Good Old Days

America the Beautiful…No More

/ cigarman501 / 2 Comments

“I really love America. I just don’t know how to get there anymore” -John Prine

It’s Independence Day and somewhere deep in my soul, I feel, “So What?”

I’m celebrating like most any other day. Sitting with my puppies lost in my thoughts. Often my mind is a terrible thing. A cigar and brown liquor drink will soon join my terrible mind as I wait for the pyrotechnics to begin. I have no belief the drink will help.

 I’m forcing my thoughts to go back to the “Good Ole Days” to the celebrations of my youth. Yes, I understand that once you get past Dutch Fork BBQ, South Carolina hash, greased pigs and poles, patriotic songs, and the fireworks, for some, America was a beautiful, seemingly, impossible dream. See, I can’t keep my mind on little Donnie enjoying the Fourth of July celebrations of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

I was young and still believed in the American Dream my parents were peddling. This was before Viet Nam, before Watergate, before Reagan’s “trickle down” and the endless wars, mass shootings, and the hatred I am seeing displayed in the present. I have become more liberal in my autumn years and a tad bit cynical.

Honestly, I could withstand most of this…except for the hatred that is now being peddled like Clark Stanley’s Snake Oil Liniment…seemingly from all sides. We are taking doses of snake oil quite liberally. Especially, one side but the other side is not squeaky clean either.

America the Beautiful has lost its empathy and with it, its humanity. With our humanity we have lost our benevolence, creativeness, our brotherly love. Why?

We have embraced cruelty. Why just disagree with someone when we can metaphorically cut them deep, wide, and frequently.

Some will immediately begin to discuss…no argue venomously, that it is the Trump effect. This may surprise you. I don’t believe he isn’t to blame. Trump is a catalyst. We knew who he was from the early Seventies.

Trump is the greatest snake oil salesman of all time, and it is his followers who turned America into the not so beautiful. PT Barnam said, “there is a sucker born every minute,” and Trump took it to heart. I’m just flabbergasted that he found so many in one place.

The cruelty didn’t just begin with Trump 1.0. It was present well before Trump. It has always been there. An honest study of history will bear that out.

The cruelty has expanded with social media. Trolls, bots, foreign agents, and computer alphas hiding behind their keyboards have pushed the idea that being cruel was cool. It has been effective.  

Before someone suggests, since I hate America, I should leave. I don’t hate America. I love America with all her flaws. The concepts behind “America the Beautiful” are still there but like John Prine, I don’t know how to get there anymore.

Note to Steve: The drink and cigar did not help.

The Good Old Days

/ cigarman501 / 6 Comments

“The only good thing about the good old days is they’re gone.”― Dick Gregory

The cold snap of the last few days have me thinking about the “Good Old Days” people wax poetic about. It is cold and windy and has me longing for the humidity and mosquitoes of summer.

Our good old days started when Linda Gail and I moved into the foothills of the Blue Ridge in 1987 just before a twelve-inch snowfall that kept us stranded for over a week.  Despite questioning our sanity, the old farmhouse became our “little piece of heaven.”

An old farmhouse sitting above the Cherokee Scenic Highway, built in 1892 that had no electricity, heat or plumbing until 1956 when the new owner, long time Methodist missionary and reverend, James Copeland and some of what he called his good “Baptist Brothers” installed it. It has never been updated and I admit I sometimes worry about how well the good “Baptist Brothers” installed it.

 Prior to 1956 this old house, with no insulation, was heated with a wood stove and five fireplaces, water was hauled from the stream located below the house and the outhouse was, and still is, located some thirty yards behind the house.

Would anyone like to explain to me the “Good Old Days” as it relates to the series of cold days we have experienced and the impending “Snowmageden” we are facing this weekend? I am reminded of the old childhood joke, “Have you read ‘A Mile to the Outhouse’ by Willie Makeit. The book was illustrated by Betty Don’t.”

I should point out that indoor plumbing was added in 1956 to an old porch that was closed in to accommodate it. We now have updated heat, two more bathrooms, a new well with running water and we only actively use one of the fireplaces. The insulation in the old part of the house needs to be redone but at least the old wavy lead windows were replaced.

 I spent some eight hours spread over three days, cutting and splitting two pickup truck loads of dead fall with a chainsaw, axe, sledge and wedge. I also had benefit of a tractor with a frontend loader to help keep me out of trouble. My back might disagree with that last statement and has me wondering how did the previous generations keep a woodstove, and five fireplaces fed without benefit from later technology?

 Hey, I’ll let you keep the good old days. I’ll take the toilet paper over the Sear’s catalogue or corn shucks any day.