Plain people living simple wait for things to change

It’s pretty hard to sit down with someone named John McClain and not have Die Hard come up in the conversation. He gets kidded all the time that Bruce Willis’ character was based on his career.

From across a table at the Uptown Diner, McClain cheerfully states with a perfectly straight face, “That’s right. Yep. They stole it. Stole my name. I was thinking about a heavy lawsuit at first. But, I let them slide.”

Actually, far from being a heroically renegade cop, McClain indulges a loftier, mild-mannered pursuit. He is a minister at Judah Lionz 5 Fold Assembly in South Minneapolis. For the past five years. “I was actually a minister soon as I believed in God,” McClain states.

It’s a two-income household with McClain’s wife of six years, Marizel, working as a teacher. Even in this economy they’re not hurting. Still, they have to keep an eye on money, which gets a little interesting since, in fact, they don’t always see eye to eye.

Mrs. McClain has her own ideas about how to make the most of their financial resources. Which don’t always coincide with John’s. On top of which she doesn’t have a whole lot of give to her. One of those independently thinking women.

Added to which, the McClains sometimes bump heads in conflict along lines of culture and habit. He explains, “We’re like every other family — it’s paycheck to paycheck. Basically what we’re doing [is], we meet the rent. Pay these notes on things like a cell phone, Internet, cable, gas.  That’s just repetitious. Every month it’s the same thing; every two weeks it’s the same thing.”

So, he likes for them to get out of the house once in a while and enjoy an evening on the town. Not quite that simple: “[Marizel] is from the Philippines, a Third World country, right? So, coming from a place like that, you conserve every penny.”

Instead of going out to dinner, she can handle the repetition just fine. “To go get a burger, she feels, is a waste of money instead of cooking at home. We have those arguments, because I came up in the Western world where it’s no big deal to go some place for a bite to eat.

“Our conflict is, she eats her own cooking. Rice and whatever stuff. My thing is pizza. And all that, to her, is a waste.” So, when they get to fussing does she pull out the old rolling pin to settle things? “No, it’s not that heavy. But, she wins the fight. Because I leave the management up to her a lot of the times. I have to admit, being a bachelor all my life, living alone, I got used to spending money how I want.”

Not anymore. “When you have a wife, everything changes,” says McClain. “So, sometimes I find myself being married [but] trying to live like a bachelor.” I share with him the known fact that the first thing a woman will do, once she has chosen a man, is to start about the business of changing him, if only to be able to say she did. “That’s it exactly,” McClain agrees. “But, what we do have in common is that we’re both plain people who like to live simple.”

How does McClain feel President Barack Obama is doing in his handling of the economy in a recession that officially was over last year but has yet to be felt in anyone’s wallet?  “For big business, it’s great. The common person? They haven’t seen it yet. That change that was supposed to happen? Come on, now. We’re still living the same, so where’s the change?”

If President Obama called and asked how to solve the problem, what would McClain tell him? “He needs to let more taxes fall on the rich so the lower class can catch up. The rich can take the burden. If you’re poor or middle class and there’s no compensation, no one’s rising. It’s not true equality where we help each other out.”

He goes on to say, “America is for sale. [For instance], China is buying up the treasury, the treasury bonds. They just bought American National Bank. As long as everything in America is for sale, we’ll never bounce back. It won’t get better.”

Dwight Hobbes welcomes reader responses to dhobbes@spokesman-recorder.com.