American Culture, Defined and Canined: My thoughts
Okay, EC, you have over the years I’ve read your comments, accused more than one of us of plagiarizing ideas from your comments and turning them into actual ARTICLES that were picked up by one or another blogs with another “byline.” When pressed by one or another TBP personage to stop inserting yourself into discussions where you have no business and write your own damned article, you proclaim your low education level prevents your penning more than a thought or two. So, in the last couple of days, while throwing together my own attempt to make some sense of it all, I’ve seen a couple of lengthy “thoughts” from you that approach actual BLOG post article length. So, as we approach the next stage of this Fourth Turning*, I have taken a few choice thoughts of yours and intentionally revised them into what I think explains why those of us at TBP put up with an annoying Mexican like you, legal or not..
If you can’t recognize your own ideas, I can provide you with the original comments pasted into a Word Doc with the track changes on to show you how I revised it, added a few personal bits of information and tone and made your thoughts my own. Old School.
*I personally think we are awash in 4T because there is almost no explanation for the series of events we just witnessed here that will change the world no matter what the election outcome.
How would any of us define and or describe American culture? (This is where the revision began) My husband believes the 1950s were the culmination of Americanism, with tales of family picnics at the Brown’s games or amusement parks where parents would sit on picnic tables in the “family recreation area” which was free if you weren’t going into the amusement area. So the old fogies who might have held kids back from the insanely dangerous rides could sit with the cooler until the kids got hungry and found the parkside entrance and got a sandwich. All day, his and his cousins’ folks were probably smoking and having a cold one while the kids rode the rides and tried to win as many prizes as their paper route earnings allowed them to win playing against the odds of the rigged carnival games. To him, those were the glory days of America.
But, I think his “ideal” of the 50s actually comes from the television era of the 60s, when televisions were selling across this country at the rate of 100,000 EVERY SINGLE DAY. In the 50s, the masses had just begun to discover the joys of watching game shows and sitcoms and variety shows! and eating those advertised tv dinners you could heat in the oven without EVER leaving the television except during a commercial break. The first hint that the media might not be what was expected erupted on a Quiz Show over a question about a movie Charles Van Doren knew by heart. For some odd reason, the 50s US Congress expected some integrity from the talking heads they paid to re-elect them and so they exposed the corruption in the show Twenty-One much to the chagrin of the mass audience, which needed a new “opiate of the masses.”
Situation Comedies became the babysitter of my age. What the media did with the sitcoms of the era created a charming image of the 50s during the early booming years of 60s television. So, the perky gals on Petticoat Junction (et al), those rascally boys on Wally and the Beave and the rare single parent images of Doris Day or Andy Griffith struggling to raise their orphaned children on the 50s television set created in Hollywood settled into my segment of the boomer generation’s mind as “ideal.” Evidence of this is that a steady dose of Saturday morning cartoons sends any grown man (my husband) back into crude, rude seven-year-old mode sitting cross legged in his boxers on a blanket in front of the television eating a bowl of cereal while Bugs Bunny convinces Daffy Duck once again that it is Duck Season.
Those 60s-created-images of a 50s era that was never the real thing to anyone seem very real to those of “us” who actually lived through the 60s in flyover country. Our lives in the small farm towns that fed the engine of industry lots of bread and raw meat for processing in big new regulated meat industries “somewhere in one of those big cities we’d heard about but never seen and never knew anyone who’d been to either Los Angeles OR New York”. Think about that. Our lives really were more like those we saw in Mayberry each week that many of you realize and there were more than a few of us in this part of the country that knew someone in our family that might have talked, acted and dressed like Jethro Bodeen from the Beverly Hillbillies. Who didn’t love to laugh at the antics of the big loveable Gomer Pyle outwitting the scheming maniacal Sergeant Carter at the longest Marine Boot Camp enrollment ever.
But, at the end of the day, everyone in our lives acted within the social norms we grew up learning as our part of the social contract. None of us ever signed it, but we understood that the things we got from the system would be expected to be returned in fair to good condition. We learned those rules and that language from television and from community. We boomers grew up in the heyday of television, when the new shows were discussed at school during recess on the playground with those who got more than two channels (when I was a kid, we got CBS out of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, home of the Limbaugh Law Firm and breadbasket farmboy central). We got NBC out of Paducah, home of the National Quilt Museum(s) and industrial center of anything quilt related and convention center for fabric and sewing industry business trips. We watched how America worked and was supposed to be in the television shows and commercials that played over and over in our mind. We were taught a common language that we have recently begun to hear and reuse. ABC came out of Illinois, which doesn’t seem to be home to much worth mentioning. (There is a riddle there for those willing to comment.) But, once in a while we could see the distant foreign world of Carbondale, Illinois on the commercials there and wonder what it would be like to see that place. For some reason, Trump’s campaign reminds me of those days of community bonding.
So, those booming television sales years throughout the 1960s (and the media industry that was growing by leaps and bounds as every idea for a television show got funding) bound a generation of boomers together in a language community we haven’t spoken aloud for a while. But something in the topsy-turvy-ups and downs of this election season has shaken up the memories and what emerged was a lot of data from a researched to death Journalism History paper I wrote at OU. I may or may not actually still OWN that History textbook. I’m still finding things in boxes in the barn I haven’t wanted for two years. I’m of the mind to burn anything I haven’t wanted in two years.
Anyway, I’m kind of thinking the 50s were not as popular as many seem to believe. The post-war germination of the seed that grew into the military-industrial complex by the time Eisenhower left the Presidency with a 5 o’clock-shadow-plagued Vice President from California sprouted into a full-scale industry brainwashing of the citizenry. In an article arguing that the 1960s are really the era which are idealized in boomers’ minds, I’m willing to suggest that it was the successful marketing of television that had such impact instead. A consumer market created by the industrial war market fueled by loans to post-war GIs educated on GI bills funded by a simple wartime tax that never ended. The massive immigration that had flooded the country at the turn of the 20th century had created a young citizenry that could be equipped and trained pretty quickly to win a world war and that set of citizens were intent on living in large urban centers close to family unless getting a good job required a move distant. As the telephone and television replaced the family dinner and radio program in the category of quality family time, there were a growing variety of inputs into the socialization of this country’s youth that could not be controlled or screened by the laizze faire parents which produced a large percentage of the boomers.
It seems to me there is another massive immigration of young people that could be equipped and trained to win a war. Perhaps one on the very ground they had been granted admission into. Since they don’t share the social norms of the American 50s, 60s and beyond, why wouldn’t they follow the directions of the political elite that granted their admission against the will of the American Flyover people. After all, that is why the refugees were settled into communities in the flyover “red” zones… to fundamentally change the landscape of this country forever. And it was done with the language of television.
My husband’s brother and he hopped on a cross-town bus to see the Browns… or the Indians… or the Cavs play in Cleveland. Could you imagine anyone allowing their 8 and 10-year-old boys to ride on a public bus without adult supervision now? But people obeyed the social norms in the 60s. They spoke the same language. Since then, the ethnic remnants of family cultures got replaced by processed and frozen foods, commercial jingles from the television, holidays invented for the sake of marketing cards and, by extension, gifts, and the ever increasing profit generating pastimes. Can you name me one organization, company, charity, foundation, healthcare facility, et al, which does not have to follow the rules of economic laws and operate as a commercial enterprise to survive in this cultural mess we live in?
What we discovered once we left the safety of suburban life attached to the government tit of military contract expertise in Oklahoma, is that the language (of our childhood) we haven’t spoken for a long time is dormant in our minds. As I rebuild the remainder of my life the way I want it envisioned and not how I’ve been told to live by a talking head box hanging on a wall telling me what to waste my money on, I am seeing people around me who are incapable of doing what we have done. They are addicted to their zombies or their bones or their talent show competitions, both vocal and dance. Since I am in charge of my own thoughts out here in the zero technocrazed world, I have decided I don’t have time to learn that language. It doesn’t interest me and the social norms the heinous, crude behavior of sitcom trollops and bums have taught the millenials are atrocious. But here on this little piece of solitude, as long as we can keep it out of federal coffers, every thing we own is ours to care for as we please.
I think Donald Trump winning gives me the best shot at rebuilding my life within my community the way I want. That is the American Dream we were all taught… that if we worked hard and saved our nickels, we could own something that was our very own while the Good Lord lets us stay here. If we obeyed the laws and didn’t kill anybody, we could perform our part of the social contract, pay a few taxes so the government fulfilled its part of the social contract and go fishing or swimming down at the river on Friday. Well, at some point, the government decided they needed to decide if the fish were fit to eat or if the water was safe to swim in and a few people forgot that is not the government’s role in the social contract. I think Donald Trump can remind both people in D.C. and people around the country what the social contract really should be in this country. If people don’t get on board with that and elect the corrupt thing that is Hillary Clinton and entourage, a lot of people are not going to survive the fourth turning that is upon us.
These past few weeks, I have been troubled by a feeling that I have some very important decisions to make. Yesterday, those decisions chrystalized and plans were set in place to finalize the steps necessary to ensure we remain able to fend for ourselves should the unthinkable occur. But, after two full years here, I can finally say that everything that was set in motion when I went to a Tea Party rally at the Oklahoma state capitol to find out what all the fuss was about is in place. When I saw the thousands of people gathered there who thought like I did and were fed up with the garbage we were being fed out of Washington D.C., I realized there really is power in the way our system works, when it is allowed to work. Out here, with the hills of Missouri shielding me from the awful thing that our country is becoming, I can go out and feed the bunnies, gather the eggs and pet the dogs. I can hope and pray that the end of the day brings hope that the days ahead will make sense again, with the horrors of political correctness and terror of property seizures for redistribution at least fading into the shadows if they can’t be destroyed forever. It is the boogieman of the new national religion (hat tip ec) with its Grand Wizard, the Federal Reserve.
With people gushing about breaking race and gender barriers instead of insisting on real answers for real questions about who is going to produce something worth 19 trillion dollars to pay back that debt, it is no wonder people choose presidents with the same level of care and thought as they choose the next Voice winner. And, quite often, they choose wrong.
By later today we will have a good idea how the scandal of this Quiz Show will play out. As for me and my house? We have to go feed the Chubby Bunnies.
Great article Maggie!
I had hoped to get in here from the Bunny run in time to revise this, but did not. E.C., I hope you like how I weaved a few of your thoughts together and told a story about my bunnies.
Ah, the 50’s and 60’s.
(kokoda 100% Deplorable)
I really did notice while putting together a Community page full of yearbooks from the 40s through present day (at my old homehicktown) that there was something quite civilized about the 50s and 60s.
This is Dutch. For some reason this post appears as Anomymous.
The reason the 50’s and 60’s worked is because we had less – and it was manageable.
I was born in 1949. It certainly was the 1st Turning. After WWII, Europe and Japan were essentially destroyed. The US was unharmed, and we had a windfall in manufacturing. The US made 60% of all the goods in the world. Combined with maturing industrial automation – it was fat city for US workers.
Why I think the 50’s, 60’s, and partially 70’s were so pleasant is that the people’s values and norms were from back in a simpler time: the 1930’s.
There was independence: independent amusement parks, independent department stores, independent grocers. Most cities had 3 TV channels: ABC / NBC / CBS – that was it. Newspapers had morning and evening editions, and they had their own reporters who wrote the stories.
I remember going to concerts – where there were 500 people – not 40,000. I heard Stan Getz at a jazz club in Philly.
I’d say 1965 was the defining moment when ‘Malls’ started to pop-up. This signaled the corporatism that was creeping in. Downtown stores closed. Respected department stores opened multiple branches in many Malls – to later go bankrupt.
From there the corporatism expanded into every part of our culture – obliterating any remnant of independent business. This is where we are today.
Now we have too much, too complicated, too many moving pieces, too much information. Ever notice ‘technology’ doesn’t make things simpler nor less expensive.
Dutch,
100%
I hope you have a great day.
Exactly… thanks for the comment.
No shit…EC and Mags been stinkin’ up Mayberry for years.
The two of ’em are like old dog turds on the carpet that Billah uses for coasters for his beer.
You can squish ’em or scrub ’em or try to get the old turds outta the shag carpet, but they ain’t coming out without a butcher knife. EC and Magz are like petrified dog turds, Admenstruator.
I asked Billah iffen he could give up that highdollar Natty Lite and go back to BEER so I could send a little something yer way.
I hope EC and Magz send you a few dollars as.well. And everyone else at TBP who realizes what is really going on.
Petrified dog turds… Billah calls ’em doggie decor.
How’re you, Claudette? Grooch said he saw Billah down to the Barber Shop…
I have been on the road! A travelin’ woman I am!
wow Maggie, very nice.
I carefully read the posts but speed read the comments…
and the comment was too much for me. But, your post
is really good reading. Very nice.
“I’m of the mind to burn anything I haven’t wanted in two years.”
Don’t do that, save for later or donate to the thrift shop please.
Four years full time in my farmhouse in the woods. Mr. retires v soon,
but I was essentially alone here, so the chicken coop remains empty.
Ed, 2″ away has eggs, as does the feed store. I haven’t had a factory egg
in 4 years!! No bunnies either, but I fantasize about getting a mule to ride.
More fencing. I admire you for a variety of reasons. I am glad I had a second
chance to read your post.
Suzanna
(I don’t know where that anon came from)
Suzanna? You still peruse?
Most of the way through the seventies, as well. I grew up in a small Southern town, where the locals didn’t consider you one unless your great-great-grandfather was buried there and they all knew your parents as they grew up there. Much of this is the same stuff I learned and knew growing up.
There would be variations, from place to place. Our town had a music man, the real thing that taught school children how to sing and play and was choir director at a church as well. We had our good and bad local pols doing good and bad things as we all tried to make local community work. Some days we were better at it than others; some days the answers just wouldn’t come, like when the local plants shut down and there were no jobs to replace them. Friday night high school football games, observed while selling programs as a Boy Scout or playing in the band; concerts from elementary, junior high and high school bands and choirs. All were woven together with deals, steals and appeals that built a society, a small town, a community.
Now we are bombarded with sectarian and racial demands for preference; small egos scream for attention alone instead of singing together to create a culture.
I liked the old days much better.
We have been here in Narnia for almost 5 years. The mailman told me today that someone asked her about those “new” people living in the log home down near the junction. Patton Junction, not petticoat.
Five years. New people
8 years and are blended into community…eventually, some else moves in and they become the “new” folks.
Next thing you know you fit in. How scary is that?
The Oscar Winning film, Quiz Show, was based on Richard Goodwin’s book: “Remembering America: A Voice From the Sixties.” Both the book and the film were based upon actual events.
The book’s author, Richard Goodwin, was a young congressional lawyer who investigated the TV game Show “Twenty One” for being rigged during the 1950s. In doing so, he brought about the humiliating fall of Charles Van Doren, a Twenty One contestant who was a young professor at Columbia University and was the son of Mark Van Doren, the famous American poet, writer, critic and scholar.
Here are some great quotes from the film:
Mark Van Doren: “If you look around the table and you can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.”
Mark Van Doren: “Cheating on a quiz show? That’s sort of like plagiarizing a comic strip.”
Charles Van Doren: “I’ve stood on the shoulders of life and I’ve never gotten down into the dirt to build, to erect a foundation of my own. I’ve flown too high on borrowed wings. Everything came too easy.”
In the end, the attorney, Goodwin, nails the producers of the show while the corporatocracy behind it proved too big to fail. After all, TV is just entertainment, right?
This is why I consider technology as like fire. It can keep you warm, but it can also burn you. Yes, TV can provide both entertainment and news, but it can also affect outcomes because it influences people at the same time. This is why TV “entertainment” has never been the same since “Quiz Show” and TV “politics” has never been the same since the Nixon / Kennedy debates.
In the modern era of television, you could say: Perception Trumps Truth. Thankfully, at least for now, we have the internet and The Powers That Be don’t control it totally, yet.
Good essay, Maggie.
The biggest show that was rigged was the $64,000 question.
That was it! Didn’t they make a movie about that?
What a pleasant exchange of discussion.. I wonder what was different here in 2016?
I am having an on the road- day. Sorry I cannot comment much.
Thanks bb
Anon above was I
This was I, on the road on my phone, which lost its mind.
There are too many Anons around here. Just home from a very busy and productive day.
My computer forgot who I was… Oh, and we got the damned thumbs back.
I hated the thumbs from the beginning.
We sold our kids for cheap foreign crap and will pay the real price, soon.
We sure did, but I think the ones really paying the price will be our kids, otc.
Ain’t that the truth.
Many midsize towns here had factories and little stores and businesses where young people could learn workplace skills. Now? If there is a grocery store in town a Dollar General is coming soon to put them out of business, if possible.
I worked about 20 hour a week at a grocery store in high school. Now? A kid.camnot get hired due to adult competition for.crappy starter jobs.
The business owners and entrepreneurs here at TBP are right about automaion and modernized.manufactueing replacing unskilled labor as a natural byproduct of technological growth. It is unavoidable. But the Social Contract between business owners and their workers is tenuous at besr. If the feudal lords do not train up the children of their serfs and care for their upbringing, children grow up to be hungry, angry men and women.
They begin to mob together and get into trouble. They belabor rather than labor.
So, most societies recognize the value of not only training up minds but the need to train up bodies and hearts as well. When they forget or choose to NOT to tram them? The social contract is broken. It only takes four generations.
Every time.
Aside…
A visit to a local salon owned and staffed by am Asian-Thai family reminded me of that. Four generations of well mannered, clean and pleasant people made my visit special. Grandmother trimmed my nails. Her daughter cleaned and buffed my gatden ravaged hands. Boh griped at me about sun damage. Something about lotion and gloves was discussed.
A very old gandpa swept the floor and smiled at me while the ladies tried to make me presentable.
A tiny little ambassadress around two years old with slanty-eyea smiled at me when I showed her my ragtag flag bag where I carry a coonskin and rocks.
Her daddy came by at lunch from his workplace down the road. A nice glimpse at four generations being as productive and pleasant as they can be.
I hope my family is some day as charming peaceful and productive as that American family in Poplar Bluff.
Not Chinese-American.
American.
P.S. This is Paula”s grandcritter with the ragtag flag bag I carry with me all the time until handoff after Alaska. Then…it goes to rest in peace with old soldiers.
If El Coyote doesn’t see this, this bumpety bump will be my last.
Thank you for the shout out, Maggie. I took a mental trip to Mayberry. You could have embellished your article with your pics, I thought the one where your in the tub was a throwback to simpler times.
I’m sure the boomers here would love to share the contents of their photo albums – remember those things? They shouldn’t worry, nobody will recognize their fat asses in those skinny kid pics.
I hope BW doesn’t submit any pics, we wouldn’t know if they were a county fair entry.
I could get that one… perhaps I will if Coyote shows up to walk and talk.
This one is a September back to school event for all the cousins down at the farm. My father put a zipline from the Walnut tree behind the house that ran a hundred feet or so to the big Hickory tree beside the chicken house. The operation required two kids… one holding the “bucket” in place with the rope on the ground while the rider climbed to the top of the ladder and scooched out onto the limb to step into the bucket. Once settled, the kid on the ground let go and the rider pushed off.
As long as you didn’t get turned around and hit that Hickory tree with your back instead of having your foot out to slow the smackdab into the tree, it was harmless fun.
I am the little short haired pixie third down in front of my sister, the other pixie, just having received our back to school haircuts.
You might note the station wagons and 60s vehicles in the background. My mother had 10 siblings and when my parents had a big picnic at the farm, EVERYONE came.
So, EC. You ready to join me for a walk and a chat?
I was wrong. That is a Pecan tree.
Pecans as big as your thumb.
There is this Mexican saying, there is nothing new under the sun. Everything I’ve said or thought is probably an idea I modified from reading others’ comments here.
I read somewhere that your ‘self’ is simply the sum of the voices you listen to in your head. The bible seems to say the same: as a man thinks, so is he. I’m a little bit TBP, a little bit white but not much, ok not white. Though I identify as this kid from the barrio, I’ve probably lost all credibility by defending white rule or breaking bread with bolillos – so to speak.
I’ve broken faith with the Democrat-voting Hispanics, sided with wall enthusiasts, I’ve befriended overt racists. I may deserve an ass-kicking back in the barrio.
Thanks Meho. As if there aren’t enough anonymous people around this place.
Meho!!! Still cracks me up.
Great read Maggie.
No new thing under the sun is ecclesiastes king Solomon
Vanity vanity all is vanity.
You are so right, mangled. People seem to forget this every time some new flim-flam man shows up and distracts the mob with their song and dance routine.
Humility is the only way to defeat HUBRIS. The only way.
I hope you see this message in a bottle and know I’m ready to form it up and march to the show.
Girl you used to be smart!
What happened?
Mijo! I actually looked it up to make sure this Cuban guy I knew onceuponatime told me correctly. I spelled it wrong before and you didn’t make fun of me!
I got a delimmer by the antlers. My husband has agreed to write a post/article/rant… something along that line… with me to tell anyone who might be in a position to whisper in certain people’s ears to really ensure advice that comes from military leadership might be best vetted through someone with some real-life experience in the military and not just the officers with which you and I are familiar with their basket-weaving degrees from local state university getting them to OTS and/or their Congresscritter in Dad’s pockets for a recommendation to the Academy.
Do you think I should remain Anon and write in such a way as to disguise the people I personally know who may or may not still be in positions that may or may not be relevant? Whom I may or may not have seen them photographed with Trump in what may or may not have been a high-profile photo-op? Since this post only got 24 comments (Good thing I’m not a comment whore like Stucky) perhaps the thing would get little to zero attention. But, what if I were to attract attention from someone I would rather not bump into out here in cyberland? Did I ever tell you a former AF comrade got accepted into a transfer program with some double dog good god secret agency because he spoke about a dozen languages like most folks from South America do? And did I mention the Cuban? Good. I’m not supposed to EVER mention the Cuban.
… here is the delimmer: Writing as Maggie and her Prince Charming might give credence to the story and help the context and clarity of the points I hope to illuminate with our upfront admission of background experience to espouse our understanding of the impact cultural changes the military has undergone in our lifetimes. I.e., why we feel military leadership does not always have the citizenry of this country in mind when they think “duty and country.” Other hand? Perhaps discretion might be the better path to take to ensure some idiot officer flying a desktop computer scanning blogs for keywords and certain phrases doesn’t decide my chubby bunnies should be strafed at dawn.
I will check here in Mayberry for your thoughts later. I don’t want to belabor it nor discuss specifics. In fact, if the discussion gets out of hand, I will delete.
Maggie, YoBo once offered Admin some practical advice on this topic, I’d say run your question by him. As much as I give him and you and Rdawg, grief, I still have respect for all of youse.
I wanted ur Chanute tainted viewpoint.
I sent him an email, so we shall see if he responderates. Still, am wondering if you think my opinion about a few folks, unnamed but kind of obvious due to what we did onceuponatimelongagofaraway and because they ended up aligned with the rich and famous, might alert nasty critters to come after my bunnies.
I came back to reread and realized you may have meant YoYo (I actually SENT a yoyo to Admin in the box with some survival goods the other day… I am SO very funny.)
I actually completed quite a bit under Agnes’s tutelage. Perhaps when I fade out, she will show up here on TBP.
She won’t.
you too. if you show up, I’ll tell you how much you’ve helped me
Seriously, EC and even you bea lever and my other friends who remember how I showed up and started chatting about how I’d met Commander McGonagle when I was on the ROTC “beat” at the Journalism School. Well, I did interview him and even have the tape but it is embarassing. He makes a couple of subtle references like he would answer questions about getting his medal of honor presented in secret, but I was so naive I didn’t know what an opportunity I had. I am the idiot who let the scoop of the century get away because I was quizzing him about the Gulf of Tonkin and he was WAY bigger than that. He was kind, though, and he continued to talk to me about my own father’s experiences in World War II. But, the tape itself was embarassing. I sounded like an idiot to me listening now.
I think you and I and bea and a few other late night readers who had ideas but not the time to pursue them, were trying to help people’s viewpoints stay in the window of reading opportunity aka comment counts to the hundred point markers to attract wider attention, because that was what I was doing.
(We were wallflowers, not trolls, back then. I admit that when I started getting sick, I began to rely on some “friendships” here I did not really have to point me to better essays so maybe we had good intentions bantering across threads, but I figured we were the advertising specialists, sort of… discussing things back forth across threads forcing people who wanted to gossip about me or whatever they found prurient enough to drag them there to snoop on our conversation would perhaps inspire them to read the damn article or try to figure out what WE found interesting on that thread. But you should never have forgotten what a clever hunter I am. When the programmer from Utah came to see me and I’d invited the General to meet the guy who’d designed those database tools to find all those union people there all for days and days putting that rope and warning sign in place, he told me he felt like Elmer Fudd, huntin’ wabbits. that really meant something to me)
Deborah would bleed red all over that parenthetical of mine. Then she would admit she understood exactly what I meant and she kind of resented me for that.
Now, if you think I’m full of shit, fine. I do not care. This is a message to my old af buddy who walked the streets of Chanute while I marched the entire squadron of ladies to class each morning at 7:45 a.m. at Keesler, after falling out for inspection and reveille, because my tech school was almost a year long since it was AWACS radar and theory of operation and involved a lot of training in really technical stuff. Then lots of training in aircrew and survival stuff. Then I became the 5th female Airborne Radar Technician in AWACS and I know all the ones who preceded me, on whose shoulders I stand. and all that jazz.
Those are shared experiences that bind people together. You and I know it, EC. Now shut up and get in this car. You don’t get to drive, but you have a seat if you’ll sit in the back with Alexandro and his wife, Cheri. Maybe you speak Puerto Rican, because we called him the Cuban, but suspected he was really from one of the other islands down there.
I have got to go. I have to make sure my login credentials are still active on this desktop. I’m back in the saddle.
Maggie- Most excellent article. I have relations here for a summer visit and have had a stomach bug, not being anti-social. Why do you refer to me in lower case?
I love America!! There I said it…..prolly get downed.
Lower case because u had changed ur moniker…
So, want to go for a walk down memory lane, EC?
And that, my friends, is what I call tightly packed active voice.
Because, Deborah Chester said so.
“Those 60s-created images of a 50s era that was never the real thing to anyone seem very real to those of “us” who actually lived through the 60s in flyover country. Our lives in the small farm towns that fed the engine of industry lots of bread and raw meat for processing in big new regulated meat industries “somewhere in one of those big cities we’d heard about but never seen and never knew anyone who’d been to either Los Angeles OR New York”. Think about that.”
I would like to suggest what we have here is a failure to communicate. For some reason the Agenda seems to be to Doom Porn until it comes, while some of us who’ve built our homes upon the Rock of Ages and are getting prepared in ways our forefathers taught us to be prepared are not only less equal than the other animals; we are loathed for speaking at all.
We are not supposed to be here. We are supposed to bow, scrape and be thankful we are even allowed to comment.
So, hopefull, EC, you brought a good Bea Attitude tonight because I think the desire to shut me up goes all the way to Nixon.
And those folks went to jail.
After Grooch reviewed the day’s gleanings, he said I know collusion when I see it and why stick around.
And, like that creepy little boy in Pet Semitary said to that old man Judd… “I played with Mommy and she’s no fun anymore and now I want to play with you.”
Talk about being macabre! Stephen King had one sick mind, didn’t he?
Well, listen, old road guard pal of mine here on the lumbering hulk that appears lost at sea now, I’m a Southeast Missouri Bootheel Country Gal and I’ve got a few friends down here who don’t like beans. They all eat CORN and nobody around here is allowed to say nothin’ bad about corn.
If you ever do get near the Elephant Rocks or Wappapello Lake or the Castor River at Marquand where that charming little kid with the shotgun took aim at me the other day at the Boarding House there, well, gimme a call and I’ll either meet you at Durso Hills Winery right there on the river or I will give you directions on how to get here.
I’m not leaving or nothing. I’ve just got some real wriring to do. Have twenty pages due July 1st. Back to deadlines, but Hallelujah, Lord… these are the GOOD KIND.
Blessings, Quetzacoatl. He’s still in Oklahoma, but the brother will be up sometime. Then he rides to find HIS Mayan roots, if I can just figure out how to get him on a pack mule out of Chile.
The other red rope(in Maryland) absolutely loves the idea of a tandem story between you and I. What does she know though? She’s a bead counting lunatic.
Later, EC. See you soon, I hope.
So nice to read one of your articles in the natural state without the doubting Thomases. Has it really been 2 and half years?
I’m afraid, comrade, this being a public post and not disguised at all, we shall be exposed for the frauds we are, attempting to subvert this blog with positive talk of old America.
There’s nothing else to do, but keep writing your Little House on the Gulag tale of olden times. If by in tandem, you mean we write at the same time, ok.
How did I get your email last time? I could email the San Antonio Rose (mygirl) if she has an email she can publish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l7rLA9Jm1I
This was long ago and far away, E C.
Those were the days!
Am working on a post. What does old Pangloss know about Aldous Huxley’s drug addition.
Is it true he died during an LSD trip? Could you review Pangloss’s critiques of Brave New World and Jacob’s Hands?
I would do so, but harvesting is upon us and jars of tomatoes and beans and pickled things demand my attention.
While some folks, like Pangloss, get paid to be grasshoppers.