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From an essay entitled "Pass It Down" by Nick Bowden in a fucking remarkable literary magazine by the name of Burnt Bridge, which I just got turned onto.
I grew up a part of a group who disliked police, judges, bosses, politicians, bankers, and bill collectors. These were people grouped together on the other side of a line from us. They were people who could evict you from your house (this happened to three families I knew of growing up), could arrest you for having a little fun (my father's uncle, who distilled his own corn whiskey, six months in jail), or just make your life miserable by hassling you for your last buck, always adding arbitrary late fees, penalties, surcharges. They were all in on it together, working against us at every turn.
"If you're in trouble," my father had always told me, "call me and your brother first, and we'll come running. Then call the cops." If we drove past a state trooper writing a ticket, or three or four black and whites flashing blue lights while the policemen that drove them cuffed people, my father would always say something like "Pig sons of bitches." If we saw a police chase on television, we cheered for the crooks, no matter what they had done. And they always got caught.
