Excerpt from A Man’s Passion: “Passion, if used wisely, is a good thing, but Pa, his passion was sinful and hateful, as you shall see.”
My loyal readers I brought up this passage from the book I wrote, not because I take pride in my literary deeds, but because an incident occurred last week that pretty much reinforced how many people who don’t live in this part of the Pacific Northwest just assume is par for the course. Trust me, it’s not.
On Thursday, March 21st, a group of University of Utah women basketball players walked to a local restaurant to dine when a pair of men, driving lifted pickup trucks, revved their engines and drove passed them yelling out racist language at these young student athletes.
I’m an adamant anti racist and antifa as well. I don’t ever condone narrow minded and bigoted people who express hateful language, especially toward young ladies who don’t deserve such abuse. I wish I could have been there on that street witnessing this childish behavior. Of course, I also wish I had Shaquille Oneal’s or Mike Tyson’s size to match my bravado so that I could have told those two individuals what I thought of their behavior.
As it is, I doubt they can read past the fourth-grade level so that they could not read my own disappointment in their juvenile behavior. Granted, they are the minority here, yet these kinds of people get most of the press around here too.
These kinds of people aren’t representative of North Idaho or Eastern Washington for that matter. All they represent, will ever represent is pure and unadulterated evil. It is my deepest wish these kinds of people didn’t breathe our air or polluted our airwaves with their hate.
But it is this attitude, this passion that inspired me to write A Man’s Passion in the first place. I wanted to expose to the masses this minority view of hatefulness. I hope that one day these kinds of people will never be a problem again.
Jerry Schellhammer 