Tuesday, July 12, 2005
almost dawn musings
Sometimes it feels like 100 years ago, other times, live and in person mostly right now. 41 years ago my father and I were on our way to the site of the air field he and 2 friends were developing near Theodore, Alabama for another day of good stuff. It's a lot of work to get an airfield graded and the hangers were all to be built out of concrete. Gee! Alabama Gulf coast! Hurricanes jus' LOVE that little bit of the Gulf Coast and Lord have mercy how many times we had to fly those kites out of the path of God's Bad Breath.
Just a perfectly wonderful Saturday morning, humming down the long, curvy road in the old (even then) International pickup listening to the radio. Roy Orbison was singing his new "Pretty Woman" and dad was a big case of smiles! I'm 14, he's 35. Damn. Nobody is that young. Nobody is that happy.
About a mile or so before the airstrip site was the abode of one of my father's friends. Dad had made arrangements for me to spend a bunch of time with him. I'd known the old man for a few years and dad wanted me to live with him and his family for a few days. He went home that evening and I stayed with the old gent, his wife of forever, had dinner with a passle of sons, daughters, grandkids, and great-grandkids. The old man farmed some mighty fine dirt with a walking plow behind a mule. He'd been doing it since before my father was born. After all these years, I can't tell you what all the kids did other than they didn't notice I was white. Frankly I didn't know I was white either. The previous 14 years had all us kids doing mostly what kids in the deep 'souf always have done. Lots of fishing, mostly from folk's piers and boathouses. Sometimes we'd borrow a skiff. I liked Mr. Snook's on the Bay, Jeff preferred Mr. White's on Fish River. Us "older" kids would teach the young'uns how to bait hooks, don't recall ever being able to teach the gals how to dress the catch, girl yuccy is timeless! The only odd part was we were obviously "confused".
That is what Reverend Martin Luther King taught us. Damn! You're white.
End of finest lovingkindness. Lots of confusion for a while. Apparently we were supposed to take sides, at least in the part of rural Alabama I was raised in. 1964. Death-knell. Federally mandated. Blacks are now 'officially' too damn stupid to compete. Ramp up de weafah. I couldn't believe a decent culture could decend so fast.
The semi-official tally of all the federal "lovingkindness" from 1964 to 2003 is $8.4 trillion. Since the present level is substantially over a trillion a year, that's probably seriously low.
Do you think we've gotten our money's worth?
If you want to fuss around with various gummit stats, a good starting point is Uncle Sam's Reference Shelf - Mini Historical Statistics
I've a rather large folder of specific sites but that one is decently linked and a good start point.
I've also a box-full of rather delightful stories involving meself, a bag of kids, and very little adult supervision! We were taught to swim really early, learned sex by watching critters, teen boys wound up with round indentations in their wallets due to the condom one had to buy at the Red Stop Truck Stop in Theodore (you really didn't think you were gonna get to use that thing, didja? ! ;o). BTW, they cost a quarter. I STILL have my wallet from back then. Yup. It's ringed. Just for kicks and giggles, those that depend on condoms for contraception have a 18% chance per year it won't work. Glenn's daddy and mom did. Last count was six kids. They kinda liked each other a lot. They also liked kids a lot!
I'd love to go back and visit my now old friends. Something over 15 years ago a black judge (who defined the true definition of "nigger"), truly hated anything in the form of a white male, set up a one-way valve. I saw the Mobile County jail when I was 12. No desire to occupy a cell. That sorry son of a bitch walked through a list of ten cases before me. Poor #3, that was beyond a travesty. That poor old guy really got the staff. He lived in Mobile County.
By #7, I wanted drugs. Been well over 10 years since I'd had a local. Yup, #11 needed serious neural blocks. Nigger Kennedy pronounced death to everything I had done from the age of 16. Judge Cain Kennedy was (had been, continued to be), the ultimate racist.
I've lived so far a bit over 55 years. Lots and lots of rather wonderful folk have been part of my life. The names of the super cool, well come visit after I heal and the ticks are gone. There are two folk very precious in my memory that are difficult to share and those are the Shoemaker kids. Damn! I was only 23 and newly married. Those folk would embarrass us! A year later, I met them again most of 12,000 miles away.
Astronomy is a passion. Shared, it is wonderful. It's not anything at all when all the lights go out.
Kinda like a kiss.
Just a perfectly wonderful Saturday morning, humming down the long, curvy road in the old (even then) International pickup listening to the radio. Roy Orbison was singing his new "Pretty Woman" and dad was a big case of smiles! I'm 14, he's 35. Damn. Nobody is that young. Nobody is that happy.
About a mile or so before the airstrip site was the abode of one of my father's friends. Dad had made arrangements for me to spend a bunch of time with him. I'd known the old man for a few years and dad wanted me to live with him and his family for a few days. He went home that evening and I stayed with the old gent, his wife of forever, had dinner with a passle of sons, daughters, grandkids, and great-grandkids. The old man farmed some mighty fine dirt with a walking plow behind a mule. He'd been doing it since before my father was born. After all these years, I can't tell you what all the kids did other than they didn't notice I was white. Frankly I didn't know I was white either. The previous 14 years had all us kids doing mostly what kids in the deep 'souf always have done. Lots of fishing, mostly from folk's piers and boathouses. Sometimes we'd borrow a skiff. I liked Mr. Snook's on the Bay, Jeff preferred Mr. White's on Fish River. Us "older" kids would teach the young'uns how to bait hooks, don't recall ever being able to teach the gals how to dress the catch, girl yuccy is timeless! The only odd part was we were obviously "confused".
That is what Reverend Martin Luther King taught us. Damn! You're white.
End of finest lovingkindness. Lots of confusion for a while. Apparently we were supposed to take sides, at least in the part of rural Alabama I was raised in. 1964. Death-knell. Federally mandated. Blacks are now 'officially' too damn stupid to compete. Ramp up de weafah. I couldn't believe a decent culture could decend so fast.
The semi-official tally of all the federal "lovingkindness" from 1964 to 2003 is $8.4 trillion. Since the present level is substantially over a trillion a year, that's probably seriously low.
Do you think we've gotten our money's worth?
If you want to fuss around with various gummit stats, a good starting point is Uncle Sam's Reference Shelf - Mini Historical Statistics
I've a rather large folder of specific sites but that one is decently linked and a good start point.
I've also a box-full of rather delightful stories involving meself, a bag of kids, and very little adult supervision! We were taught to swim really early, learned sex by watching critters, teen boys wound up with round indentations in their wallets due to the condom one had to buy at the Red Stop Truck Stop in Theodore (you really didn't think you were gonna get to use that thing, didja? ! ;o). BTW, they cost a quarter. I STILL have my wallet from back then. Yup. It's ringed. Just for kicks and giggles, those that depend on condoms for contraception have a 18% chance per year it won't work. Glenn's daddy and mom did. Last count was six kids. They kinda liked each other a lot. They also liked kids a lot!
I'd love to go back and visit my now old friends. Something over 15 years ago a black judge (who defined the true definition of "nigger"), truly hated anything in the form of a white male, set up a one-way valve. I saw the Mobile County jail when I was 12. No desire to occupy a cell. That sorry son of a bitch walked through a list of ten cases before me. Poor #3, that was beyond a travesty. That poor old guy really got the staff. He lived in Mobile County.
By #7, I wanted drugs. Been well over 10 years since I'd had a local. Yup, #11 needed serious neural blocks. Nigger Kennedy pronounced death to everything I had done from the age of 16. Judge Cain Kennedy was (had been, continued to be), the ultimate racist.
I've lived so far a bit over 55 years. Lots and lots of rather wonderful folk have been part of my life. The names of the super cool, well come visit after I heal and the ticks are gone. There are two folk very precious in my memory that are difficult to share and those are the Shoemaker kids. Damn! I was only 23 and newly married. Those folk would embarrass us! A year later, I met them again most of 12,000 miles away.
Astronomy is a passion. Shared, it is wonderful. It's not anything at all when all the lights go out.
Kinda like a kiss.
