It is five in the morning on a Saturday and again I am awakened by the loud boisterous Mexicans driving down my alley. The sound of a tuba rivets my windows. The bass; the bass makes my ears split. The debris they throw in the back of the old weighted down pickup makes a screeching sound; metal upon metal. And there are voices speaking in Spanish. I can’t make out what they are talking about, but the term, Sabado Gigante, keeps coming up. Sabado Gigante I know. It is a game show on Univision that I somtimes watch; midgets running around in clown outfits and scantily clad women showing off their perfectly round backsides. Contestants are pulled from the audience and mahem ensues.

I close my blinds and I go back to bed. The noise of the early morning quickly disipates into nothing, not a sound while the morning sun makes it’s way into my room. It is another day. Soon the construction workers and the carpenters will be making different kinds of noise; hammers hammering, saws sawing, concrete mixers unloading, and more Mexican music.

Long ago before I moved away this town was quiet and small. It had less than a hundred thousand people living in it. Today there is well over two hundred thousand people in less than a twenty year time span. The growth is amazing. Neighborhoods being turned upside down. Homeowners make great profits while the renters are tossed aside to another neighborhood, or, outside the city. Landlords complain about their property taxes. What is fair and what is not? Upset because they are paying more than the rich in the suburbs where city council members live. In a way, everybody is getting screwed but the rich. That’s the way it goes in America. The rich decide. I start thinking back to my childhood with that idiot Regan showing a pie chart and explaining trickle down economics to the nation. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now, I say to myself. It doesn’t work now. Sabado Gigante indeed.