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….

That most un-civil war.....

Let me be very clear~our uncivil War between the States was not fought over Slavery! I don’t care what school you attended, or what kind of teacher you had…if you were taught that it was over slavery, you were taught a lie!

Although slavery, also known as property rights, was an issue, the act of secession was not about slavery!  It really was about States Rights!  And not the right to own slaves as some glib proponents of the slavery theory will attest.

Rather, it was the economy…or what political hacks are often wont to say, “It’s the economy, Stupid!”  

The southern economy was an agrarian one while the more populous northern states were basically manufacturing. The north had a ‘buy American’ agenda, therefore they wanted high tariffs on foreign goods making them more expensive than American products.  The south wanted low as possible tariffs so that foreign markets would buy more of King Cotton.   Problem was, the north had a larger and growing populace that, over time, would give them an advantage in Congress which southern leaders likened to taxation without representation, the stone upon which the rebellion of 1776 was founded.

So while it’s true that slavery was a major issue of the time, a political football, if you will, it was not the deciding factor that precipitated secession. Still, the system of government was working, citizens voting in individual States to classify their State as either ‘free’ or ‘slave’.  It was a fractious time and feelings ran high on both sides.

Factions came to blows in the Assemblies of many States.  Armed insurrectionists like John Brown fomenting revolution, abolitionists urging Slaves to flee their shackles for the safety of ‘Free States’, the famed underground railroad that funneled runaways to the north.  The fact is, the practice of slavery was ending. It had fallen into disrepute. England had abandoned the practice. Ministers of almost every church railed against it from their pulpits.  Not only was it unpopular, but it had become increasingly expensive to own slaves.  The large plantation owners, a relatively small group, were the primary business still using slave labor and finding it less profitable every year. There was a percentage of small farmers that owned slaves, usually less than a dozen, and that practice of maintaining mostly household labor was simply too expensive to continue. It was becoming economically more feasible throughout the south to hire immigrant labor that did not have to be fed and housed. Indeed, most of the public works throughout the southern states at that time employed Irish immigrants.

Still, as history books point out, slavery was in deed and fact an issue written into the Constitution of the Confederacy.  But, while it was just one issue, slavery was and is a very big deal for ‘black’ Americans.  And rightfully so.  They tend, therefore, to view the War in a very personal manner.  More so than most Americans.  Truth is, most Americans of today are descended from immigrants that came here after that war and simply don’t have a dog in the fight.

Of the three quarters of a million men who were killed in that conflict, almost half of them fought for the Confederacy.  And the majority of them by far, 95% or more, were not slave owners.  Nor were they fighting for the sheer joy of putting their lives and property on the line for a handful of slave owning rich men.  No, they fought and died for the same reason that their forebears had fought and died in our Revolutionary War. 

The flags they carried are of little importance except for the historical significance to their decedents and while critics are right to point out that they do not belong above the Capitol buildings that are supposed to represent every citizen, there is a place for them as there should be for all our historical icons, good, bad, or otherwise.

I’ve long been a proponent of teaching history, especially American history, warts and all.  America really has been a beacon of hope for the entire world and, as an American, its a position that I’d like to see continue. Teaching our students the flaws that accompanied our growth as a nation should not be a bad thing, rather a warning for future generations that history ignored is often history repeated.   

"Mine eyes have seen the glory..."

"Old times are not forgotten...."

This whole argument thing over the battle flag of the Confederacy is something else, don’cha think?  I mean, the darn war was ended in 1865 and the south lost ’n as ever’body knows, the winner gets to make the rules…

Of course, it’d probably help if all the schools in this fair country of ours ‘ud teach history the way it actually happened, warts ’n all…but, we had us a President back a few years ago, one of them progressive liberals, by the name of Woodrow Wilson ’n he decided that he didn’t like the way our history wuz taught so he, with the power of the Presidency (sound familiar) did something about it…he had it re-written…not a lot, y’understand…just a little bit…just enuff to clean up our hist’ry books by taking out some of the more heinous things that happened…ah well, for the common good, y’know….

I didn’t find out about all this while I wuz in school…like durn near ever’one else, I tho’t history wuz pretty darn boring, all about names ’n dates ’n places ‘such…I didn’t know that a whole lot of warts had been removed courtesy of progressive liberalism…

Anyway, this flap over the Confederate flag is sumthin’ of a tempest in a teapot,  most of us regular Americans being far too busy trying to keep up with the payments ’n such…

I hear people on television talking about ‘institutional racism’ ’n stuff…it ain’t true, of course, being against the law and the Department of Justice eager to prosecute anyone they can that might be guilty of it….

People talk about racism ’n bigotry ’n tolerance ’n intolerance ’til a body just wants to plug up his ears ’n run away somewhere where it’s summertime ’n the fish are jumping...

Tolerance is a funny thing, being sometimes good ’n sometimes bad ’n figgering out the difference c’n give a body pause…

Now, I’ll testify that it’s a whole lot better t’be loved than t’be just tolerated…but, sometimes, ‘specially in a marriage, being tolerated is asking a lot of your partner, ’n other times, just being tolerated is enough, ‘specially if you happen t’be in the wrong, ’n as I approach that magical age of…well, old, I realize that I spent a lot of my life just being wrong about so many darn things….

Intolerance, on the other hand, is just plain bad…well, that’s how it’s portrayed today…today, when our United States are at loggerheads with each other, or at least seem t’be...

Now, when a progressive liberal behaves intolerantly, they’re apt to rename it ’n call it zero tolerance becuz intolerance is just plain bad…so when a six year old brings a toy cap pistol to school for show ’n tell, the teacher calls the cops who come and arrest the six year old, putting him in handcuffs and transporting him in a patrol car to jail where he’s photographed sitting on a wooden bench while various ’n sundry cops in battle gear pretend to interrogate him on suspicion of terrorism...

The actual fact of the matter is that while sometimes tolerance is good ’n intolerance is bad, other times ever’thing just gets all turned around….what in my somewhat wayward youth, we often referred to as ‘bass-ackward’….

As a young person, it’s really difficult to know the difference…sometimes, it’s difficult to know the difference when you’re old but usually by the time you get old, you just don’t give a big rats behind (or patootie) if I use the language of a favored niece….you notice how I cleaned it up for those folk who don’t hold with what they consider to be prurient language…just another form of discrimination that kids have to learn how to deal with…(back in the day when I wuz a reasonably tolerant father, before I became a curmudgeon, I told my children that when they felt they were grown up enough to swear, they should come to me ’n I’d teach them all the swear words that I knew ’n what they meant ’n how best to use ‘em~none of them ever did that having learned how to swear in the time-honored manner of ever’body else)...

Discrimination is the same kind’a thing…sometimes, it’s good t’be discriminating; other times, t’ain’t!

Now, you take bias…you c’n have a bias for something or ag’in it; it all depends on which side of the creek you happen to find yourself...

Now, for some reason, I almost always find m’self on the ‘wrong’ side of the durn creek….Ain’t at all sure how that happens but I feel like I been stuck there since I was a boy running the streets of Beattyville…

Step back in time.....

A little explanation...

...A year or so ago, most of my accumulated writings (novels, poems, musings, etc) were lost in the ether of the internet, thanks to my own stupidity of not having hard copies...recently, whils't rummaging through an old box full of papers 'n stuff, I stumbled across some early stuff...this soliloquy was written when I was thirty-two years old so if it seems young 'n stupid, well, quoting Mr. Red Skelton, "I dood it!"

Sunday Morning Soliloquy

  (45 years ago) 

Sunday morning at a crowded breakfast table with newspapers, the funnies and stories of the beautiful people and places, the living room all junky after sitting up ’til 1:30  in the morning watching the stupid television(?)...

Sunday morning with the radio tuned to an FM station and the kids s till in their nightgowns, me in pajamas that I began wearing when I was thirty, my wife dressed but uncombed.  Ashtrays full, empty pop bottles, I quit drinking almost two months ago, tripped over the goddam vacuum cleaner on my way to shave and shower.

Reverse image, mirror, mirror, on the wall, you look like a hippy, an almost thirty-two year old hippy, that ain’t so bad, you don’t look that old, why shave?  What age do you have to be before you look in the mirror and say goddam you’re getting old.  Don’t feel old though, feel just like it was yesterday coming home for the air force, twenty-one years old and hungover, ten goddam years ago and all you wanted to do was drink and fuck and be cool, drive around all day in an old car with a bottle of beer and look at the world.  That’s about all the hippies want.  Must have been before your time, you and your buddies, always too late or too early, don’t shave, man, fuck it, in a beard, you’d look like Jesus and that’s why hippies and beatniks, etcetera, don’t bathe too often, if you get clean, you feel like shaving off your scruffy beard…..need to get out of this bathroom, house too.  Run away before too late, run you sonofabtich you, where to run, to go, because happiness is narcotic stopping time photograph, suspended in happiness is sort of death, I suppose and who in hell wants to die just to be happy, life is more than happy, happy will come and go, all experience and come again, a little different but almost recognizable, you idiot, on a Sunday morning before you shower and shave and converse with a goddam mirror the meaning of life…..

Age is a funny thing; if you don't mind, it prob'ly don't matter.....Mark Twain, I think....

Tolerance is a funny thing, being sometimes good ’n sometimes bad ’n figgering out the difference c’n give a body pause…

Now, I’ll testify that it’s a whole lot better t’be loved than t’be just tolerated…but, sometimes, ‘specially in a marriage, being tolerated is asking a lot of your partner, ’n other times, just being tolerated is enough, ‘specially if you happen t’be in the wrong, ’n as I approach that magical age of…well, old, I realize that I spent a lot of my life just being wrong about so many darn things….

Intolerance, on the other hand, is just plain bad…well, that’s how it’s portrayed today…today, when our United States are at loggerheads with each other, or at least seem t’be...

Now, when a progressive liberal behaves intolerantly, they’re apt to rename it ’n call it zero tolerance becuz intolerance is just plain bad…so when a six year old brings a toy cap pistol to school for show ’n tell, the teacher calls the cops who come and arrest the six year old, putting him in handcuffs and transporting him in a patrol car to jail where he’s photographed sitting on a wooden bench while various ’n sundry cops in battle gear pretend to interrogate him on suspicion of terrorism...

The actual fact of the matter is that while sometimes tolerance is good ’n intolerance is bad, other times ever’thing just gets all turned around….what in my somewhat wayward youth, we often referred to as ‘bass-ackward’….

As a young person, it’s really difficult to know the difference…sometimes, it’s difficult to know the difference when you’re old but usually by the time you get old, you just don’t give a big rats behind (or patootie, if I use the language of a favored niece….you notice how I cleaned it up for those folk who don’t hold with what they consider to be prurient language…just another form of discrimination that kids have to learn how to deal with…(back in the day when I wuz a reasonably tolerant father, before I became a curmudgeon, I told my children that when they felt they were grown up enough to swear, they should come to me ’n I’d teach them all the swear words that I knew ’n what they meant ’n how best to use ‘em~none of them ever did that having learned how to swear in the time-honored manner of ever’body else)...

Discrimination is the same kind’a thing…sometimes, it’s good t’be discriminating; other times, t’ain’t!

Now, you take bias…you c’n have a bias toward something or you c’n have a bias against; it all depends on which side of the creek you happen to find yourself...

Now, it seems that I almost always for some reason find m’self on the ‘wrong’ side of the durn creek….Ain’t at all sure how that happens but I feel like I been stuck there since I was a boy running the streets of Beattyville…

Can't seem to get off that dead horse thing.....

"Ride a painted pony, let the spinning wheel spin..."

Recently, one of our children (I ain’t gonna say which one but he knows who he is) queried us about our future plans regarding green bananas ’n suchlike…well, t’be truthful, his question wuz more about the suchlike than it wuz  green bananas…he wudn’t p’tick’ly worried about Millyrose since she’s something of a gadabout who lunches frequently with a host of friends ’n therefore has what he considers t’be something of a support system…Nah!  He’s a good boy (at least in the minds of old people) who evidently has too much time on his hands ’n worried about his dear OLD Papa who spends ‘way too much time with that corrupting influence, FOX NEWS and, as a result, become a ranting curmudgeon who spends his days either in front of the teevee overdosing on Bill O’Reilly ’n Sean Hannity or on his seemingly only friend, his computer, where he searches endlessly for someone with which to argue politics ’n, or, the meaning of life…

I’m not sure if his worry is about what’s gonna happen to Dear Old Dad in his dotage, or what’s gonna happen to himself if Dear Old Dad turns into a blubbering, balding infant of advanced years, dependent on someone else to change his depends for him…

It’s a serious worry for adult children in this country who are facing life caring for dependent parents who need t’be strapped into bed at night ’n into their wheelchairs in the morning, pushed into various ’n sundry corners where they c’n drool their final days away…

I don’t mean to make light of what is becoming a serious problem for the younger generation…they say people are living longer these days ’n Altzheimers is a real worry for the children of the afflicted…not so much of a worry for those afflicted becuz they tend to forget they have a problem (or children, for that matter)…

Still, I heard t’other day that Doctors are confident that they will solve the problem in a few years…not yet sure if they’re gonna find a cure for Altzheimers or go along with Ezekiel Emanuel ’n start killing people off when they reach the biblical age of three score ’n ten…or maybe he said three score ’n fifteen…it’s too late for me since I’ve already passed Old Zeke’s deadline a few years ago…

I’d prob’ly worry about that but I’m already afflicted with Oldtimers ’n the attention deficit thing that caused my teachers to label me as a Daydreamer when I wuz a child has kicked into gear again ’n I don’t worry too much about much of anything anymore…

’Course, I don’t buy a lot of green bananas either….