Patronizing

I used to work late night at an Arby's in Boulder, Colorado. This provided me with money to subsidize my parent's generous gift of putting me through school as well as a series of life experiences that have put me in good stead for lo these past forty-ish years. Hungry drunk boys who came in looking for "food" who could barely speak the words "Beef 'n'Cheddar." Lost pilgrims looking for A) Mork's House or B) The Boulder Dam. But one of the Arby's moments that sticks with me the most did not occur on one of those hazy late nights. Sometimes I worked the lunch shift. An entirely different beast.
Working the counter at a fast food restaurant during the hours of eleven in the morning to one in the afternoon is no sprint. It's a marathon, and you have to pace yourself. Most days, it was hard to see the five booths we had for seating in our lobby because the crowd was so thick, lined up for their meaty treats. Two to three customers in two to three minutes was our expectation, and the best of us could do even more if we were in our best form. And eventually, the siege was over, and it was time to wipe things down. "Dave, go grab a lobby," came the order from my manager behind the slicer. I grabbed a sponge on my way through the back room, out and around to the lobby where the debris was piling up. Wipe this, that, and check the trash bins, making sure that there were no large chunks of "roast beef" left beneath the tables. Nope. Good.
What's this? A business card? Some IBMer left his credentials as a lopsided thank you for that speedy service? No.
"You have been patronized by the KKK," read the card. I stopped my hustle and bustle and read the card again. This was Boulder after all, recently described by Newsweek magazine as the place "Where the hip meet to trip." This was not something I expected to find while scouring a fast food lobby and scooping waste in the direction of the trash.
Trash. The Invisible Empire. I carried the card with me into the back room, set down my sponge and made a point to pin the card to the bulletin board above the manager's desk. It stayed there for a week or two, inviting a good deal of comment from my fellow employees. It also stayed on my mind each time I found myself on the other side of the counter, trying to imagine the face or faces of the person or persons who dropped that ugly reminder. I had heard stories from old-timers about how they had been held up and how their initial terror had become a story to tell young Tuna like myself. I wasn't terrified, but I told the story to anyone who would listen way back then.
And I'm telling it again here because the Ku Klux Klan continues to exist. Announced appearances of this hate group continue to draw many times the number of counter-protesters than those in the bed sheets and pointy hats. Those are the ones we can see. The frightening thing is that they continue to exist at all, and continue to spout their racist screed to anyone who will listen. And there are much worse groups showing up in their wake. Imperial Wizards and Grand Dragons have given way to Proud Boys and Boogaloos. These idjits don't want to be invisible. They want to be the news.
That's scary.