Thursday, March 15, 2012

It Is Time Again To Chose Up Sides

I might have told some of this story before, cause there are lots of parts to it, and not all of them will be here. I have in my collection of things to finish, a project that contains a metal stencil for a sign from a Santa Fe Rail Road Station in Northern Oklahoma.  It was a small station with one waiting room. The stencil reads "Whites Only". It was used to make the sign on the waiting room door.  If you were not White, you had to sit outside on a bench at the loading dock of the station.  Not White meant Indians, Mexicans, but most especially Negros.

I have taken that stencil  and have pasted a picture on it in such a way that when I cut out the letters most of the picture can still be seen.  There's where the projected stopped.  Still haven't figured out what comes next.

The picture was taken in Indiana in 1930.  It is almost like a town festival.  everybody seems to be there, well all the White people are there.



I am from that culture. No not Indiana, the culture that kept Negro's in their place and segregated; the culture that, if it wanted to, could punish them for being uppity and Black at the same time.  I remember it.  The segregated cafe's, rest rooms, and drinking fountains or on a work site, one water bucket for Whites and one for Them. It did not seem strange.  It was the normal way things were done.



Even though we were segregated, I wasn't separated from the Negroes.  I worked in the fields with them when I got older.  I played with their kids when I was a kid and they were living in our nigger-shank during boll pulling time.  I was Naive with a capital N.  I knew what as going on but had not the foggiest notion of what it meant. When I was 15 I just happened to ride into town with a black man who had been helping me and my crop duster boss clean out his hanger.  He was just going to drop me off at my house.  Before we got there, a car passed us and some jerk stuck his head out of the window, and yelled at me by name, "f..... nigger lover".   The Black guy got real scared.  That was an epiphany for me, but I have to admit it took a couple of years to totally sink in.


Now we have a whole bunch of good solid people, citizens, that want to go back to those days for Blacks, and Mexicans, and Indians, and even for Women.  They want their America back.  No, they will tell you, that's not the America they want back.  Not that segregated one, they say, but that one where me and mine were respected.  Mind you they are good people, good Americans, our friends and neighbors and they don't have a clue as to what they are actually striving for  (some do, the bad ones).



We all have to chose which America we are willing to fight for.  If you sit on the fence on this one your wump won't survive, nor maybe even your neck.

Monday, March 12, 2012

The Spit & Whittle Club

The Spit and Whittle Club.......The club was about a half block from the city park.  It was in a small one room house under a Mulberry tree across the street from the County court house.  The old men sat on big apple crates, an old church pew set against the wall, and chairs liberated from several places.  They sat outside in the spring and summer. In the winter they sat inside around a big bellied stove fueled with coal from the nearby blacksmith shop.

Mr Mitchel, a man that my Dad farmed his place on the shares, was often there and he would be whittling stars, animals, and abstract geometric figures out of the sides and ends of produce boxes. He always used the small blade on his Barlow do do the cutting. When my dad stopped by to talk to him, I'd play in the park, and when we left Mr. Mitchel or one the other men would give me all the things they had whittled out that day.

My mother called it, "That Nasty Place" because most of the men chewed and would spit their tobacco into coffee cans sitting around on the ground.  Some mens' aim was better than others.  They didn't drink coffee at the club. They drank something with a brown sack wrapped tightly around it.  They would always offer my Dad a chaw or a sip.  He always said, no.  Dad was devout Baptist deacon, and thought that even going to the movies was a sin. Although he did roll his own with papers from a pocket can of Prince Albert.  Sometimes when we were through visiting, Dad and I would walk across the street and get a Dr. Pepper or an RC out of the Coke machine at the City Service filling station.


Wednesday, March 7, 2012

The Bigotry of the Left: Of Shoes--And Ships--And Sealing Wax-Of Cabbages and Kings


I was 18 in 1963 when I stumbled into participating in the desegregation of my home State of Oklahoma.  I spent the last half of my professional life with "desegregation" as my primary job description.  One thing I came to know is every single descendant of Adam and Eve carries in their being deep abiding prejudices. It doesn't matter if you are black, white, yellow, red, green, radical,  liberal, moderate, conservative, fascist or communist you are a bigot in some manner and in some degree.  In short no one is innocent of this "sin".  If it is a sin. I see it as just a genetic remnant of our herd, troop, or tribe.  The "other" is always there, and always bad.  The corollary thing I learned is that every single one of us is a good person and each of us know that about ourselves.

These underlay the current pivot in American Politics.  We are shutting down the uber-conservative final manifestation of the Republican Party. In the transition all of the moderates and reasonable conservative members will move eventually to the current Right leaning Democratic Party.  The radical conservatives will return to the outlier groups where they normally are, and the the uber left will seperate from the Democrats and form their own radical left version of a political party.

The humorous (maybe it is the ironic) catalyst that finally sets off this festering manifestation of racial bigotry against blacks and most other minorities,  is the existence of  the Half Black/Half White President of the United State Barack Obama.

As I've said one political Party is dying and another Party is forming. I've found this blog post at the Huffington Post Blog that pretty much explains why the New Party is forming where it is and from whom it is. America's political structure is pivoting on Obama's Presidency.



Of Cabbages and Kings: It’s Not that Obama’s Naive; It’s Just That the President’s Not White

Posted on Monday, 18th July 2011 @ 12:57 AM by 


Tuesday, March 6, 2012

An American Conversation: Defending Beyond The Pale


Limbaugh Last Friday "....he's now insisting that women who want contraceptive coverage should "pay" in return by posting sex videos of themselves online. "Femi-nazis, here's the deal," he announced. "If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch." The News guys seem to forget that after he propositioned the Georgetown Law student, and then all Georgetown coeds, he insulted all the women on contraceptives in America.

    • Bodie Carl Gaffenstof Yeah, he's in the same category as when Bill Maher called Sarah Palin a Dumb Twat, and a Cunt. Just ain't a good idea.
      about an hour ago ·  ·  2
    • Junior Bear Bullshit, Rush is unique and incomparable. Those ole boys make single statements. Rush wove a fantasy and then wandered through it for three or four days in a row. He just took his art to a level of exposure that a bit too revealing for being broadcast on the airwaves. Not to mention insulting around 120,000,000 american women among whom my daughter is one. Nope you can unditto this time.
    • Richard Bodie Gafinstof ol rush just said what every red blooded male was thinkin if they are going to pay for her to have sex then they should pay for me where is my hooker
    • Junior Bear So how is her paying for her insurance policy costing you any more than any other thing people buy cost you?
    • Richard Bodie Gafinstof im tired of carrying the world if she wants to have unprotected sex then she should pay for not everyother policyholder using your thinking the next time im at walmart i should just fill my pockets all the ohter people wont mind paying a little more if i want to steal after all its the democratic way share and share alike
      about an hour ago ·  ·  1
    • Bodie Carl Gaffenstof I can't wait for the party pictures to come out. She has that DC party girl look about her.
    • Junior Bear 
      RBG she pays for her insurance. Georgetown would not let any policy for their students pay for contraceptives. She was talking about the 14% of the women there that needed the contraceptives for actual medical reason. All that pay for he sex shit Rush MADE UP. It was his own fantasy, not anything that was talked about in the congressional hearing.
      Bodie: yor Mama. You understand it now? Why everybody is pissed?
      See More
    • Richard Bodie Gafinstof what medical condition nymphomania
    • Junior Bear Cancerous cyst on an ovary.
      47 minutes ago · 
    • Richard Bodie Gafinstof so your sayin this georgetown student had that i think not see was just wanting to have a good time
      42 minutes ago · 
    • Junior Bear Have another beer.
      41 minutes ago · 
    • Bodie Carl Gaffenstof I just can't stand hypocrites, and you are one every day. If you think Bill Maher and talk that way about women, and the fat fucker can't, you are a hypocrite. It all comes down to the (D's) and the (R's) with you. And you think no one notices. People are smarter than you think.
      14 minutes ago · 
    • Junior Bear Have I hidden the fact of being a yellow dog democrat?, "People are smarter than you think.", Some are and some aren't. Bill Maher was kicked off the public air ways for his remarks and had to go to HBO. I'll accept a similar result with Rush. Is that not fair?

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Death's come to Jerry McCormic

Humans are actually social beings, not actually individuals, not really.  This week I was searching the web for some points of personal history.  I didn't find my personal history but I found the history of the organization, the 337th Radio Research Unit at the First Infantry base camp at Lai Khe, Republic of Vietnam, exactly 12 months after I had left it, complete with a photo album. All of the people and  photographs looked exactly as I remembered them.  The place indeed was the same one, the people all dressed like I remembered them but were not the same people.  They were completely different humans.  Same postures, same looks, one guy even had my M-3 rifle I used for courier runs.  It was my rifle, but it wasn't me.  Stranger still was the fully grown little white dog named Skeeter, that belong to this guy I didn't know.  Yes, Skeeter was my dog the tiny puppy we had bought from a little girl in the village of Quan Loi.  Skeeter was a little white female puppy headed to the cooking pot, and she was rescued and raised for six months by me and two other guys.  She was now another mans dog.
My gun, my dog, my place, completely populated by totally familiar strangers in my clothes with my rank, unit patches and insignia, drinking my beer , and eating my steaks, cooked on my grill, outside my tent, in my war......
except, although they were exactly the same, they were completely different.





M.C. #Escher, Moebius Strip II — w/Ants (1963)


Departmental

by Robert Frost - 1936





An ant on the tablecloth
Ran into a dormant moth
Of many times his size.
He showed not the least surprise.
His business wasn't with such.
He gave it scarcely a touch,
And was off on his duty run.
Yet if he encountered one
Of the hive's enquiry squad
Whose work is to find out God
And the nature of time and space,
He would put him onto the case.
Ants are a curious race;
One crossing with hurried tread
The body of one of their dead
Isn't given a moment's arrest-
Seems not even impressed.
But he no doubt reports to any
With whom he crosses antennae,
And they no doubt report
To the higher-up at court.
Then word goes forth in Formic:
"Death's come to Jerry McCormic,
Our selfless forager Jerry.
Will the special Janizary
Whose office it is to bury
The dead of the commissary
Go bring him home to his people.
Lay him in state on a sepal.
Wrap him for shroud in a petal.
Embalm him with ichor of nettle.
This is the word of your Queen."
And presently on the scene
Appears a solemn mortician;
And taking formal position,
With feelers calmly atwiddle,
Seizes the dead by the middle,
And heaving him high in air,
Carries him out of there.
No one stands round to stare.
It is nobody else's affair. 


It couldn't be called ungentle
But how thoroughly departmental