The Mar-A-Lago Club is is doing it again. On the Department of Labor's job site for foreign H-2B workers they are requesting 20 housekeepers, 27 cooks, and 12 server assistants for the season.
One "we are hiring" post on Truth Social and the president could have filled these jobs with an army of young Americans.
Never should have abandoned Gen Z.
A man in Kansas City told me the meat would be ready at four in the afternoon.
He started it at three in the morning.
Thirteen hours. For one meal. I want that understood. In my country we have fought entire battles in less time and gone home.
I asked if I could keep him company. He said, "If you want."
That was the longest sentence he spoke for two hours.
I prepared for the vigil the way a man prepares for a vigil. I brought a notebook. I intended to record what the fire did, in case I was ever called upon to do this alone.
I asked what wood he was using. He said, "Oak."
I wrote down oak.
He watched me write down oak, and he said nothing, and I have decided that his silence was a kindness.
He sat in a folding chair beside a black iron drum and watched a fire that did not need watching. Every so often he opened the lid, looked inside, and closed it. He adjusted nothing. He consulted no device. He was simply confirming that the fire was still keeping its word.
I offered to take the second watch.
He told me there was no second watch. There was only him. And now, apparently, me.
At 4:15 in the morning he handed me a beer.
I drank it with both hands.
I want to explain what I understood, sitting in the dark beside that drum.
He was not cooking. Cooking is a thing you do to food. This was something else. Thirteen hours before one single guest would arrive, alone, in the cold, with no one to watch him and no one to thank him and no possibility of ever being properly thanked, he was tending a fire so that people who were still asleep would eat well.
He was keeping a promise to people who did not know he was awake.
Where I come from we would have built a shrine to a man like this. We would have carved a poem into it. We would have forgotten his name within a century.
Here he is called Dave. He does this most weekends. He has a coupon for the wood.
At six he stood, stretched, and held out the tongs.
He said nothing. He simply held them out.
I want to be clear about the gravity of what was being transferred. A man does not hand his fire to a stranger. Where I come from, this is an adoption.
I took the tongs with both hands and bowed so deeply that my forehead very nearly met the lid.
He said, "Just don't open it too much."
I did not open it.
I did not open it for forty minutes.
I did not open it while a bee conducted a full investigation of my face.
When the people arrived at four in the afternoon, they ate, and they laughed, and they said it was good, and not one of them asked who had been awake at three in the morning.
Dave did not tell them.
I have decided that I will not tell them either.
But I would like it recorded somewhere, by someone, that a man named Dave rose in the dark to keep his word to a backyard full of people who had not arrived yet, said nothing about it afterward, and ate his own plate standing up.
I have bought a black iron drum.
I do not yet know anyone here well enough to feed.
I am starting the fire anyway.
I don't often ask for prayers, but my golden retriever is very sick and she needs surgery asap. She's my daughter's best friend and I don't say that lightly. Please pray the Lord will intervene and the surgery can happen even tomorrow if possible.
@MilitarySummary Who knows. If he was killed in Ukraine then he died doing what he loved. Spending US tax dollars on countries he doesn’t live in helping people he doesn’t represent.
He was burning alive, yet he kept re-entering the burning Bradley Fighting Vehicle until all six soldiers and the Iraqi interpreter were safe. Burns covered 72% of his body. His first words were, ‘How are my boys?’ He died three weeks later. It took 16 years for him to receive the Medal of Honor. HIS NAME IS SERGEANT FIRST CLASS ALWYN C. CASHE, NEVER FORGET!!!
Trump swore he "would not sign" the housing bill. He let it pass anyway.
Inside it: a Section 8 expansion — better zip codes for the next Michael Brown. Yours, for instance.
Guess who's made millions off Section 8 housing? Jared Kushner.