Guest Post by Fred Reed
I am preparing to fly to Fredericksburg, Virginia, for the—God almighty—fifty-year high-school reunion of King George High School. Perhaps we all do it eventually, unless of course we don’t. It is a curious thing, I have learned at previous reunions, to meet after half a century people you last saw when they were seventeen. They seem so little changed.
Mostly wooded, on the Potomac River, Dahlgren Naval Proving Ground the biggest employer, with a fair number of kids who got up at four-thirty in the morning to help their fathers with commercial crabbing on the river.
There was nothing special about the class of 1964, or about King George High, except for those of us who were in it. Our yearbook looked like ten thousand others across America, portraits with acne removed in the photo lab, the basket ball team exactly like everybody else’s, the cheerleaders conventionally glorious, conventional adolescent good-byes in ball-point pen—but without misspelling or bad grammar.
We, largely rural kids of the small-town South, represented without knowing it a culture, an approach to existence, and a devastating principle: You can’t impose decency, honesty, good behavior, or responsibility. They are in the culture, or they are not. If they are, you don’t need laws, police, and supervision. If they are not, laws won’t much help. And this is why the US is over, at least as the country we knew.
The names in the yearbook are just names: Sonny, Rosie, Butch, Kenny, Joyce, Cecil, Ricky, Kit. Just names. But. But, but, but. With any of these people you could leave your keys in the car—we did—or the front door unlocked—we did. We had one cop in the country, Jay Powell, a state trooper, and he had little to do. The high school did not have metal detectors or police patrolling the halls. We had none of the behavior that now makes these things necessary. It wasn’t in the culture. We could have raped, killed, robbed, fathered countless illegitimate children like barnyard animals. We didn’t.
It wasn’t in the culture.
We were not obsessively law-abiding. It may be that a certain amount of beer, even a substantial amount, was consumed in contravention of the law. I may know somewhat of this, though I can’t swear to it.
Well, OK, I can swear to it. The statute of limitations has run. I remember my first encounter—don’t we all?—with the demonic grape. One summer night in my fifteenth year I and a carful of country youth went to the Blue Note, a black club somewhere on Highway 301, where clients would for a price buy grog for a nursing infant. The night was warm and humid, full of hormones and inexplicit promise, though not much judgement.
You probably remember that teen-age at-large-in-the-world feeling: lithe and loose, never having heard of “tired,” razor sharp on a long jump-shot, male, unsupervised, almost grown up, or at least close enough to make it worry. There is nothing better. It never comes again.
I had never drunk before, but wasn’t going to admit it, and so simulated the worldliness of a French rake. The others bought beer but I didn’t like the taste. I somehow got a bottle of a ghastly purple substance, later determined to be sloe gin. The others were showing off by chugging beers. So I too chugged…oh God. Oh God. Even now it hurts, a half century later. Perish forfend, a hangover so bad that I began to retch if I blinked. I was sure I was going to die. I hoped so.
And yet there was an innocence to it. It was a rite of passage, not a door to iniquity, and while we did ensozzle ourselves, we didn’t get into fights or do anything murderous, vicious, or shameful. It wasn’t in the culture.
So with our kinship with guns. The boys had them. They were mostly shotguns for deer hunting, .410s, over-and-unders, twelve gauges, and maybe a .22 Hornet for shooting varmints. If you have a field of soybeans, you don’t want whistle pigs eating them.
We were free in those days. I could walk out the main gate of Dahlgren with my Marlin .22 lever-action over my shoulder, and nobody blinked. The country store sold long-rifles (for the frightened epicenes of today, that’s ammunition) with no questions asked. There was no reason to ask questions. We didn’t shoot each other. Only savages unfit for civilization would do such a thing.
And we weren’t. It wasn’t in the culture. You don’t have to police people to keep them from doing what they aren’t going to do anyway.
There were memorable times. One frigid winter night me and this other fool—it was Rusty Reed, no relation as that would have represented too great a concentration of recessive genes—set out to shoot rats at the Colonial Beach dump. We were in my ’53 Chevy, with the lines of a satiated tick in two-tone dirt-brown. It ran on half its cylinders and remembered compression as an old man remembers the ardors of youth. But it was mine. To be on Route 301, empty of traffic, windshield gone in frost, unsupervised—it was heaven. No one knew or cared where we were. There was no reason to care.
Rusty had a twelve-gauge double-barrel with a few rounds and a .22 semi-auto rifle. I had my Marlin and a couple of boxes of long-rifles. It was colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra. No moon. We had that glorious sense, silly but not, of young males setting out into whatever came their way, unsupervised, free.
The dump was isolated, in man-high frozen brown scrub, a dirt road more hole than road leading to it. I turned off the headlights and began bucking along the road, frozen puddles crackling under the tires. A ’53 Chevy driven by a country teen-ager can go places that would have sent Rommel into a sanitarium.
Rusty wanted to catch the rats off-guard, so he got out with the twelve and sat on the right fender. We reached the dump. Rats squealed and cans clinked on the piled refuse. I turned on the lights.
Blam! Blam! Rusty let fly and fell off the fender with the recoil onto his head. It was absurd. It was wonderful.
And it was wild, I guess. It was assuredly unsupervised. It wasn’t irresponsible. That wasn’t in the culture.
Machodoc Creek in the county. Virginia has a robust conception of creeks. Could have been my canoe, except mine was a Grumman aluminum.
We spent half our lives on the water, with no one watching us. We had heard rumors of life jackets, but couldn’t see their purpose.There was no damn-fool federal law saying we had to have a license certifying that we knew how to operate a canoe. Nobody ever drowned. We just weren’t real drownable. It would have taken three SEAL teams and a D9 Caterpillar to do it, and even with them the then odds would have been about even.
Sex had occurred to us, but didn’t occupy our thoughts except when we were awake. The girls were shapely, neither fat nor emaciated, without such signs of mental disturbance as anorexia and bulimia, which had not been invented. We were not sexually supervised. A large, emptyish county with lots of woods offered many places where a couple could park discreetly at night, and we did. Oh yes. In nearby Fredericksburg there was that old American standby, the drive-in theater, colloquially known as the Finger Bowl. We engaged in much experimentation, some sex, many happy memories, and few pregnancies. No rapes and, among the boys, no disrepect (as distinct from lust) for the girls. It wasn’t in the culture.
Again, an innocence. The boys watched their language around the girls, and vice versa. We weren’t gentlemanly, having no exposure to that sort of thing, didn’t wear spats, but neither were we toilet-mouthed. We just didn’t do that
Stray thought: One night I was somewhere with Fred Burrell. Being already a promising wise-acre, I scratched myself indelicately and said, “Damn. My Burrells ache.” To which he replied, “My Reed itches.” Smart-ass.
King George High School was I suppose typically American for the time. The teachers were not brilliant, but neither were they stupid. Brilliance was not needed. It was then thought that schools existed to impart knowledge. This could be done at the high-school level by following a syllabus and requiring that the students learn the material. It worked, to no one’s surprise, since it always had worked. Since the studentry were entirely white—my class, 1964 was the last such class—no reason existed for lowering academic standards.
Discipline was not rigid. It did not need to be. The country kids were more unpolished than rough. There was the class clown—I have no recollection of who that might have been—but clowning stopped well short of real misbehavior. Fights were very few. When one occurred, no one picked up a piece of rebar or kicked the guy who was down. These boys weren’t wussies. Viet Nam took a large bite. But there were things we just didn’t do.
No one would have thought of disobeying a teacher, much less shoving or threatening one. The result I think would have been instant and permanent expulsion, but it never happened—not because of fear, but because it wasn’t in the culture.
The word “motherfucker” was not the chief component of speech, even among groups of boys, and its use in school would have been thought inappropriate to people with opposable thumbs.
We didn’t know it, but we were what made America what it was, and isn’t.
The Sixties followed hard on our dispersal in 1964, and Viet Nam, in which KG suffered dead and wounded. Butch Jones, center, my buddy in school and later a SeaBee in Nam, showed up at the the Naval Support Activity hospital in Danang to visit me after I had proved my virtuosity more as a target than a Marine. I think we both thought, “What the hell are we doing here?” It was a good question. Right, Don March, immensely talented artist, guitarist, and big-bike rider.
Come graduation, we blew every which way, like dandelion puffs, and became all manner of things. “Rural” doesn’t mean stupid: There were physicists, engineers, and such like rabble. We were not shiftless, semi-literate, dependent, infantile, narcissistic, vulgar, spoiled, or whining.
It wasn’t in the culture.
“We had one cop in the country, Jay Powell, a state trooper, and he had little to do.”
——– from the article
ONE cop … in the whole fuckin COUNTRY ….. and he was BORED.
Things were a lot better then I realized back then.
They used shotguns for deer hunting? Musta snuck up real close.
Give ol’ Fred an A+++ for some fine nostalgic writing.
I graduated high school in 1970 … and it was still very much like that for the most part …. and in a suburb just 30 miles from NYC.
Country, county….I noticed that too Stuck.
TJF
Good for you! At least Fred didn’t misspell it thusly …
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Thusly …
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Good post from Fred.
The culture hadn’t really changed either by the time I was growing up in the late 70’s. By high school, we were buying old 60’s muscle cars and hot-rodding them. When they died, we dumped them and got different ones. You could pick one up for a couple hundred bucks because everyone wanted those Japanese pieces of crap because of gas prices. The 60’s muscle car was ignored and thus, the sole province of us youngsters.
I remember my Daddy telling me about him wandering down to the local dump with his buddies, each carrying a .22, to shoot rats. He told me about a police detective who gave him a revolver he took off some skell or other. I think he wasn’t yet a teen when that happened.
He told me stories about him and a friend of his who would take a canoe out on the Ohio and wait until a steamboat would come by (yes, even when I was young, on certain summer mornings I could hear the steam organ of the Delta Queen as it passed by) – and he and his friend would paddle like mad to catch the wake of the boat as it went by. They would ride the wake for miles and it was an easy way to go long distances with little effort.
I didn’t believe him. Thought it was bullshit. But then, years later I was watching PBS for some reason and they had a documentary on about the Ohio river. They were talking about steam boats and there on the screen, for about 10 seconds, was grainy black and white footage – obviously shot off the aft end of a steamboat by someone – of two teenagers in a canoe, grinning their asses off and riding the steamboat’s wake. No life jackets. And I will swear to this day on a stack of bibles that the kid in the rear of the canoe was my Daddy when he was young… I jumped up and ran into the kitchen. “DADDY! YOU’RE ON TV!!” By the time we got back, the image had changed to something else… but it was him.
Beautiful piece, it gives me pangs of nostalgia for a time I never knew nor can ever come again.
The white culture is /was intentionally being destroyed. This is what liberals, progressives , leftist ,the Ted Kennedys and Marxist Jews hate most about America. The white culture was out of or from Christianity .It had order , decency ,respect for older people. It had virtuous people within and that showed to the world.It had Christian morals and morality .This all has to be torn away ,debased and destroyed if the leftist were ever to have a real chance of changing,/destroying the old America. Look at the way these bastards rejoice every time they hear the white population is shrinking . They know without the white population there is no white European Christian culture.
This destruction of white culture has been deliberate and planned. It started with Marxist Jews and Ted Kennedy s 1965 immigration act.Once these traitors got control of the government , Universities and most importantly the mass media it was over for the old America.
White culture came out of the Christian World view. This nation was founded by White Protestants from England and then greater Europe. For those who say otherwise you are liars. Go pound salt.
Four words:
Court Ordered School Busing.
Sounds like the early 80’s in Iowa, town of 3000 people, 1 sq mile of not much in the middle of corn fields .It’s not so bad now tho, at least where I live, thank god he put me here,the wise old gentleman, knows what he’s doing. 90% white and everyone is armed to the hilt, civilization.
1. Stuck, that is obviously photoshopped, I could tell more easily if you had posted a chorizo and tried to claim it was a dicktree. As it was, I had to look for some sap to be sure.
2. bb, stopp weepig about a supposed pure anglo-america. i read somewhere that there were so many Germans in colonial times that the founding bears (four bears) considered printing the declaration of independence in German as well. Somewhere else, I read English is not the official language of the USA. Somewhere else, I read that our failing school system was imported from the Prussian program of domestic control. (it’s quite the conspiracy theory to claim the US educational system is rigged to dull student’s minds but Plato says in allegory of the cave, the mass of people are deluded and only a few are enlightened) The writer mentions in passing that marketing came about at the same time and I will add, so did the push for a bland diet, cereals being the prime effort in order to reduce the inflammatory (inflaming the passions) effects of spices in our food. All this America you weep about came alive in the 19th century, not the time of the colonies. Another great time you lay on your couch weeping about is the late forties and mid fifties when Davy Crockett ruled the airwaves. It isn’t real, real America would never recognize the cuntry you yearn for. So please, bb, if you are going to refer to an America we lost, or you lost, since I just crossed the border last week, please specify in years or if you want to do it in bible fashion: before Kanye or after Elvis.
I don’t know about you fuckers but I grew up in a time when gas prices were not in the news everyday, unless it was a gasoline price war, .32$ per gallon. My brothers and I roamed our small town. Our parents beat our asses with a belt or a stick. We played with black kids. White folks lived in their own areas and you could make good money doing odd jobs for them. Our culture was whatever white people were watching on tv or listening to on the radio. I’ll go with the conventional view that Vietnam destroyed that America, on with America 44.0
Nobody gives a shit about what you bean bags did.
Go take a fucking class… English as a second language would be a good start.
What is a fesskin? is that like fess parker in a coon skin?
Just because you don’t understand my language doesn’t mean I need to take a class. Really, interacting with you is like trying to converse with a two year old.
Hey Billy, there’s a new racist in town, he’s got brains too, he got his cherry popped on TBP with 100+ votes. Now tell me all about how people give a shit what you have to say. I’m all ears.
Hey bean head ,you to will regret the lost of white Christian culture and it’s influence. All I got to do is look at Mexico to know what’s coming your way .Other then that ,kiss my white protestant ass.
The most dangerous phrase in our language is, “There outta be a law.” When you make lots of things illegal, you sure can lock up lots of criminals.
During my 4 years at 2,300 student private residential college from 1981-4, there were literally thousands of crimes (including felonies) committed every single day. I don’t recall anyone expelled or locked for more than a few hours when the local police somehow came upon them.
The second big thing is the mommy look women give each other. It’s the “don’t you care enough about your children to . . . ” look. That’s got to be THE most oppressive thing. And parents go into serious debt solely trying to impress those moms they have the most lovely names for.
Sharia or bust….and the hits keep comin’..
U.N. to dump flood of Muslim refugees on U.S.
‘Several thousand in the pipeline, and that number will go up
hen on Sept. 4, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman hinted at her daily press briefing that a new wave of refugees will soon be coming from another predominantly Muslim nation – Syria.
“The United Nations high commissioner for refugees just this year started referring Syrian refugees to the United States for processing,” said Marie Harf. “Obviously, we have several thousand in the pipeline, and that number will continue to go up.”
Obama’s State Department is expected to present Congress with a list within the next two weeks that shows the total number of foreign refugees it wants to accept into the country over the next year and the countries from which they will come. The new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
The “old America” to which Fred refers is the ~20% of the North American population that is paying all the taxes for this current farce.
Once my cohorts realize the compact under which they work and work and work has been overturned, and that the parasites and cockroaches are entirely in charge and laughing at the fools who are still working, the ATLAS SHRUGGED moment will arrive and the upper middle class draft animals pulling the wagon will all sit down.
@flash,
Hope for the markets to roll over.
Only once this bubble bursts will the old paradigm be washed away.
What follows this folly may be worse or better, but I’m sick to exhaustion of being lectured by the Obamanaties (and all related leftists) over how they’re making me better by cramming their ideology down my throat.
Billy says:
“DADDY! YOU’RE ON TV!!” By the time we got back, the image had changed to something else… but it was him
hon, I hate to call you out in front of all yer friends, but that was the time we scored that batch of really bad dope. That weren’t yer daddy in the canoe catching the wake of a steamboat on tv.
Doppleganger HELL.
At some point one has to think that enough is enough already.
Facts are stubborn things. Integration of schools was the beginning of the end for the USA.
I drank sloe gin once. ONCE!!! Haven’t had any in more than 50 years.
Our driveway repair complete, we spit shined this old house and listed it for sale. Today, three people are coming and I just realized I may be on my way to a little country place where a log home newly built sits waiting for me to pretend it is 1964 again and forget all about the insanity of this society. Practicing on the target range and raising big territorial dogs sounds pretty good about now.
Oh, and my husband sat in line for a half hour or so yesterday and got issued his new, improved secure area badge with the new, improved numbers.
Three people bidding for my house. A gal can dream.
The main difference between then, the 70s/80s when I was out feeling my way, and now, is that all those things are now 100% prosecuted, criminal, ruin your life forever, crimes.
In order to protect the children, those of us that grew up like this decided we needed to ruin a few of the little bastards lives in order to save the few – very freaking few – others that killed themselves.
In my opinion it isn’t because the culture changed, it is because the government did.
EVERYTHING has become a prosecutable offense. In 1981 the cops would pour out your beer, scatter your bag, and scare your asses home. Flash forward three years and you are going to jail, your immediate future in the hands of Johnny Law and his thousands of state-union employees. And it has only gotten more insane, more restrictive, more destructive, since then. Thanks Ronnie and every bastard that has come after.
Man, I feel safer.
Farking insanity is what it is.
As Fourth Turnings wipe out the old, I sure as hell hope these nanny-state rules that create criminals from relatively harmless behavior are blown away.
Somehow, with all the “outta be a law,” “save the children,” and busybody/dogooders I see myself surrounded by, I freaking doubt it.
That America will never be regained. As the Boomers die off and the Xers become old and therefore irrelevant, it will be a dim recollection in family lore and conservative history texts.
There has been an agenda, and it has succeeded, probably beyond the wildest dreams of its agents.
The former dominant culture, despite its flaws, created a great nation which often used its power to promote good in itself and the world.
The god of diversity has succeeded in splintering the tribe, and this effort tirelessly continues. The simmering tensions between ethnic groups that we live with now will soon be complicated by the addition of enough Muslims to turn the heat up considerably. Give it 10 years, and our current way of life will be looked upon within great nostalgia as the good old days.
Gayle, that past America never once promoted “good” around the world. The notion that it did is simply part of the self-serving PR used to keep the taxes, conscripts and consent flowing.
D.C.
I’m pretty cynical, but not as cynical as you.
A couple of quick examples, one from private industry and one from a government initiative:
For some nefarious reason, Mr. Carnegie wanted to build libraries, one of which abundantly fed my childhood love of reading. And a beautiful library it was.
Did John Kennedy start the Peace Corps to consolidate American power in third world nations? Maybe so. But to say no good has ever come from that effort is a stretch.
It’s true we have been propagandized.for generations about many things emanating from the nation’s power centers. Things my be rotten to the core, but the dominant Judeo Christian ethic kept the evil somewhat in check. Now that it has been thrown off, the social, economic, and political deterioration is breathtaking to behold.
@ Gayle,
I’ll give you those (even though they were paid for by sticking a gun up my nose.) Carnagie, along with Ford and others, set up foundations that are now the undead and unkillable bastions of hard core leftists, so I think that at least balances Carnagie’s library initiative (which turned into just another taxing body, by the way.)
“Things my be rotten to the core, but the dominant Judeo Christian ethic kept the evil somewhat in check. Now that it has been thrown off, the social, economic, and political deterioration is breathtaking to behold. ”
All that has happened is that the Common Folk decided to adopt the “No Limits, No Morals” ethical standard of the people they elected to rule them these many decades.
Power has always corrupted. It cannot be otherwise. NO ONE is born an angel, and every angel would become a demon if given the power this stupid system bequeaths to “government officials.”
Power. It’s all about power.
Mags,
Dump the house and beat feet for the hills…
Best thing we ever did. Just the lack of stress will add years to your life…
TE says:The main difference between then, the 70s/80s when I was out feeling my way, and now, is that all those things are now 100% prosecuted, criminal, ruin your life forever, crimes.
TE Prostitution has never been legal no matter how many times you got away with it back in the day.
bb, sorry about the rant, you know i care, you my little buddy, besides, no one else reads my posts. orale, carnal. we gonna have some coronas, soon as Llpoh gets back to his native land.
Stucky says: Doppleganger HELL.
At some point one has to think that enough is enough already.
Sthephie Sheepdog fessed up yestidy, It ain’t me. I do have dibs on Llpoh’s Wife, the moniker, not the lady.
Plus, I like getting doppled, and frankly I think it adds a lot of ‘fun’ value to the site.
@TE – “The main difference between then, the 70s/80s when I was out feeling my way, and now, is that all those things are now 100% prosecuted, criminal, ruin your life forever, crimes.”
I constantly worry my 20-year old son, as well behaved as he is (non drinker/no drugs) will somehow
end up on the bad end of something…even if innocent, the odds are bad and getting worse. Judges are probably getting kickbacks for prison sentences. It’s a racket:
“Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million – mostly Black and Hispanic – are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don’t have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.
“There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.” The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of the world’s people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.
“What has happened over the last 10 years? Why are there so many prisoners?
“The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners’ work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself,” says a study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being “an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps.”
The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. “This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors.”
House is sold. Second viewer willing to pay asking price and closing costs. Pending inspection. Just so happens an old friend is an inspector. Would he like his name and number? Why sure.
When it is time to go… it is time to go.
Llpoh says:
Plus, I like getting doppled, and frankly I think it adds a lot of ‘fun’ value to the site.
Next thing you know, Billy will confess that he likes getting doppled. I think the person who doppled Maggie last time is responsible. Carry on.
El Comandante ,No hard feelings . You’re still my favorite Mexican American. In fact you are the only one of Spanish Mexican background I know anything about.Out of 40 million you’re the only one.
Maggie , that was fast ,I know several people who have been showing their houses for close to a year with no luck.Just be careful with the IRS , they can be a real pain.
bb, no Spanish here, just a lot of indian blood, i have a small forehead, wide nose, small teeth, close set eyes, I’m raza, man. i don’t wear my hir in pony tail tho, that’s for faggots
El Comandante ,this whole time I thought you were Spanish or Mexican. When you say Indian do you mean like Lipoh?
@bb… well, we are still waiting to hear from the IRS about that $13 of unreported income two years ago, so the real estate tax people can just get in line.
The other viewers called and offered us an additional $5k, but they brought a realtor to a For Sale by Owner party, so it isn’t REALLY an additional $5k.
The buyers got a dozen eggs (since my son left for college, they are kinda stacking up everywhere) and is keeping four of the hens and the little A frame coop my son designed and built. So, you can see the attraction of our home… a lovely hillside acre and all the eggs you can eat for at least 5 years.
The funniest Dopple movie EVER!