I had just returned from a heartening walk on the beach, where I built a fort, and watched a man, his son and his grandson and two black dogs romp around and set up their fishing spot.

It was about eight in the morning and a perfectly beautiful day. I was full of spirit and energy and ideas to write.

There was my elderly neighbor and his great dog. He was returning from a walk.

I greeted him and played with the dog. He didn’t greet me but asked if I had watched the news this morning. For him, “news” meant Fox News.

No, I had not. I was on the beach. He launched into an almost frenetic report on the dire situation at the Mexican border. It was more of an assault than a report and I had no part in initiating it.

There was children wallowing in feces, sleeping on top of each other, wrapped in plastic, in cages. They were coming by the thousands and bringing disease and disorder with them. It was all Biden’s fault and had always been Biden’s fault although he’s only been President for less than three months.

Virtually everything he said to me about the crisis contained obvious errors of fact and history. First of all, the people trying to gain entrance to the US in this particular scenario are not Mexicans.

I didn’t engage with him at first, and mentioned about the beauty of the beach and the new erosion. He kept going on about the immigrants. I finally had had it and corrected him: refugees. These were refugees from Central American countries seeking political asylum from the carnage of their countries, carnage largely inflicted by American foreign policy the last century. A federal law had established this asylum law some time ago and that’s why these refugees were walking across Mexico. The law stipulates if they reach the border, they must be processed to determine their claim for asylum. I said change the law. It could have been done under Trump. My neighbor said, incorrectly, Trump tried. He did not. He then claimed the Democrats were responsible. I mentioned the Republicans controlled all three branches of government until 2019. He looked at me as if I was speaking Klingon.

The situation at the border is obviously a humanitarian disaster with seemingly no quick solution, and people can disagree on how to handle it. If I recall, Obama’s policies were pretty much the same as what’s going on now, although the numbers skyrocketed during Trump’s term, or whatever it was.

But my point in writing this and calling out the man is that you must have the facts and history right if you want to assail me in the morning with a current event after I have just returned from a walk on the beach where I got my head and heart right. You typically won’t get facts and history from programs like Fox News. You have to go deeper and get off the ideological teat. You have to walk a mile in the other person’s intellectual shoes. You have to think for yourself and not parrot talking points.

I finally disengaged from my neighbor and went inside my domicile to eat some breakfast. I wouldn’t let this conversation ruin my day. And I wouldn’t let it poison my friendship with the man.

But we haven’t spoken since.

I was sitting outside my domicile writing a letter when a couple about my age approached. I’ve known them for several years and they both suffer from health issues and are on, I believe, disability of some kind. What she wore now escapes me, but he donned a bolo tie, Western shirt, sunglasses, cowboy boots and black motocross gloves. It was a very curious fashion ensemble for a coastal Oregon Saturday in March but he wore it without any irony whatsoever and I dug that. The man had invented his own fashion style without the assistance of any magazine, web site, celebrity, TV show or Influencer. I really dug that.

I hope someone out there sees me in my corduroy and beaver stencil shirt getups and thinks the same! Probably not.

We caught up on things and they informed me they’d recently returned to church, some Pentecostal speaking-in-tongues sect, even though they weren’t religious. He also told me he was building his own AR-15 assault rifle in his single wide trailer. Why I asked? He wanted to be ready. For what? When they come, he said.

He’d tried buying the rifle elsewhere but everything was sold out since Trump left office. I got the idea he was assembling one with a 3-D printer, which you can easily do. Don’t you just love the 2^nd Amendment, certainly the worst, most vaguely written sentence in American history? See where bad writing can take a country?

I asked him if he was one of those grocery store or school or movie theater or concert or disco or church or nail salon kind of angry guys. He said no. He said his dad had been a gun dealer and that he’d had his ass kicked by his gun dealer dad growing up and that made him learn the difference between right and wrong.

We said our goodbyes and I pondered his statement. Maybe there was something to it. I don’t know.

I had thought to write some long and probing piece about a big ending in my life, one that is occurring as I write this from my domicile as the sun comes up in late March. I have been thinking about this piece for some time and even made a few notes.

But as I sat down to begin writing, I found I didn’t want to write it. I had already written it in my mind and in my journal and that would be enough for now. I am on a new path as a person and a writer and I don’t want to recapitulate. It is time to move into a new realm and perhaps if I am lucky, into some new people and ideas and stories.

Perhaps the day will come when I will revisit the last five years of my life living on and off on the Secret Coast of Oregon. Maybe there is a book in the experience.

I will close this short reflection on an ending of my life by mentioning three important things I learned during this particular era: 1) construction work; 2) RV life; 3) friendship.