USA! USA!

 

As we quickly slip from first world nation to second, no scratch that, to third world, this building across the street from me, the one with the large American flag hanging down, is being built.  It's been going up for a year now. Although it may appear to be diminutive here, it's actually fairly imposing for West Oakland.  Four stories with another story underground.  Not one window in the place.  Barry, my across the street neighbor says so far, $12,000,000 has been put into it.  For the longest time I couldn't figure it out.  No windows, looked pretty fortified and then last week an entire roof of huge cooling units were craned on.

The flag, once a symbol of something, is now something else and that threw me off.  In 1970, I drove across the country with a fellow Beavercreeker, Carl Key, to Montana to go to school in a VW bug painted with a US flag on it.  We stopped in Ann Arbor and bought a couple fingers of weed in a city park glancing around in the shadows.

Now that same flag is being waved around in Code Talk by groups of people who I just can't relate with. 

So I didn't quite know what to make of a thirty foot red white and blue flapping around.

 

As I was talking with Barry, who seems to be in the know about the building he says, "Cannabis"

12 million to process weed in a firefight proof building. 

USA!  USA!