Definition of BRIGADOON

:  a place that is idyllic, unaffected by time, or remote from reality

Once't upon a time, in a place faraway, there was a village located along a riverbank, then as now, lined with willows and water maples, its evolutionary history shrouded in the mists of time.  

It probably began life as an encampment of shanty boats, a haven for slave catchers and other undesirables.

You’ll not find it on a map.  Not even in its heyday, but, it was there.  A remnant still exists but every year finds it less and one day, like fabled Brigadoon, it and all the people will be gone and, soon after, there won’t even be a memory.

When I was there, it was called Beattyville.  Not officially.  Officially it was part of an area  called South Portsmouth that sort of skirted by it.  But, back then, everyone knew that Beattyville was, well, Beattyville.  And in that time and in that place, that was enough.

I don’t wish to be misunderstood.  It was never a bright, shining Camelot of a place except, maybe to the kids. And kids, then as now, exist in a kind of magical time and space continuum that disappears at some point and only lives in fragmented memories ever after.

Beattyville was a between kind of place, between poverty and wealth, between the railroad and the river, and the unpaved streets were gravel and cinder, connected by narrow alleyways that were also gravel and cinder. 

In the middle of the village, the homes were four to a block but on the edges, circumstance dictated the size and shape of the lots.

The houses, for the most part, were kept neat and clean, separated by fences and hedges, the lawns mowed and tree trunks whitewashed.

Most everyone had a  garden.  They were called Victory Gardens in that time because the country was at war.  Of course, most people had gardens before the war but  then, of course, they were just gardens, much as today.

But, we had Victory Gardens and tin can and paper drives and women saved the grease and turned it in to the markets for the war effort. Gas and tires were rationed and hard to get.  Those who had cars shared. There wasn’t any bus service so most people walked. 

There were only a few telephones in the village and those were also shared.  There was a great feeling of community in the village and even if you didn’t like someone, when there was a problem, the whole village stepped up to help.

There were two churches in that little village and they stand today though at some point, if they aren’t moved, the mighty Ohio River will simply take them away. 

The Methodist Church, which my family attended, and the Christian Church. In my memory, ‘most everyone in the village went to the Methodist Church, in that long ago day, the Southern Methodist Church.  Those who didn’t attend the Methodist Church must have inevitably attended the Christian Church. 

Now, in my adult awareness, I recognize that is a faulty memory, that people went elsewhere or not at all.  Much like today.  

Things change over time, but basically, intrinsically, people are people and they pretty much stay the same, thank God, no matter what.

But, as the man in the movie said, “When legend becomes fact, print the legend.” 

Faulty memories are all that any of us have, and like the brief, shining moment that was Camelot, I prefer my faulty memories of a once upon a time Beattyville…..Justin Other Smith

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these~It might have been!” Tennyson

It's history and it can't be changed...

After the war, after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, when the beaten Confederate soldiers made their way to their homes, what if Lincoln hadn’t been murdered, what kind of country might we have become?

You see, history isn’t about what might have been; history is simply what was…

I recall, we in the west laughed a lot at the Soviets attempt to re-write history. To wipe clean the slate of the old Russia and start all over again, brand spanking new.  It didn’t work well for them.  We made fun of them in our movies and television shows. Same in China under Mao. 

But Russian history remained what it was and so did Chinese history.  

And we can’t re-write our history either.  There was a war, not really about slavery. No matter what Negro Americans want to believe. They were simply a side issue. The war really was about States Rights and the rights of the individuals living in those states. No more, no less.

The ‘What if’ game is fun to play.  What if the South had won?  What kind of country would we have been?  Doesn’t matter!  Can’t change history.

And Lincoln. What if he hadn’t been murdered? How would it have been different?

We know a great deal about Abraham Lincoln from his speeches, his writings.  We know he was a compassionate man, a man deeply scarred by the horror of the war just finished, a war that he had never imagined lasting so long and costing so much in the way of human life.  

We know, or we think we know that Reconstruction under his leadership would have been different that what actually happened under Andrew Johnson, his successor.

Lincoln was a uniter, a compromiser, a man of Law who always strove for fair and balanced solutions to problems.  A man not given to doling out punishment to transgressors if it could be avoided.

Andrew Johnson was not Abraham Lincoln.  Andrew Johnson wanted to punish the south for their transgression. Reconstruction under Johnson was likened to standing over a beaten man and kicking him until you tired yourself out.  

The new president favored quick restoration of the seceded states to the Union. His plans did not give protection to the former slaves, and he came into conflict with the Republican-dominated Congress, and the House of Representatives impeached him. The first American president to be impeached, he was acquitted in the Senate by one vote.

Johnson used an Obama tactic to implement his own form of Reconstruction – a series of proclamations directing the seceded states to hold conventions and elections to re-form their civil governments. When Southern states returned many of their old leaders, and passed Black Codes to deprive the freedmen of many civil liberties, Congress refused to seat legislators from those states and advanced legislation to overrule the Southern actions. Johnson vetoed their bills, and Congress overrode him, setting a pattern for the remainder of his presidency. (Sound familiar) Johnson opposed the Fourteenth Amendment which gave citizenship to former slaves. As the conflict between the branches of government grew, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act restricting Johnson's ability to fire Cabinet officials. When he persisted in trying to dismiss Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, he was impeached by the House of Representatives, and narrowly avoided conviction in the Senate and removal from office. 

 Although Johnson's ranking has fluctuated over time, he is generally considered among the worst American presidents for his opposition to federally guaranteed rights for Negro Americans. Seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Doesn’t really matter, does it?  It’s history. It’s done and can’t be changed!

Olde Fashioned ’n Out of Date…

A few months ago, I voiced an opinion ’n wuz told that I wuz ‘old ’n irrelevant’…I supposed that I wuz ’n laughed about it….t’other day I voiced an opinion to some other people ’n wuz told that I wuz ‘old fashioned ’n out of date’…

Now, I tend to believe in that old adage that if you run into multiple jerks in the course of a day, you should probably look in the mirror…so, I been kind’a looking in the mirror, so to speak, about what I do believe in…y’know, those intangible things that we were told ‘way back when, were the building blocks of life…the truth, justice ’n the American way that we got from the Superman comics, the death before dishonor thing that came with the King Arthur stories, the Ten Commandments that we heard about durn near every Sunday, the Boy Scout creed, the George Washington ‘cannot tell a lie’ story that children believed as implicitly as we believed in Santa Claus….

So, I guess I really am old ’n irrelevant ’n old fashioned ’n, also, out of date bec’uz I don’t think very many children today get those ideals dunned into them day after day…

So be it, I guess…times change, it’s a far different world today than when I wuz young…I recall brother John explaining to his grandson that he’d had to use his imagination when he wuz a boy becuz there wuz no teevee, no computer games, that back then, life wuz different….

On the intangible side of life, I do believe in truth, justice, ’n the American way…I believe in honor ’n standing up for what is right just becuz it’s the right thing to do…I believe in the concepts of good ’n evil ’n, on some level, I guess I believe in Heaven ’n Hell…I believe in the sanctity of life ’n am bewildered by the casual acceptance of murder among young people…so it should come as no surprise to anyone that not only do I believe abortion is wrong, I believe it’s infanticide….I also think euthanasia is wrong…it makes no difference to me if the State passes laws making those things legal, I consider them wrong….’n those beliefs, according to a younger friend of mine, makes me hopelessly old-fashioned ’n totally out of date with t’days enlightened thinking…

“It ain’t necessarily so…..” George ’n Ira Gershwin

I wuz told recently that in all our long hist’ry, Obama is the very first Black President ’n the only reason he hasn’t got more done is bec’uz the Republicans have blocked him from the git-go…

I replied that I didn’t think that wuz true, but then, I kind’a backed off c’uz life is difficult enuff without turning all our young people into cynics...

Cynicism is a horrible thing ’n maybe people ought not be exposed to politics at too young an age…I think if you teach 2 plus 2 in Kindergarten, you c’d prob’ly teach calculus in the First or Second Grade but I don’t see as how that’d help a kid get through puberty at all…’n it darn sure won’t help with pimples that come with the aforesaid puberty...

In my opinion,  politicians are just natural born…um, windbags, ’n if you give ‘em a choice between tellin’ the gospel truth or a bald-faced lie, why they’ll just naturally gravitate toward the lie ever’ time…I b’leeve that’s the true nature of the beast...

I ain’t saying it’s a fact c’uz I wudn’t there but the snake in the Garden of Eden wuz most likely a politician ’n the trick with the apple worked back then ’n seems to still work t’day…

It’s what you might call, a basic truth, ’n our founding fathers knew that… ’n that’s why they carved out a special niche for THE PRESS…’cause politicians for the most part know when they’re caught in a lie ’n called out, they might lose their spot at the public trough…’n that has been the purpose for the fourth estate, otherwise known as the public press, referred to as a collective ’n encompassing photographers, journalists, teevee broadcasters, ’n radio announcers, among others. 

In a free society which the USA has generally been,  most people agree that the press, or media as it is popularly known t’day, has immense political and social power, since the powers that be think that it can be used to re-shape society while ostensibly imparting news of note ’n commentary of interest…’n yes, I’m talking about Uncle Jethro in his shirtsleeves ’n suspenders, sitting in front of that teevee camera telling everybody what he (or his boss) think you shoud hear ’n not telling you what they think you don’t need to know…(Orwell, like Nostradamus, knew)

Anyway, because it is historically recognized as an important body, most nations, those in the West anyway, have laws to protect the rights of the press, ensuring that citizens have access to reporting on matters of interest and of note. At least, that’s the way it’s s’pozed to work, legendary keepers of the faith, the watchmen at the gate, the media is charged with keeping a close eye on politicians to  make ‘em walk the line so far at the truth is concerned.

.Problem is….uh, the keepers of the faith seem to have been corrupted…’n that makes it really hard to figure out what is what in this technicalized new world of ours…

“Still, a man hears what he wants to hear ’n disregards the rest….” Paul Simon

The choice of life on one hand and death on the other is sometimes hard to make.....

The Henny Penny ‘Sky is falling’ crowd won’t quit until the USA becomes a 3rd world country…

Before the cheap energy of coal and oil, America was pretty much one great big farm…well, a big farm with most of the acreage unused because it was too arid or too wet, too rocky or too mountainous….you get the picture, don’t you?  

Americans had more freedom to move about than did the people in most of the rest of the world but our life spans didn’t differ much. If you survived childbirth and adolescence, your teeth became pretty much history in your 30's or 40's, restricting your diet after which you quickly got old and died.

Boys and girls came of age in their very early teens, married and had children of their own, well except for those that died stillborn.  If they made it through their first year, it was still a battle for most of them to make it all the way to adolescence.

And those girls that were able to complete the cycle died either in childbirth or from the physical debilitation that came from just too many pregnancies.  It is not at all uncommon when visiting old burial sites to find that many men had multiple wives.  Children, after all, were a source of labor. Of course, I’m still talking about pre-cheap energy days when men were old in their forties ’n fifties, revered for their age.

But, this ‘new’ land had resources beyond it’s vast forests. It had coal. An abundance of coal to fire the factories, to heat the homes. Why, that very abundance of coal helped to save some of the forest that once blanketed the USA from the great Mississippi River to the rocky coast of Maine. 

And then, there was oil. First, from Pennsylvania where they’re still pumping out cheap energy. Later, from Oklahoma and Texas and…wow of wows, California. Other oil and coal deposits, of course, all around this bastion of freedom for the world.

Coal, oil and natural gas fueled the great immigration of peoples from around the world, holding the promise of freedom and prosperity for all, regardless of color or creed.

Oh, and the cheap energy doubled the life span, not only of Americans, but those of other countries as well because as most capitalists are aware, prosperity breeds prosperity.

And, little Susie ’n Samuel, that’s how your great-great grandparents made this country, indeed this world, a safer, better place where you could march for Greenpeace and clean energy!

I use’ta read the Bible a lot when I was a kid….more the old testament than the new…the old testament was exciting, even bloodthirsty 

what with wars ’n blood feuds ’n all that kind’a stuff…well Heck, y’know, I grew up with WWII (the big one) ’n was weaned on Robin Hood ’n westerns ’n war movies…we made our own bows ’n arrows, wooden knives and swords, ’n I recall one summer where we all had homemade rubberband guns ’n stalked the alleys of Beattyville hunting each other…

Anyhow, I’m just saying the old testament was a lot more interesting than the new testament...

Thing is, I consider m’self t’be a Christian ’n Jesus came along in the new testament…Back in the old testament days, God was something of a vengeful God…His way or the highway, y’know…eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth kind’a guy….trouble is, that eye for an eye thing, if you keep it up, you’ll end up with a world full of blind and toothless human beings…

Anyway, I figure that God knew that before any of us ’n decided that He was gonna do a reformation thing ’n that’s why He sent His only begotten son to tell us that He’d had a change of heart about being the vengeful God of old ’n from that time on, He was going t’be a forgiving God…Parents are like that, y’know, they start out being stern taskmasters but eventually they just shake their heads ’n give up…it makes life a whole lot easier to forgive your children ‘cause you can’t stop the little darlings from doing pretty much what they want to do anyway…..

So, I heard from an old friend t’other day ’n he was a little upset about this whole ‘Gay marriage’ thing ’n how the Book condemned homosexuality…I told him that God had made all creatures, great ’n small ’n that included homosexuals ’n if God made them, He did it on purpose so it couldn’t be a bad thing…I told him that the Lord moves in mysterious ways ’n while it might not be his thing, God also told us, “Judge not lest ye be judged” so it might be in his best interest if he’d just leave it up to God to work it out.

He changed the subject ’n then got another call ’n had to go….