Greetings ASEAN Hivers, I'm here in the good ole' USA, already missing my Khmer family deeply, but I still want to show you the agricultural and industrial wasteland where I'm from.
The Princeton Auto Parke 🚘
I do have some last pics of my solo time without the family in Suriname, but perhaps I'll share that another day. For now I want to share with you all a side of America not portrayed in Hollywood movies. My father has his own "buy here, pay here" used car lot, and this is because my area of the USA is economically stagnant, few people have good enough credit to even get a $5,000 loan from a local bank.
At my dad's place, you can make weekly or monthly payments to eventually own your car, of course with some interest calculated. One of my many old jobs was to steal the car back when customers stopped making their payments. This was never satisfying nor a safe job by any means, especially when nearly everyone has a gun in southern Indiana.
@Sreypov's Moto 🛵
For now the moto I purchased for my wife when I thought our US immigration interview was approaching, lies in limbo inside the garage at the back of the car lot's garage. I did take it for a quick test drive, but it's freezing here, simply too cold to use this for transportation.
My Former Job & Workmate 👨🏭
I've done tons of manual labor jobs in the USA, and detailing cars was one I did for many years. Mike is my former workmate, and still employed by my Dad doing the same job I used to do with him many years ago. Detailing a car consists of using a melee of toxic chemicals to clean the interior and exterior of a car, in an effort to make it look as good as possible, allowing the boss man to charge top dollar for each car.
Here are the chemicals I used to work with, the wheel acid is the one that can actually make you black out and wake up on the floor, and pure ammonia is pretty noxious too. I've blacked out more than once cleaning cars, so maybe this is why I wasn't scared of COVID nor the vaccine.
I probably still have enough wheel acid in my lungs to kill any potential corona virus. Well, after usually around 8+ hours, a car is completely finished. This particular one Mike was working on was about 85% complete. If you're wondering if I miss the job, the answer is not really.
The Office Side Of Things 👨💼
Here is a view of the office, with my Dad on the phone making deals, a typical site. Also, since I left, our little farmtown has contributed a recent highschool graduate to the WNBA, a professional women's basketball league. Her name is Jackie Young, and she's the biggest thing to come out of our town since Orville Redenbacher.
Christmas-time is approaching, so decorated trees are a common sight inside many local businesses, or should I say what few local businesses there are. In the above photo on the left, my dad, the bossman, is talking to Scott, another former workmate of mine who graduated from the detailing world to an office setting.
Vast Expanses of Nothing-ness 🌽
My dad asked me to accompany him on a trip to the junkyard and a mechanic, about 45km away in the biggest nearby urban area, Evansville, Indiana. The drive to this town is filled with vast fields of mono-crop chemical agriculture, mostly corn, but not corn legal for human consumption. It is mostly GMO corn to be used for animal feed.
Corn fields, gas stations, and oversized American flags dominate the landscape. There isn't much social living like in SE Asia going on in this part of the world.
A local tourist attraction is the oversized Santa Claus, which stands year-round, but has changed owners countless times since I've been a kid. Whoever owns and displays this antique fiberglass Santa is basically the richest person around.
Southern Indiana is long straight unending highways and flat horizons, so just try not to fall asleep while driving.
Industrial Wasteland 🏭
As we enter the city of Evansville, the former industrial glory is immediately apparent. This town has been in economic decline since the 1950s, and is commonly featured in the USA's worst ten cities to live in. It's just a series of semi-abandoned former factories, and almost every industrial building is for rent.
On this drive I realized that southern Indiana is a third-world country by many international parameters. It was hard for me to find anything interesting to take photos of, so I just decided to take photos of the things that reminded me why I left the USA for Cambodia in 2010 with $500 in my pocket.
Evansville is known for high quality methamphetamine, low quality jobs, obesity, and a low quality of life. Public transportation is abysmal, leaving poor people who live in this city with several hours of commuting just to travel short distances.
Local Business 🏠 A Dying Way Of Life
A site you don't see very often in most of the USA is small locally owned businesses. This bar/restaurant we passed would be considered massive by Cambodian standards, but running a business any smaller than this is basically illegal because of countless zoning regulations.
NGOs Fixing Problems ⛲
Much like Cambodia, NGOs take on most of the serious problems government is either unwilling or unable to afford. Decent parks are are in southern Indiana, and if you see a good one, chances are an NGO is behind it. This cool little park had a sign highlighting the sponsor who made this possible.
Brown & Gloomy 🚏
The state of this bus stop is an example of the failed economy of the area I grew up in. Massive parking lots with hardly any cars and strip malls with many vacancies dominate the part of town near the junkyard.
We dropped off my aunt Rita at a transmission repair business to run a car back to my little farmtown 45km away.
Note that my aunt Rita is a ginger like me, so us freckle faces have a special bond.
This shows the tallest buildings in Evansville, a bank and the courthouse in the distance on the righthand side (I think it's a courthouse).
Our last stop was the junkyard, a typical stop for used car lot running on a tight budget. After we left this place, we stopped by a redneck mechanic's place who shook my dad's hand with such force that he actually commented on it. The mechanic's response was "My mom didn't raise no p^ssy!" Welcome to 'Merica everyone!
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