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….

Ahhhhh,,,the good ole daze.....

Once’t upon a time in America...

People like to talk about the ‘good ole days’….a young friend of mine opined that it must’ve been great back in the ‘fifties with all those great muscle cars ’n the cheap gas…he guessed nobody cared about mileage back then….I almost kind’a hated to burst his bubble but I bit the bullet ’n told him…”Yeah, ’n you c’ud buy those big block Fords for only two or three thousand dollars…once you saved enough money from your 35 cent an hour job to make a down payment…’n when people made $.35 cents an hour, gasoline sold for 

$.35 cents a gallon. Boy, we had a good time then.”

Humans like to fantasize about living ‘back in historical times’ without thinking that all of us actually live in historical times…or at least it’ll be historical times when our great grandchildren read about them in school…(if they even still have school then)...

Jobs were hard to come by when I wuz in high school, ’n they didn’t pay $.35 cents an hour for teenagers…Jobs wudn’t all that easy for adults but kids didn’t have a lot of choices…there wudn’t very many ‘real’ jobs ’n there wuz a lot of competition for the ones that were out there…a kid needed an edge if he or she could get one…sometimes, just knowing the right person wuz enuff of an edge…sometimes not…it wudn’t all that easy to get a job delivering the daily paper, or bagging groceries…

One summer job that wuz pretty much open to all the boys that grew up around South Shore, Ky, wuz cutting flowers on Hardin Farms…today, they call that kind of a job, ‘stoop labor’…’back then, it paid about $.20 cents an hour…they were 10 to 12 hours a day, hot ’n dusty…hard work…but you c’d buy soft drinks from the farmer, price deducted from your wages…it wuz a hard way to go ’n the lesson wuz that you didn’t want to do this kind of work any longer than wuz absolutely necessary…but there wudn’t any wage disparity…every kid started at the same pay level…at the bottom.  What they call t’day, minimum wage.  At least, we didn’t have to serve an internship!

Internships, I’m told, are racially biased in favor of rich, white kids.  They’re the only ones who c’n afford to work for nothing….sounds reasonable t'me but what the hell do I know....

The talk is about minority kids and wage disparity 'n how it's all rooted in racism...I don't know about you but I’m really tired of all this racial BS 'n so far as wage disparity is concerned….black kids don’t get paid less than latino kids and neither of them get paid less than white kids for doing the same job…and even tho’ some statistics show asian kids as super-achievers compared to everyone else, the asian kids don’t get paid more either…minimum wage jobs pay minimum wages…(Hint: that’s why they’re called minimum wage)…everybody that works at a minimum wage job gets paid (gasp) minimum wage.

That ain’t to say there isn’t cultural differences that affect the rate at which some kids get hired ’n others don’t.  Business’ that hire young people to represent them, ie; counter people, etcetera ain’t inclined to hire young men who are showing ‘way too much undergarment or young men sporting gang tattoo’s whether or not they belong to a gang.  I see a lot of highschoolers emulating thug dress, flashing made-up gang signs, girls with red, blue ’n green hair ’n heavy makeup…skirts ’n shorts that are too short, too tight, exposing too much skin, too much bling, too many bangles, baubles ’n beads and piercings in public places…

Just doing their own thing, wearing the uniform of the day much as their parents ’n grandparents did back in the dinosaur days…

Funny how the rules that applied for job-hunters in the golden olden days of yore still apply today.  Present a neat appearance, use your best manners.  Speak respectfully ’n look at people when you’re being interviewed.  Neatness counts.  Showing respect for your elders counts.  A willingness to begin at the bottom of the heap also counts.  People who expect to start at the top almost never get the chance to go anywhere.

Sort’a like a long trip on a dead horse...  

Sometimes a body just has to rant.....

“You  cain’t ride a dead horse!” Anon…

For all of you people (y’all, where I come from) who looked upon your history classes as ‘just so much boring shit’ please let me remind you that, never in all the recorded history, well all of our recorded history, whatever that may be worth…if that ain’t enuff, why you, as they use’ta say in those oh so innocent days of the mid-20th century, c’n just go ’n piss up a short rope…anyway, we ain’t been able to find, not one instance, never, never, never an instance of a socialist government that hasn’t failed…they don’t work…put that in your friggin’ pipe ’n smoke it instead of your damn weed…or, since it’s now the 21st century, vape it for all I care…

Now, in your pipedream fantasies, in your socialist-governed society, you (’n I’m talkin’ here about...well, you know who you are) are fond of talking about ‘basic human rights’….like food, clothing, housing, medical care, including dental, education, free wi-fi, food stamps (oh, I guess that’d be covered under the food category) ’n maybe free drivers licenses for people who sneak into our country illegally (illegal immigrants) ’n abortions for them as want or need suchlike, all of which don’t appear anywhere in our Constitution…even Ruth Bader Ginsburg who evidently believes in faith-based science will admit that, altho’ she has stated that our Constitution should be re-written but then, I think she probably believes in evolution which ain’t in our Constitution either…kind’a funny how liberal progressives or progressive liberals all profess to believe implicitly in evolution but don’t want to hear anything at all about that other Darwinian theory called ‘Survival of the fittest’….

Meanwhile, back in what us brash Americans use'ta call The Old World, there's a little country called  Germany,(it wuz in all the newspapers once upon a time) It's an almost-not quite-socialist/capitalistic country that has been moving more ’n more to the capitalist side which tends to anger some of the brave gimme-gimme bottom-feeders who are now demonstrating in the streets, a la the sucky Wall st occupiers, burning cars ’n breaking windows on the chance that their welfare checks might be cut…’n of course, that same class (less) group has been crying for some time now because their elected leaders, afraid of going bankrupt 'n losing their own jobs, are refusing to pick up the public tab any longer…Heckfire, (paraphrasing my old man)…even the golden isles of

Greece, the fabled birthplace of democracy ’n now a bankrupt nation,  is threatening to sue Germany over WWII wherein the 3rd Reich trampled all over their basic human rights…anyway, I doubt any of the welfare crybabies remember WWII…sort’a like the poor-me blacks in this country that want reparations for the servitude of their forefathers back before the Emancipation Proclamation…of course, they fail to take into account that because so much of ‘white’ America died during that uncivil War between the States that our gov’t opened the floodgates of immigration…so much so that the majority of Americans today are descended from peoples not here in those bad old days of slavery ’n Indian wars 'n never had the chance to own a slave or kill an Indian…

And speaking of our aboriginal Americans who keep insisting they are ’Sovreign powers’…Yeah, Binky, as long as the US Gov’t allows them t’be ‘Sovreign’…kind’a takes the bottom out of their argument, but what the heck...

Like the rain that falls on the just ’n unjust alike, our Constitution protects the wise ’n the foolish alike without regard for race, color or creed….or something like that.

“Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.”  G. Satayana