On my way home today (2015-11-09) in T-shirt and jogging shorts, I met an retired Galician furniture mover named José, digging a ditch in the sidewalk with a battered shovel under an overcast sky. Sweat dripped off his face, and he showed me his knee-replacement scar, and I felt his rock-hard Popeye forearm. There on the sidewalk, we talked about what motivates people to honesty and about the difficulties he had had with police demanding bribes when he was in business and the difficulties with employees. I told stories about Diogenes of Sinope.
He told me of a time, 40 years ago, when he was moving furniture for the former propaganda chief of the SS, who had retired to Argentina after the war. The man told him that propaganda could persuade brothers to kill one another.
He also told me of a time when he was 17, working as a mover for his father. After finishing up the job, he presented the bill to the customer, a friend of his father's. The customer said he would pay his father. He went home and told his father, and his father asked, "Why didn't you collect then?"
"I figured he'd pay you. He's your friend!"
"I don't have any friends!" laughed his father.
And, sure enough, the man never paid.
As I said goodbye to José, the lightning began, and then the hailstorm. I shivered in my soaked T-shirt in the freezing rain.