Sociologists and legal scholars have written extensively on the elements of a caste system present in the U.S. and its relationship to ignorance levels. My wife and I have lived, worked and raised our children across a number of states, from the middle of the plains, to the Gulf coast, to the Pacific coast, and on to the Atlantic coast. Somehow, in all those locations, in all those years, I failed to see or even think about castes.
But recently my wife and I operated a small resale shop, along with our partners. It was located on a minor but important state highway that traverses most of the width of our state. Our experience in the resale / collectibles business in a low-population part of a low-population state have enabled a tiny view of this caste system at work in America. It just took a while to see it.
The distribution of work in our partnership was simple; the women took care of merchandising, pricing, negotiating and handling sales while the men did the routine physical labor. Upon opening the shop the women were busy opening blinds, turning on lights, moving mobile displays into their locations and all the other things necessary to actually sell merchandise. Meanwhile the men were putting up the portable signs along our highway frontage, setting out eye-catching banners and flags, and similar deeply intellectual duties.
My last routine, daily-opening duty was to gather the day’s offerings of wind gifts and other homages that had been faithfully contributed by members of the lower castes. This activity, which is not especially fulfilling nor completely unpleasant, stirs up mixed emotions. These gifts and little rewards, that people of the lowest castes distribute to those they perceive as belonging to higher castes, are remarkably diverse.
Many of these honorariums must have involved a significant expenditure for those in the lower castes, even before the cost and/or effort of delivery is considered. Others may have been free castoffs, stolen, or have cost very little money. Every color in the visible spectrum is represented at one time or another. They are made from an equally diverse range of materials; however, plastics, paper and glass are best represented.
The specific distribution techniques remain a bit cloudy. This is mostly the result of the lower castes’ preference for anonymity. Some are delivered in the daytime, most are delivered after dark, but the majority are delivered clandestinely. It is as if the Untouchables and other low castes don’t even want to be seen by their presumed higher-caste recipients. It is quite rare to actually see one of the timid low-caste donors in the act of delivering a gift, and he or she always disappears as quickly as possible.
It appears that differing distribution choices divide these honoraria into two general categories. The preferred delivery technique, it appears, is a nonspecific-recipient technique that takes advantage of the wind (of which our state is blessed with plenty). If a gift has a very low total weight, or has a rather large area-to-weight ratio, these low-caste donors have learned to toss them up-and-away into the wind. Mother Nature’s delivery is efficient, although not particularly effective; only some fraction actually reach an upper-class beneficiary—many just rot away unseen in high grass, weeds, scrub timber and brush.
Our share of that fraction of wind gifts that actually reach a recipient still provide an abundant sample of materials, colors, textures and designs. They are also sprinkled with well-known brand names, particularly McDonalds, Burger King, Frito-Lay and other food providers. One category of wind gift producers is especially well represented—tobacco companies. It seems that low-caste people don’t have the means or education to select innovative or unique gifts for those of us they consider upper-caste. Therefore, colorful wrappers of all kinds of products predominate—candy bars, chewing gum, and so forth. Each day reveals a never-ending variety of these simple, inexpensive offerings.
Those gifts which are too heavy for the wind are placed, or possibly tossed, onto the property of a selected recipient. Those gifts made of glass are in this category; some fraction arrive intact, but the remainder are unfortunately broken in the delivery process. The variety of colors and designs of the labels on these glass gifts is quite large, but the colors of the glass itself is essentially limited to three—primarily brown, with the remainder divided between green and clear. Brand names, although well-known, are somewhat limited—Budweiser, Millers, Coors and a few others.
Aluminum cans used for beverages, both beer and soft drink, have the characteristics of both hand-delivered and wind-delivered gifts. If a can is completely empty it can be wind-delivered; but if it has more than half a swallow of liquid, it must be placed or tossed. Therefore it is difficult to tell if this type of gift was intended to be hand- or wind-delivered. As I collected these pitiful little gifts, I always had a sense of guilt over the knowledge that the low-caste donors are unaware of the potential monetary value of aluminum cans.
But my greatest sense of guilt came about because of our limited means to properly display all the gifts. Rather quickly I had to start storing them in a 55-gallon drum, and I feared that the donors might see me and think I didn’t appreciate their homages. That 55-gallon drum could easily be mistaken for a rubbish container, and I certainly did not want to break the hearts of those poor little, miserable people. It’s bad enough for the low castes to know that they are the bottom of the barrel, and the thought of them believing I would put their carefully delivered gifts in a trash barrel was heart-breaking for me.
Posted by thedrake01 
