your Mom and Dad sign over the house to them. Just think, no more responsibilities. Dad can sit and watch TV all weekend and Mom does not need to remind him to do a single thing.  The government owns every house on the block and therefore, they have to provide people to do all those nasty chores. Junior does not have to lift a finger, hose down the drive, pick up a single leaf.  Socialism really works (for jerks). Dad, who had his own business as a pool cleaner has not been assigned the job of driving a garbage truck by the city hall staff, and mom, who was a school teacher is now in charge of a meat market, which seldom has any meat.  Of course, if you want to paint the house and pay with your own money, you might be accused of trying to show your neighbors at the next meeting of the Socialist Party and you could be expelled and moved into a smaller home.

 

I have been writing to a Canadian friend who fixed up a house in Cuba for his wife, with all the necessary papers duly filled out at City Hall. After it was finished, while he was away she was kicked out and a General moved into the house.  She was not assigned to another home, so had to move in with relatives.