Author: cigarman501

Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes is Now Live

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes is now live on Amazon and may be purchased as a Kindle download or in paperback at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09GQSNYL2/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1632220574&sr=8-1

Pig-Trails and Rabbit Holes refers to the way Don Miller’s mind works…a curse or a blessing?  Alice’s rabbit hole worked out well, right?  Think of all the friends she met. A White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, a hookah-smoking caterpillar, a Cheshire cat, and the one he thinks he most emulates, the March hare…as in, as crazy as a March hare…or a Mad Hatter…which is it?

These are short stories and essays about life.  Some humorous, some reflective, all from the perspective of one of the rarest of animals, a Southern liberal. 

Stories of life in the foothills of the Southern Blue Ridge, history, politics, race, religion, and religion’s close Southern cousin, football.  And food…too much is written about an obsession for barbeque. That’s a lie.  One can never write too much about barbeque.

Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes

/ cigarman501 / 8 Comments

“Rabbit holes are my specialty. I live and breathe in them.”
― Kara McDowell, One Way or Another

Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes is now live on Amazon and may be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09GQSNYL2 in both download and paperback.

Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes refers to the way my mind works…a curse or a blessing?  Alice’s rabbit hole worked out well, right?  Think of all the friends she met. A white rabbit, the Mad Hatter, a hookah-smoking caterpillar, a Cheshire cat, and the one I most emulate the March hare…as in, as crazy as a March hare…or a Mad Hatter…which is it?

I write in a world that is slightly out of focus or as a Southerner might say, cattywampus, waiting for something to occur that will send me on an unplanned metaphorical trek, twisting and turning like a wild pig trail or mountain switchback, until I find my rabbit hole.  My motivation may be a spoken or written word, a song, a taste, or a smell…food maybe.  I seem preoccupied with food. 

Once the pig trail leads me to my rabbit hole I will pursue my rabbit to whatever lengths necessary to satisfy myself.  It is maddening to live in my head sometimes.  See, I’m already wondering why you have a rabbit and a hare in the same story about Alice’s great adventure.  They are the same, right? No, they are not.  I did not know that.  Shame on you biology teacher!

Several years ago, I decided to attempt to bring my maddening thoughts under control by writing and created the blog Ravings of a Mad Southerner.  It was a failure …but I’ve enjoyed the trip along the pig trails even though my thoughts are under no better control than they were seven years ago when I embarked on the storm-tossed sea of blogging.

Symbolically, the title of my blog, Ravings of a Mad Southerner has nothing to do with anger but is related to the madness experienced by Alice’s Mad Hatter or March hare…and the madness experienced by the author of the blog. 

In all fairness, my madness has nothing with the production of felt hats or crazy hares at the beginning of their mating season.  I get my madness honestly, I was born this way it seems.

Most of the rabbits I pursue resemble Elmer Fudd’s “wascally wabbit”, Bugs, or Gary K. Wolfe’s bumbling, Roger Rabbit.  I admit sometimes I encounter monster rabbits resembling the fanged demon Kevin McCarthy pulled out of his hat in Twilight Zone: The Movie, but it is rare.

While I search for my rabbit holes, I tend to get lost. Mostly I like it that way.  To quote Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”

Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes is now live and may be purchased in both Kindle and Paperback at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09GQSNYL2

Switch ‘dem Legs

/ cigarman501 / 9 Comments

“Suffer the pain of discipline, or suffer the pain of regret.” – Unknown

The young boy-child held a long privet branch, stripped of its leaves, maybe three-eights of an inch at its broken base before tapering to nothing at the “business” end.  It needed to be a “keen hickory” as in “Go out yonder and break me off a keen hickory and be quick about it.”  My grandmother was quite specific concerning her needs…much to my dismay.

The young boy that was me, was hesitant but even his young brain realized that waiting was only postponing the inevitable…and possibly making things worse. My legs were going to be switched no matter how long I waited and often the wait was worse than the punishment.

Punishment was to be swift and the question, “should the punishment fit the crime,” was never asked.  It was to be corporal and somewhat “Old Testament.”  “Spare the rod, spoil the child” was a guiding principle.

Rarely was I sent to my room without my supper, never did I stand with my nose in the corner.  Discipline was a thick privet brach applied to the bare legs.  Whelps that faded quickly while the lessons did not…may be.  All were accompanied by “this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you” and while it was being administered, “quit that cryin’ fore I give you a reason to cry.”

“Spare the rod…” actually never appears in the Bible but my Nannie had memorized Proverbs it seems.  Six verses speak to disciplining children with a rod in Proverbs beginning with Prov 13:24: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him often” and ending with Prov 29:15: “The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.” All from the King James version of course.

My parents were shift workers at a nearby textile plant and my care along with my brother’s and three girl-child cousins’ were primarily in the hands of my grandmother.  Care and discipline along with many life lessons.

We would spend the night at my grandparent’s house and would spend the morning and early afternoon with them until my parents returned from their first shift work or their morning sleep when they worked the third shift.  I only mention this to emphasize that we had ample opportunity to run afoul of my grandmother’s wrath…or a lesson or five. 

Not to say I couldn’t incur the wrath of my parents, I did, but it was different.  The line I had to toe with my parents seemed a bit more crooked than the line my grandmother had etched in the sand.  Her line was a sharp, thin line like the crease on a Marine’s dress trousers. Not to say my parents weren’t disciplinarians, they were.  But they took a different tack. 

My father was a talker, an explainer…a pontificator reminiscent of a Southern diplomat stumping for reelection.  Many times I thought, “Please get to the beating, you are killing me.”  He would eventually, a thin belt across the buttocks, done with a purpose but without any emotion other than disappointment.  His disappointment might have been the most painful of all.

My mother…her’s was a reaction to emotion…and her first emotion was raging anger.  She was the stereotype of the explosive Scot Irish redhead.  She went off like twenty sticks of dynamite, swiftly and violently, and then it was over.  The whelps might last a bit longer and some may not have landed where she aimed, others might be a bit weepy with blood.  By today’s standards, the word abuse might have been used but this was a different time.

If you are over fifty and reading this, my guess is you can relate.  If you are over fifty and from the Bible Belt I know you can relate.  Corporal punishment was, maybe is, the Southern way but it is not the only way.  As I’ve gotten older I wonder if it was just an easy way to address the behavior without the cause.

Understand, I hold no deep seated animosity for the discipline I received and am reasonably well adjusted. Any maladjustments were not due to the “whoopins'” I received. While the discipline was swift so were demonstrations of love and when I heard, “Now Donnie, this is for your own good” deep down I knew they were correct.

I began my teaching career in the last decade or so of teacher dispensed corporal punishment and while I dispensed many “licks” with a wooden paddle, I was never comfortable with it.  Early on, I learned I had a good bit of my mother in me and that punishment, like revenge, was best served cold and without a side dish of anger.  I’m proud I had this revelation.  I tried to become a happy medium between my mother and father…no, I became my father complete with pontification.

I was once assigned a classroom across from the principal’s office.  The principal was an imposing woman, the best principal I ever had.  When a male student ran afoul of the system her secretary would step into my classroom and inform me, “Ms. Koon needs your assistance.”  Those were code words that I needed to administer a paddling.

I found those paddlings much easier to administer because I was emotionally detached.  Three firm licks across the buttocks of a young man who hadn’t made me mad.  There was no “this is going to hurt me more than it is going to hurt you,” lie. 

Some I can remember that make a smile cross my face.  One crawled across Ms. Koon’s desk while I was in my backswing.  “Come on, I haven’t even hit you yet.”  Another, I found had padded his backside with notebooks.  Chortle.

I hear assurances that what is wrong with America is we have gotten away from “whoopin’ our youngins’.”  I don’t know.  I believe there is an absence of limits and discipline being taught but discipline takes many forms beginning with teaching what is right or wrong and what is expected.  We seem to lack self-discipline.

I spanked my daughter once.  Not even a spanking, a light tap on a bare leg.  I don’t remember what it was over and it doesn’t matter.  She cried like I had hit her with a rock.  I’d like to think her tears were over being disappointed that she had disappointed me.  I think we are a lot alike in that area.  Most of my pain was not from the rod but from realizing I had disappointed my parents or grandparents or teachers.  I had fallen short of their expectations.

Deep down I wanted to be the perfect child and repeatedly, due to my lack of self-discipline, fell short.  I hope they forgave me for my many transgressions.  Hopefully, I made them proud. 

My dearest Ashley, you did not fall short.  You were almost a perfect child.  You have made me proud.

***

Don Miller is a retired teacher and coach who writes on many subjects, fiction and non-fiction. His author’s page may be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR3vG_2EfWcuXYSOufYCAOFURnisANCQjCQITPrds5zWwlSO8MKkBqFFhJo

Hooray For Me…

/ cigarman501 / 12 Comments

And the hell with everybody else.

I grew up in a world where people were supportive of each other, regardless of political viewpoint.  If you were a liberal, conservatives might look at you side-eyed and shake their heads, but they supported you as a human being. They might talk about you behind your back, call you a ‘quare’ bird, but it was usually in whispers and in all honesty, where I grew up there were few liberals…still are few liberals.

I don’t know where that world has gone.  I hope, pray, that it is just a vocal minority but they seem to have developed a loud “hooray for me and the hell with everybody else” attitude.  Sounds selfish to me but then who am I to accuse?  I’ll just say if the shoe fits wear it. It is my opinion.

The most vocal don’t believe that falling sick to Covid is worse than getting the vaccine or the “jab” as they like to call it.  I detest hearing “I don’t need it. God will call me home when he deems it is time.”  I hate hearing “It is no worse than the flu.” Some three hundred and fifty thousand more were called to their heavenly home in 2020 than in 2019 and we seem to be on a similar schedule for 2021.

Where does free will fit into this?  If I choose to roller-skate on a crowded boulevard during rush hour and am crushed by a beer truck, is that God’s will?  Where does “data” figure into this? “Oh, don’t waste my time with data, my mind is made up. There is a chance I’ll survive and if I don’t, it’s God’s will.” Not my god.

It appears that some of the same vocal minority believe storms, wildfires, and changes in climate patterns are a symptom of an angry god rather than the prodrome of a sick planet. Yep, science is for sissies, and New York got flooded because of liberal leadership despite the fact Ida traveled from New Orleans to New York over several conservative states.

Somehow the liberal media and all the world’s liberal leaders have figured out a way to keep a secret.  A worldwide plot to eradicate conservatism with facemasks, vaccines, windmills, and solar panels.  Covid and Climate Change are all hoaxes or a plot.  All we must do is take vitamins, exercise, eat well, and sweep out our forests.  If that doesn’t work, animal dewormer…yeah, I know they make it for humans too…for parasites. Just say no to windmills and solar panels while you are at it.

I’m trying to picture my parents, Ernest and Eldora Miller, members of the “Greatest Generation”, standing in a picket line, or screaming at a school board about the evils of Satan’s mask mandate and waving placards denouncing returns to Marx’s virtual learning. I can’t picture it because it would have never happened.  It is almost too humorous to consider.

Lord help us if someone mentions “lockdown.”  Oh, that slippery slope toward communism.

How did wearing a mask or getting a “jab” lead us to arguments about freedom?  Do you want the freedom to infect your family, friends, and the old guy you passed in the checkout at Wally World? 

Why are we not supportive of humankind?  Somehow humankind has become a triggering word too.  Why should we worry about people in other parts of the world not named Afghanistan?  That pesky, “Love thy neighbor” thing in the Bible? 

Does this mean my parents were unaware at best or stupid at worst?  No, they were concerned about their family, friends, neighbors, and people they had never met.  Old Ernest and Eldora saw a way to make life better for all.  They were concerned about the human collective except the most vocal will take offense to me using the word collective.  Collective is just too close to communal, and we all know where communal leads. To the great communist devil hiding under our beds.

Somewhere in the dimly lit past, I remember loading up after church into our 1953 Ford Customline and driving to our small school, standing in line with all the people I had just been in church with at the cafeteria.  My parents, grandparents, brother, and me.  Why?  To eat lunch? No. To receive the Salk vaccine on a sugar cube.  No one was protesting and polio disappeared.  Imagine that and I grew up in a most conservative place.  There was no discussion of mandates.  There didn’t need to be.

What happened to us?

Commander Spock of Star Trek fame uttered these words in the movie “The Wrath of Khan,” “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Captain Kirk answers, “Or the one.” I agree with Spock even though he was a fictional character.

Many will say that Spock’s utterance is too utilitarian, the doctrine that an action is right if it promotes safety and happiness, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of conduct.  I certainly believe sacrificing oneself for the greater good is an individual choice but no one, not me or anyone else, is asking you to sacrifice your life.  I believe the data supports that and they are not going to take your guns either.

Do some people have potentially deadly issues with the vaccine and is it worth the fear?  Sure, but a very small percentage, 0.0017 percent have died after taking the vaccine through June 14, 2021.  People died from the polio vaccine.  Look up the Cutter Incident and it was caused by a mistake. 

Do the vaccinated still catch Covid? Yes, but look at the vaccination numbers versus unvaccinated and the recovery rate.  YOU LOOK IT UP. The data shows you are much more likely to recover if you do get it and are less likely to get it, period.

For those from the “Don’t confuse me with the facts group”, it would appear, logic has disappeared, worse, it appears logic is purposely being distorted. That worries me the most. People are getting sick. People are dying because hospitals are being filled with the unvaccinated.

To be clear.  Do mandates take away freedoms?  Of course.  What I’m saying is, we shouldn’t even have to mention mandates.

Don Miller writes on various subjects, mostly uplifting non-rants. His author’s page may be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR1smB-fmScUP0JbtXJZaCzDQXYPuJKLT-n4oLUE6ojWkNkHcug5ZFWD8DE

My BBQ Hash Ought Not Be Lookin’ At Me

/ cigarman501 / 6 Comments

“Like the blind man said as he wandered into a cannibal village . . .“Alright! The country fair must be right up ahead. I smell barbecue!”― John Rachel

This morning I fell into a rabbit hole that involved football and BBQ.  If you have ever been to a football tailgate, you know how they are related. Southern football tailgates for sure. 

Here, in my part of the world, worshipers of the religion that is football filed back into various high school cathedrals erected to their pigskin gods this past week, and college football worshipers will begin their own pigskin revival this weekend. Many worshipers will bring with them their religious trappings in the form of grills and smokers, filled ice chests, and lawn chairs. 

It is time to sacrifice the fatted hog to whichever football deity you worship. Hardwood charcoal smoke and the aroma of Boston butts slow cooking will waft through the stadium parking lots and are the sacred incense of the religion of football.

I have worshipped football for most of my life and spent twenty-nine years coaching it. As a young, first-year football coach I was a clean slate.  I knew not what I was getting into when I accepted the offer to coach junior high football at Gallman Junior High School and scout for the Newberry High School Bulldog varsity squad in the fall of 1974. 

I was the junior high offensive and defensive line coach, positions I had played in high school…positions I found I was sorely lacking the knowledge necessary to coach. As my first varsity head coach, a big, hairy, square bodied man with the moniker, Bear, pointed out to me, “The first thing you need to understand is that you don’t know sh!t from Shinola and learn which one you need to shine your shoes with and which one you better not step in.”  An old phrase that meant I was ignorant.  Yes, I was ignorant, and some might claim, “You remained that way and to this very day, step in the wrong one…every day.”

Not only was I “on the field” ignorant, but I also had no idea what off-field responsibilities coaching entailed. Cutting fields, lining fields, taping ankles, doing laundry…all fell on the heads of the younger coaches.  I was twenty-three and a first-year coach, my duties weighed heavily upon my shoulders. Did I mention I was a fulltime teacher too?

Friday game nights I never saw us play live and in living color until the last game of the season. I was responsible for scouting. It was my duty to drive to the next week’s opponent’s game for reconnoitering duties and film exchange. Sundays, I assisted with film breakdown because I was the only coach who had seen our next opponent live.  All the while facing five classes of seventh graders daily, five days a week, and no real clue how to teach history, either.  I didn’t know sh!t from Shinola and I was learning which was which while on the job.

What does this have to do with BBQ hash? Nothing but I’m getting there.

Another duty I didn’t realize I had was the twice-annual fundraisers we ran to support our programs.  Athletic programs run off gate receipts and only a few sports make money.  Consequently, athletic programs run their “Sell Your Soul to the Devil for Athletic Equipment” fundraisers or allow the Booster Club to bend you over a desk.  “Was it good for you? Here is the chin strap you needed. See you next week and maybe I’ll give you a second one.”

In my part of the world at the time, the midlands of South Carolina, the easiest way to raise a lot of money was selling tickets for BBQ plates with all the fixings…said fixins. A local farmer gave us a deal on hogs, a local grocery a deal on chicken and the fixins, a local game meat processor did his part and viola, fund raiser.

The kids were handed a number of tickets to sell entitling the buyer to a plate of BBQ…with all the fixins. It also gave us an idea of how much to prepare. That’s right, coaches, their wives, their teams, and any fool stupid enough to volunteer were responsible for preparing and serving the food.

Family and friends who allowed their arms to be twisted into purchasing a ticket would show up on the blessed day and pick up their Styrofoam containers and consume them where ever. This was held in conjunction with meet the Bulldogs and picture day. Everyone wins, athletics get their needed equipment and supporters get a meal. A right good meal I might add.

Unfortunately, it also requires a sleepless night of slow cooking porkers and cluckers for the coaches and then filling plates with pulled pork, or roasted chicken, slaw, pickles, fried hushpuppies, baked beans and my duty, BBQ hash smothering white rice…all without the benefit of any sleep for over thirty-six hours and a hangover from drinking too many brown likker drinks brought by one of the other assistants to help while away the hours. I truly didn’t know the difference between “sh!t and Shinola.” Ah, the stupidity of youth.

BBQ hash is a dish served over white rice, an accompaniment to BBQ served mainly in the Dutch Fork of South Carolina.  Unrecognizable pig parts are cooked until they attain the consistency of mush.  Unrecognizable pig parts means “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Head meat including snouts, tongue, liver, and other organ meat were primary and I guess I just told.

Sautéed onions and potatoes are added and are further cooked to death.  Near the end, mustard BBQ sauce, vinegar, pepper, and hot sauce are added and simmered just long enough to give the flavors a chance to blend. That could be ten minutes or forever plus one day. Finally, you’ll stir in butter.  The dish is much better than it sounds and not a dish you need to eat if counting calories or if you have an arterial blockage.

The Most Underrated Barbecue in South Carolina | First We Feast
SC BBQ Hash-from http://www.firstwefeast.com

My duty? Stir the hash in a huge black, cast-iron kettle over an open fire with a wooden boat oar.  Stir, stir, stir, sweat, sweat, sweat, drink, drink, drink.  Repeat until the correct consistency is achieved, or you are too inebriated, tired, or dehydrated to stand.  Couldn’t be dehydrated. Don’t worry, the hash will all come together on its own.

At some point during the early, still dark hours of the morning, I watched as a white object was stirred to the top of the hash. No I wasn’t drunk or dreaming. In the flickering light of the wood fire under the kettle, I watched an eyeball roll over and fix me with its gaze.  This was not an unrecognizable pork part but I decided not to tell. As it sank, it seemed to wink at me as it disappeared into the ooze. 

Suddenly wide eyed, fully awake, and fighting the urge to scream, I dipped the oar where the eyeball had disappeared but never found it.  Later as I ladled hash on top of white rice, I worried which lucky diner would receive the prize he or she didn’t want.  I also admit it was years before I ate BBQ hash again and to this day, when I do eat it, I’m careful to search each forkful before opening my mouth.  Hash ought not to be lookin’ at you while you are eating it. 

In my best Bugs Bunny voice, “Bon Appetit!” For a recipe for genuine SC BBQ hash that doesn’t use “don’t ask, don’t tell” pig parts try https://spicysouthernkitchen.com/south-carolina-barbecue-hash/

In case you are unsure, Shinola is a now defunct type of shoe polish.

Funny, Marca, and Shoe: BROWN SHINOLA O O REG. U. S. PAT OFF MARCA REGISTRADA WAX SHOE POLISH Some people just don't know the difference Some people...
From http://www.awwmemes.com

The image of the football grilling over coals came from Canva.

Don Miller’s Amazon site can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR1Kd0edLWxmy4Zt24SHvYnwe7QBAyx47b-LwntLo5wOhrAjT838vBaFKL0

Hotter Than The Devil’s Colon

/ cigarman501 / 11 Comments

“It’s a sure sign of summer if the chair gets up when you do.” — Walter Winchell

The “Dog Days” of Summer just ended but I guess no one informed Mother Nature.  Maybe she is “going through the change” and is sharing some of those hot flashes my wife tells me about.  Much of the country is finding out about Momma’s hot flashes. Good Lord I’m dyin’ here. It is hotter than “all get out!”

Dog Days? Credit the ancient Greeks for the name. They dubbed Sirius, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, the “Dog Star”.  From the Greek word Canis, we somehow arrive at the word canine…the word for puppy dog. 

The star appears above the eastern horizon just ahead of the Sun in late July and with its appearance, the hottest days of summer arrive. At least that is the folklore. It was already “hotter than a pepper sprout” before Sirius peeked at us from above the horizon.

The Greeks believed the combined power of the stars, Helios (Greek for the Sun) and Sirius. Their combined heat was what made this the hottest time of year. As hot as puppy breath.

The Greeks also believed the Dog Days didn’t bode well for humans…or dogs. All you have to do is read Homer’s Iliad. It refers to Sirius as Orion’s dog rising and describes the star as being associated with war and disaster. Even the Romans believed the rising of Sirius to be a time of drought, bad luck, and unrest when dogs and men alike would be driven mad by the extreme heat.

“Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun” is believed to have been coined by Englishman Rudyard Kipling and might to apply. Not sure if his quote has anything to do with the Dog Days but “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” was a great album. Sometimes my thoughts wander like Joe Cocker singing in front of a microphone.

I do know it is hotter than a mosquito’s tweeter.  When I walked through the Wally World parking lot yesterday and got into my black truck with its black interior it was hotter than “blue blazes” which with “mosquito’s tweeters” got me to thinkin’, always uncertain for me. I began to mull over all the Southern colloquialisms I have heard to describe how hot it might be. These are some of the “cleaner” ones I’ve heard throughout my lifetime. Mostly cleaner…well borderline cleaner.

First, to be clear, I’m not complaining about the heat.  After a particularly brutal winter, for the foothills of South Carolina, I swore I would “nevah, evah” disparage the heat of summer again.  Humidity, now that is something else. I will disparage humidity; it is fair game.  So, to be clear, I’m not disparaging the weather being “hotter than a Billy goat with four peckers.”

Seems we Southerners have several colorful colloquialisms involving Billy goats and heat.  Besides the previously mentioned curiously endowed Billy there is “hotter than a Billy goat with a blow torch” and my favorite, “hotter than a Billy goat’s ass in a pepper patch.”  Man, that’s sho nuff hot.

We have a gracious plenty of sayings involving animals and heat.  “Hotter than Satan’s housecat.” “Hotter than a fire hydrant chasing a dog.” My very favorite, “hotter than two rats fornicating in a wool sock” or its variation, “two dogs fornicating in a croker sack.”  Those sayings lose something in the translation, but I felt it prudent to change from the other “F” word.  I know a gussied-up pig is still a pig. Finally, one I really don’t understand involves an owl I reckon, “Hotter than a hoot ‘n a poot.”  Nope, don’t understand at all but it is rhythmic sounding.

Including the title of my epic, many sayings involve the Devil or Hell as you can imagine.  “Hotter than the Devil’s armpit.” “Hotter than Satan’s toenails.” “Hotter than the hinges on the gates of Hell.”  “Hotter than Hell and half of Georgia.”  

Poor Georgia. Georgia is at best semi-tropical and at worst, centered directly over Hell.  “Hotter than a Georgia firecracker lit at both ends.”  “Hotter than Georgia asphalt.”  Sorry, Georgia, I don’t mean to denigrate but there are few places I’d rather not be in the Southern summer, and you are included on my list along with Columbia, South Carolina. 

I know why “the devil went down to Georgia” in the old Charlie Daniels tune. Despite the lyrics, he wasn’t “looking for a soul to steal” or to challenge Johnny to a fiddle contest.  He was on his way back home to Georgia from his vacation spot in Columbia. Sorry, Ray Charles, Georgia is not on my mind.

I reckon I would be remiss if I didn’t include one off color response to the Southern heat involving women of ill-repute. “Hotter than a two-dollar whore on Saturday night” or a variation on the theme, “Sweatin’ like a whore in Sunday school.” I’ll quit. Yeah, I know I said one off color response and your got two. Must have been Saturday nickel night.

During my early football coaching days, I questioned a player who was struggling in the afternoon heat and humidity after the second practice during August two-a-days. His steps were slow and plodding, his head downcast as we fought our way up the hill to the locker room through soup like humidity.

“Bub, you lookin’ a bit wane. You okay?”

Exhaling heavily, “I’m ah sufferin’ from heat castration, Coach.”

“Heat castration? That’s a new one on me.”

“Yeah Coach, It’s so hot I’m sweating my balls off.” Bah-da-boom.

I read a quote recently that was directed at the Pelican State but could have been directed at any Southern state during the late summertime…or the rest of the United States this year.  Tom Robbins wrote, “Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air–moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh–felt as if it were being exhaled into one’s face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing.”  Well said, Mr. Robbins, well said.

From previous experience, my guess is the obscene heat and humidity we Southerners endure will continue well past the official end of Summer.  Mother Nature doesn’t seem to abide by calendars or such. At times I’ve found late October to be “hotter than forty dammits”. 

Please don’t get me wrong.  I’m not complaining, and I will not wish my life away longing for fall. I wouldn’t live anywhere else but am thankful for the invention of air conditioning cause otherwise I’d be “sweatin’ like a pig in a sausage factory.”

Meanwhile, here’s Charlie Daniels with a few of his friends. “Devil Comes Back to Georgia.”

Don Miller’s author’s page may be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR1AnHOdby4tY4i5xWAMfNinEgy1Y4K5EpLKQBVaDr5-QeTZX1fkiYOzOW8

The soaring thermometer image came from https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1429525/beware-of-soaring-heat-index-stay-cool-and-hydrated-pagasa

…And the Agony of Defeat…

/ cigarman501 / 5 Comments

A conversation with my brother and a simple act of research has caught me in the event horizon of the black hole that is the internet…or my mind.  My mind…I don’t seem to be able to escape the pull of my own mind. 

I’m on my twelfth Jim McKay narrated ABC’s The Wide World of Sports intro and I’ve lost count of John Cameron Swayze’s Timex commercials. All courtesy of YouTube, thank you. 

Somehow they are connected by something other than the black and white I watched them in but I’ve yet to figure out what that connection is. Later there was the black and white picture I discovered of YA Tittle battered and bleeding on the turf in Pittsburg. Where did that come from? The black hole of the internet of course.

All I know? Timex watches and an Italian ski jumper “takes a licking, but keeps on ticking” and the Italian ski jumper is probably happy Wide World of Sports was canceled.  We just celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his failure this past April. What about YA Tittle? After a crunching tackle in a 1964 game with Pittsburg left him with a concussion and a cracked sternum, he suited up for every remaining game of the 2-10-2 season but retired at its end. He barely kept on ticking and experienced “The Agony of Defeat.”

The iconic picture of YA Tittle

The skier’s name was Vinko Bogataj but no one knew at the time.  With limited TV in Italy, Bogataj didn’t know he was a television star…even if it was for “the Agony of Defeat.”.  He was the nameless guy on a fuzzy black and white screen who wiped out on an attempted ski jump in 1961 and was immortalized on film by ABC and now on YouTube. 

Bogataj was the epitome of the “Agony of Defeat”, the posterchild for failure, and remained so for three decades after his broken ankle and concussion had healed. He even continued to compete…just not well. ABC added a crashing motorcycle later but it just didn’t catch on like Vinko.

In case you have forgotten…or are too young to know.  Here is Jim McKay’s rousing 1978 Wide World of Sports intro preceded by Charles Fox’s ringing brass…

“Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport … the thrill of victory … and the agony of defeat … the human drama of athletic competition … This is ABC’s Wide World of Sports.”

The 1978 Introduction to The Wide World of Sports. Snowy and blurry like I saw it.

When Wild World of Sports premiered, 1961 was still BAC, before air conditioning, and BC, before cable.  Our RCA TV only received two and a half channels.  Why do I say half?  The closest ABC affiliate was still in distant Asheville, NC, some one hundred thirty miles away as the cow patty flies, and the VHF signal just wasn’t strong enough and subject to shifts in the ionosphere. 

Too much science, right? Right! No matter how much we tried to fine-tune the Rototenna, it was always snowing on Channel 13.

No matter. On Saturdays, we sat down to the snowy Wide World of Sports before the weekly battles erupted over whether to watch The Lawrence Welk Show, Have Gun Will Travel, or the NBC’s Saturday Night at the Movies while eating Mom’s spaghetti, Sloppy Joes, or breakfast at suppertime. Seems Lawrence Welk won most Saturday nights and why polka music and champagne bubbles make me ill. “Ah one, and ah two…”

Sports programming was nothing like the unfettered access we are afforded today.  The Game of the Week was just that, the lone game of the week and “lesser” sports were overlooked until Wide World of Sports came along.  It was the big three, baseball, football, basketball, and if you were lucky you might get one pro and one college basketball game a week…except I’m not a lover of basketball and didn’t tune in unless Bill Russell was playing.  Why Bill Russell?  I have no clue.

Speaking of agony. Due to the way pro football coverage was allocated, our game of the week usually meant watching the always struggling, awful Washington Football Team, known as the Redskins. Even Sonny Jurgenson couldn’t lead them to victory. I am reminded of many late fourth quarter failures and my father’s exclamation, “Well, I believe they’ve shot their wad.”

 “Wide World” was different. It included many sporting events not seen on American television, such as hurling, rodeo, curling, jai-alai, firefighter’s competitions, wrist wrestling, powerlifting, surfing, logger sports, demolition derby, slow-pitch softball, barrel jumping, and badminton.  

Deadpan Jim McKay calling curling was not one of my favorites but he hosted for over three decades. Don’t confuse hurling and curling. Hurling is interesting, curling is not…at least not south of the Mason-Dixon.

NASCAR Grand National/Winston Cup racing first appeared on “Wide World.” Traditional Olympic sports such as figure skating, skiing, gymnastics, and track, and field competitions were also regular features of the show.

Another memorable regular feature played to two of my worst fears, heights, and drowning. The scary Mexican cliff diving.

The first national television broadcast of the Canadian Football League was a Wide World of Sports broadcast of the 1966 Grey Cup game; ABC paid the league a whopping $500 for the rights. 

Wimbledon, The Indy 500, the NCAA Basketball Championships, Little League World Series, and the British Open all debuted on “Wide World” before they became wire to wire on a network or pay-TV.

I think we’ve lost something with our twenty-four/seven access to whatever it is we want to watch.  Nothing seems to be special. There is no excited anticipation for the Game of the Week because there is no Game of the Week…there are dozens.  There was more excitement when there was “just one”. We are flooded to the point of saturation and lose a bit of the uniqueness, “Would Christmas be as special if it happened every day of the week?”

I’m still trying to figure out how Wide World of Sports led me to Timex watch commercials.  Maybe it is the similarities between John McKay’s and John Cameron Swayze’s deliveries or that I watched them in glorious black and white until the late Sixties.  May be there is no connection. I thought they were both a bit deadpan until I found McKay’s call of the 1972 massacre at the Munich Olympics.

Jim McKay informing us of the deaths of the hostages.

Next year will mark the fiftieth year since “our worst fears have been realized.”  Fifty years? With recent events I would say our worst fears, like too much access to TV and internet, have saturated us.

On a lighter note, here is John Cameron Swayze. A commercial that aired live and didn’t work out as planned. Like McKay he was the consummate pro. Like Bogataj and Tittle, he recovered. Swayze broke nothing, not even the watch.

Don Miller’s author’s page may be found on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR2Uc4u_Ru_3f-hHEt9wpgjXtKYKBTOUhSMRy_EtVLVtnbpSZo1laWAwFIw

The Persimmon Tree That Ate Superman

/ cigarman501 / 11 Comments

In those thrilling days of yesteryear, before twenty-four-hour cartoon channels, Disney apps, Nickelodeon, YouTube, and such, there were Saturday mornings.  Every Saturday was like Christmas except better.  Well, maybe not better, but Christmas only came once a year. Saturdays came once a week. 

For a child, it was the best morning of the week.  Sitting in front of our black and white TV with a plate full of Dad’s pancakes watching the good guys beat the bad guys without anyone drawing blood until the Saturday afternoon movie reruns took over or Dizzy Dean, singing “The Wabash Cannonball” with his little pardner Pee Wee Reese doing the color commentary, brought us the Major League Game of the Week sponsored by Falstaff beer.

From the time the local TV station’s test pattern was replaced by a US Flag with forty-eight stars and the National Anthem played, Saturday mornings in the Fifties and Sixties were dedicated to children’s programming.  Looney Tunes,  Merry Melodies, Tom and Jerry, Howdy Doody with Buffalo Bill, Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Greenjeans, even a Japanese Sci-Fi cartoon about a battleship turned into a spaceship, Star Blazers…wait.  That was in the Seventies.  I guess I never outgrew cartoons.

I liked the cartoons.  I did.  But there was something about the syndicated serials that ran along with them. “A Fiery Horse With the Speed of Light, a Cloud of Dust and a Hearty Heigh-Yo Silver! THE LONE RANGER!” Let’s not forget his faithful Indian companion, Tonto, or other oaters like Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, and The Cisco Kid, “Hey Cisco, Hey Pancho”.  There was even a modern cowboy, “From out of the clear blue of the western sky comes Sky King”, flying in his faithful steed, The Songbird. Modern for the Fifties. Finally, Captain Midnight, pilot of the Silver Dart and leader of the Secret Squadron, spoiled saboteurs while hawking Ovaltine and secret decoder rings.

I watched them all but my absolute favorite was something else entirely.  George Reeve was the man of steel, and he didn’t need a horse or an airplane.  He could fly!

“Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane! It’s Superman!”

Intro to the Adventures of Superman. YouTube

.38 caliber bullets bounced off his chest like popcorn and he twisted the pistol they came from into a pretzel, crushed coal into diamonds, used his X-ray vision to see through walls or burn up asteroids, and he could fly.  He was my guy! 

Oh, Noli, my grandson, I remember the four-year-old you in your Spiderman costume.  You had all the Spider moves down pat.  Me?  I was limited to a red union suit with one of Mom’s towels safety-pinned to my shoulders. The things you did to fight “a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way.”

I did have a small closet to use as a pretend telephone booth and twin beds to “fly” between. Clark Kent might have a problem in these modern times since there are no telephone booths to make quick changes in.  Bummer.

Too many times I heard, “Son! Quit jumpin’ on that bed before you break it down!”  I was reduced to running through the house pretending to fly. I got yelled at about running in the house and finally took the game outside.  “Quit slammin’ that screen door, boy!”

Reduced to running until the fateful day I walked into the  Woolworth Five and Dime and saw the Transogram Superman Flying Toy.  For less than a dollar, I could watch Plastic Superman fly, soar, bank, loop, glide, or dive.  It said so, right on the package.  I imagined the flash of red and blue sailing through the air.

Transogram Flying Superman Toy https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-antique-superman-flying-1922615109

The Superman Flying Toy was a plastic glider powered by a slingshot affair that would tear your arm up if you weren’t careful despite the package assurances, “Safe for children of all ages.” Right!  It taught lessons, painful lessons I’ll say.  He was also a blond-headed Superman that looked nothing like TV Superman.

I had to beg for a three-week advance of my allowance, but I walked out with the last package and into hours of fun with Superman…until that damnable tree intervened.

A huge persimmon tree sat, majestically…no…ominously, to the left of my grandparent’s home.  It was a pain when the fruit began to fall.  A pain for me, not the possums that reaped the tree’s bounty. How many times did I come in with rotting persimmon pulp oozing from between my toes?  Persimmon pulp mixed with dirt, resembling puppy poop one might have stepped in.  At least it didn’t have the same aromatic properties and the possums partaking of the fruit seemed to like it.

The bottom limbs had been lopped off to allow the blue Rocket 88 my grandfather drove to park under it.  Without lower limbs, it was impossible to climb unlike the pecan tree on the other side of my grands’ front porch.  It also created persimmon Kryptonite for my Superman glider.

At some point in time, I found it necessary to replace the long and thick rubber bands that powered Superman and set about to do so when the thought occurred, “What if you double the bands?”  Twice as much umph, twice as much distance or flight time thought I. That thing would fly a country mile, especially if launched with the wind.  Against the wind?  It climbed higher and higher…circling and circling, right into the clutches of the persimmon tree from one of Krypton’s mountain tops.

An updraft took Superman to the top of that tree.  I prayed to the “gods of Krypton” he would clear but he didn’t.  “Charlie Brown, I feel your pain.”  I wonder if he could have told me how to get Superman out of the tree. Ole Charlie seemed to have a lot of experience with kite-eating trees.

I threw rocks, even the Chinese oranges from the bush with the sharp thorns that tore at my clothes, sometimes my arms.  I ran out after windy thunderstorms with hope in my heart only to have my hope squished flat. Mostly I just stood and shook my head in anger and despair. My parents didn’t seem inclined to call out the volunteer fire department to help. “Son, file this under lesson’s learned.”

I never got Superman down.  He spent years as a lonely sentinel in the top of a persimmon tree until I finally outgrew him and he disintegrated due to loneliness.  Rubber band airplanes, bicycles, my Combat Thompson machine gun, my genuine Rifleman Winchester air rifle, and such replaced him much in the same way Jackie Paper replaced Puff the Magic Dragon.  Later girls would entice me to buy more expensive toys.

Funny, I don’t remember many of those girls, but I remember Superman and the persimmon tree that ate him.  I remember the best day of the week and the childhood memories it sparked. 

Don Miller’s author’s page maybe found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0pjd3sx2XSojL9YQGsygAqHaAp6MfY7pm_ywvteFSDLLII20gZN7hbk6A

Image from https://www.artstation.com/artwork/380LY

Doodlebug, Doodlebug…

/ cigarman501 / 9 Comments

Fly away home! Yer house is on far (fire) and yer children are gone! Appalachian Rhyme

Oh, the things we did to engage ourselves and forgo boredom when we were children. Boredom?  I don’t remember being bored as a child.  The days were filled with activities, many forced upon us, but boredom is not a word I would have used. Most days we were allowed to be creative…sometimes to our own distress.

I also don’t remember being very successful chanting Doodlebug, Doodlebug, either, which considering the little insect we were attempting to vacate from his abode might have been fortuitous. Behold! The Doodlebug.

Antlion larva…a doodlebug. Looks like something out of a 50s horror flick on its way to attack Tokyo.

At this point, unless you are of a certain age, you may be asking, “What in the heck is a doodlebug?” I doubt kids today have a clue about doodlebugs.

So, what’s a doodlebug? It depends kiddies and I’m going to further confuse the issue.  A doodlebug is, according to www.merriam-webster.com 1: the larva of an antlion also: any of several other insects. 2: a device (such as a divining rod) used in attempting to locate underground gas, water, oil, or ores. 3: a buzz bomb.

You might still be confused.  Let me clarify.  The doodlebug of rhyme is the larva of the antlion, an insect that primarily subsists on ants.  Divining, also called dowsing, or water witching uses a forked tree branch, called a doodlebug, from a witch-hazel bush, or metal rods to find water or certain minerals.  Finally, a buzz bomb was a World War Two unguided flying bomb used by Nazi Germany to bomb London.  The British called it a doodlebug because of the sound it made. Still, confused? Me too! I’ve never heard a doodlebug make a sound.

The adult antlion: It eats ants.

An adult antlion https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/galveston/beneficials/beneficial-32_ant_lion.htm

The divining rod, dowser, or water witch. It finds water…maybe. I’m a bit doubtful of the science behind it…there is none, but the site of our well was found using one.

https://www.humanism.scot/what-we-do/news/scottish-water-distance-dowsing-humanist-society-contact/

And finally the Buzz Bomb or the doodlebug as the British called it because of the sound it made. Over ten thousand were launched toward England, six thousand or so landed in London. It goes boom.

https://military.wikia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb

Enough! Back to the rhyme.  As a child, I was instructed to find a moon crater-looking depression in dry sandy soil.  Sitting next to it I, along with my brother and cousins, would all chant, “Doodlebug, doodlebug, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children are gone.”  Because of my Southern Appalachian accent, it might have come out of my mouth differently and there are many other variations of the chant, some not very cheery. 

“Doodlebug doodlebug, come out of your house; it’s burning up with your wife and all your children, except Mary-she’s under the dishpan.” What are we teaching our children? It has no rhyme and the rhythm is awful.

The chant, along with dropping grains of sands down its hole, supposedly caused the critter to come out.  If that didn’t work a small twig was inserted for the larva to latch onto.  That didn’t work either.  I have a lifetime batting average of zero enticing doodlebugs.  My guess is it was a ploy to keep the young ’uns occupied while the adults kept busy with their chores.

A Doodlebug crater https://www.mysoutex.com/beeville_bee_picayune/news/features/what-does-a-doodlebug-doodlebug-do-all-day/article_6988b656-7628-11e8-b13b-5b83b660c7ad.html

My friends and I did a good job of keeping ourselves busy without assistance from a doodlebug…or our parents. We played other childhood games, mostly made up games played from TV shows we had seen or books we had read. We fought and refought battles with corncobs, created pirate ships from a treehouse thrown together with scrap lumber, used my grandmother’s front porch as Fort Apache, although Trixie looked nothing like Rin Tin Tin, and swung from “vine” ropes screaming our best Tarzan yells.

There was one little issue when a friend tried to jump off the hayloft imitating Roy Rogers jumping out of a second story window onto Trigger’s back. Problem was, my friend’s steed was his Schwinn bicycle. He missed the first time and only tried once more. It was a success…maybe. Don’t know if he was ever able to “go forth and multiply.”

We also learned we could fling a Chinese orange a country mile by stobbing (stabbing) it onto the end of a slender sapling and whipping it through the air. We inadvertently on purpose bounced one off the top of Mr. Jimmy’s ’49 Chevy as it motored down the highway. Didn’t hurt anything but gave the old man a bit of a start. Also got our hides tanned.

I know, I know. Some of you of a certain age are wondering, “Did you tie thread around the legs of a June bug and fly it in circles?” No but I know some who did. Always felt it was cruel treatment even for a bug.

Speaking of cruel treatment. The only deed I am truly embarrassed about was strapping a tin can to several large bottle rockets taped together and putting a frog in it. Honestly, it was Mickey Morris’ idea and I really thought the rocket would reach escape velocity. First Frog on the Moon! It may have been the first, we never found the frog.

Further writings can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR1vjrkVD5tHLACNvQM7kjc3RUUE2PROcwIT_xxvLhagMX_376LxmGSM_I0

Hope For Mankind

/ cigarman501 / 2 Comments

Written in 2018 on the fiftieth anniversary. Are there parallels between 1968 and the present day? Do we still need a “giant leap for mankind?” Do we need something positive to rally around or have we turned corners that make that impossible?

cigarman501's avatarRavings of a Mad Southerner

1968 had been a bad year and early in 1969, the world had not recovered from its sickness. Much of our pain in the United States derived from the war in Viet Nam or from the Civil Rights unrest. The two-and-a-half-month Battle for Kha Sanh began along with the Tet Offensive. Three college students were killed by the police in a Civil Rights protest in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert “Bobby” Kennedy are both assassinated. Much, much more would occur before we watched a glimmer of hope in July of 1969.

The country, and the world, seemed to be coming apart at the seams. Student and civil rights protests and riots, not just in the good old USA but all over the world. Cronkite said what many of us feared and others denied, “the war is unwinnable”. LBJ announced “I shall not seek, and I will…

View original post 372 more words