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She Wasn’t Getting Any Avocados [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-29
After waiting in traffic on the drive north, and stopping for groceries, we finally arrived at the river place at 7:30 PM. It’s midsummer, and the day still has some warmth to it, and I want to paddleboard upstream in the very last of the daylight. To have the flowing water and the redwoods and the warm sunset overwhelm and soothe my irritations with the world.
But there’s a stepladder. I notice it’s a nice new one. I can tell because the stickers on the side saying “Werner” are fresh; the bright construction-equipment yellow rail on the top is unsmudged. There are no splatters of paint on it, no dings or bent legs from past use. The stepladder looks lonely and left behind where it stands in front of my garage door.
I think I know why it’s there. The avocado tree that was just a bush, nine years ago when I bought the place, has now grown as high as the house. Last week, on the last trip up here, I’d noticed some plump avocados on its lower branches, which hang down above the garage door. Now they’re gone.
I stop the car in the dead-end street and get out. I walk over in front of the neighbor’s house, and look up above an imposing wood fence that makes the place look like a fortress compound. I see Renee, the matriarch of that family—the only one who is consistently sober—climbing the stairs.
“Hey there,” I call out. “Anybody missing a stepladder?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“It’s not ours.”
“OK, I guess I’ll keep it.”
I move toward the task of opening the garage door. A stepladder will come in handy. Meanwhile, Renee is calling out a question to whoever might be inside the house.
“Anybody leave a stepladder outside?”
Somebody answers her. I can’t quite hear.
“Wait!” Renee yells at me. I stop.
“It is ours.”
I can hear her talking to whoever is inside.
“Why were you using the stepladder?”
A female voice answers her back: “I was getting some avocados.”
Soon a woman, 30s, hustles out of the gate, heads for the stepladder.
“Those are not your avocados,” I say to her.
“I wasn’t getting any avocados,” she says, closing the stepladder and hauling it back to her house.
Once you believe the lie of white supremacy and are really committed to that lie, then shamelessly believing and telling any other lie is just gravy. This truth is what unites Republicans across the economic spectrum in their behavior, in their loyalty to each other, and in their loyalty to their leader.
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