“The cakes and pies and casseroles beckoned like gastronomic sirens, and there was no one to lash me to the mast.” ― Chris Fabry, The Promise of Jesse Woods
Drug of Choice-an excerpt from the book Food for Thought by Don Miller
While food is my drug of choice, “Food for Thought” is not a cookbook. There are some recipes, recipes from angels now gone, who with their hands, cast iron pans, dollops of bacon grease or lard, and a lot of love, created so much from so little. There are other recipes from those that still exist and come to you over the cable ways on such channels as the Food Channel or from the internet.
Primarily it is a book of memories and history, a Southern history if you will, chock full of pig parts, home grown ingredients, and possibly roadkill. No not roadkill but there might be a possum or a raccoon story to tell. It is stories of an elusive quest for the perfect biscuit, peanuts poured into an eight-ounce Coca Colas, dope wagons in the cotton mill, and why when we order a Coke we are asked, “What kind of Coke?”
There is diversity, lessons taken from Scot Irish Appalachia fused with Native American and African American food and combined into dishes that have culturally diffused throughout the United States.
There are also too many essays involving pig parts, pulled pork, liver mush, sausage, slow cooked ribs, I need to quit before I go crank up the smoker.
None of the recipes shared are mine. Some are old family recipes, others from Methodist and Baptist cookbooks handed down by previous generations in my family. Lastly, some came from the Food Channel and such and are noted and linked as such.
Really lastly, any beautiful photographs of certain dishes are not mine. My dishes rarely come out looking photograph worthy. To quote an old college chemistry professor I had, “Find your wife’s disasters and you will eat like a king.” Thank you Dr. Setzler. The proof is in the eating not in the looking.
“100% True Fact: Spam means; Sizzle, Pork and Mmmm. Someone tell me I’m wrong…”― Skylar Blue
SPAM actually stands for spiced ham according to its producer Hormel.
A pig trail ran through shredded Spam and scrambled eggs, twisted to lettuce, tomato, and Spam sammies, switched back to Spam and fried potatoes, to a now dead college chum and his recipe for Spambalaya. Johnny Bolt, you little bald-headed demon, I miss you, I do.
Miracle Meat not Mystery Meat
If you are newer to this earth, Spam is tech lingo for unwanted, unsolicited mass communications. While the term is most associated with email, it can also be used to refer to spam comments on blogs and social media, physical junk mail, robocalls, and more.
The newer description is an assault on a once proud delicacy created by Hormel in 1937 to sell more pork shoulder, the weakest selling part of the pig at the time. For those not in the know, pork butts are not butts but pork shoulder. Back in the day, they were shipped in what were known as butts (barrels), after being butchered in New England or Boston. That’s how they got their name, Boston Butts, but more importantly, they are the star ingredient in pulled pork barbeque…and Spam.
According to Wikipedia, Spam is sold in forty-one countries, trademarked in one hundred, and sold on six continents. It tends to freeze too easily in Antarctica I reckon. In the U.S., Hawaii is the state with the highest per capita consumption of Spam, which has become a major ingredient in Hawaiian cuisine.
Muriel Miura’s Hawaiian Spam Cookbook
Why did it become such a seller? During World War II, the U.S. government sent Spam to the troops because it was easier to deliver than fresh meat. It came precooked in a can, so it didn’t need to be refrigerated or cooked to consume, necessities under battlefield conditions.
By mid-war, Hormel was producing fifteen million cans of Spam for the troops each week. Hormel was buying 1.6 million hogs each year, and 90 percent of the canned goods were going to the military. After the war, soldiers returned home with either a taste or disdain for this odd product, and Spam has adorned grocery store shelves ever since.
We also supplied it to our allies including England and the Soviet Union. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his autobiography, “Without Spam, we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army.” Before she became the English Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, a teen at the time called it, “a war-time delicacy.” “Spam the food that won the war!!!”
Spamville somewhere in the Pacific during WW 2
My father was a World War II vet, and he brought home a taste for the salty processed canned pork made primarily from pork shoulder and ham…with a bunch of nastier ingredients like fat, sodium, and preservatives. People were not deterred by its high fat and sodium content. Austin, Texas even celebrates it with their annual “Spamarama.”
During my childhood, we ate it a lot along with bologna, deviled ham, and Vienna sausages. We considered Spam to be a higher quality meat. Bologna, deviled ham, and Viennas were lunch selections, what we call dinner here in the South. Spam was reserved for a simple supper, the evening meal.
“Don’t knock it till you’ve fried it” was once a catch phrase for Spam. I honestly haven’t seen a Spam commercial since…well…since the last time I ate it which has run into decades ago. I don’t know why.
It is not a healthy meat choice, but I would say I wasn’t eating it well before I turned my lifestyle around after a 2006 heart attack. I’m not inclined to run out and grab a tin, but if I do, I might try Johnny Bolt’s recipe.
Johnny passed over a decade ago. Our lives first tangled in college the fall of 1968. He was a cocky little fellow, mostly bald by age eighteen. By the time his hair fell out, he had quit growing upward, topping off at about five-five.
When it came to playing the saxophone, he had an ego the size of a sperm whale. I was the only member of the saxophone section of our jazz ensemble that wasn’t a music major and played like it. Johnny was at the other end of the spectrum, and I guess I was a bit jealous. What is it they say? “It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it?” Johnny could do it.
We both became teachers; he was band director, and I became a science and history teaching football and baseball coach. It was inevitable we would run across each other when our schools faced off, but in the early Nineties, we found ourselves teaching at the same school.
It was at Riverside High School that the powers that were decided we should publish a “Cookbook” as a fund raiser. Johnny’s submission was “Spambalya so good it will make you want to slap your momma.” Before you ask, I did “Chicken Cooked in theGround,” one of the only things I learned in the Boy Scouts.
As it turns out Johnny’s recipe for Spambalaya came directly from a Spam cookbook from the Fifties. Teachers are adept at stealing good lesson plans, why not a recipe? I did add some spices to “kick” it up a bit.
“Spambalya so Good it Will Make You Want to Slap Your Momma!”
Ingredients
1 (12 ounce) can spam luncheon meat, cubed (It called for lite, but I’d use regular. Why bother.)
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
1 cup chopped onion.
2⁄3 cup chopped green bell pepper.
1⁄2 cup chopped celery.
A tablespoon of chopped garlic
1 (14 1/2 ounce) can diced tomatoes (use liquid from tomatoes)
1 (10 3/4 ounce) low sodium chicken broth (I use regular)
1⁄2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 1⁄2 – 2 teaspoons hot sauce (recipe read 6 to 8 drops)
1 bay leaf
1 cup long grain rice
1 tablespoon chopped parsley.
If you wish to add shrimp or chicken, please do.
Cajun spice mix, if you desire, and I would.
Directions
In a large non-stick skillet over medium heat, sauté spam until browned.
Add vegetable oil, onion, green pepper, celery, and garlic. Cook until all vegetables are tender.
Except for rice and parsley, add remaining ingredients.
Bring to a boil and add rice.
Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes or until rice is done.
Remove bay leaf, and sprinkle with parsley.
Best served with an ice-cold pilsner beer. Put on some Zydeco and laissez les bons temps rouler.
***
I could not find a live version of Jambalaya On the Bayou. This will have to do.
“I don’t mind going back to daylight saving time. With inflation, the hour will be the only thing I’ve saved all year.” — Victor Borge
There are many perks to retiring. A huge one being, I am not held captive by the clock…except when I have a doctor’s appointment. Doctor’s appointments are one of the non-rewards of retirement because to retire, one must get old. I don’t wear a watch anymore. If I could figure out how to get rid of a calendar, I would. But then when would I know we were getting ready to change to Daylight Saving Time and back again? Note: I have trouble knowing which day of the week it is since I retired…don’t care, either.
When I was a child, I didn’t remember much about Daylight Saving Time except when Mr. Gordon walked into our church service with a bewildered look on his face as we stood and began to sing the benediction. Mr. Gordon, like my family, tended to get up with the crowing of a rooster and went to bed when the chickens came home to roost. Unlike us he had missed the news flash about the then April change in time.
I remember asking my parents why we were changing the time. They stared off into space and no explanation was forthcoming. There still is no explanation but the difference is, I just don’t care.
My lack of care today was not the case when I toiled in the then hallowed halls of education. Working people and students will wake up on Monday morning and spend the day yawning because in springing forward, they will lose an hour of sleep. Nowhere is this more evident than in a high school teaching environment. Teens are notorious for finding ways to stay awake well past their bedtimes and Sunday night, March 12th will be no different, except it will be worse. On March 13, Little Johnny and Juanita will sleepwalk through the halls of learning even more stupefied than normal. So will their teachers.
No one has been able to give me a good reason as to why we need Daylight Saving Time and Dave Berry agrees, “You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight saving time.” Another quote attributed to “a wise old Indian” states, “Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket.” I see nothing faulty about his logic.
So, why do we have it?
According to a CBS Boston article, “Daylight Saving Time has its roots in train schedules, but it was put into practice in Europe and the United States to save fuel and power during World War I, according to the US Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics.” Train schedules? Must be of German origin. Don’t their trains always run on time?
While in Paris, Ben Franklin proposed the time shift change in 1784. In a satirical letter to a Parisian newspaper, Franklin suggested that waking up earlier in the summer would economize on candle usage; and calculated considerable savings. This makes no more sense than train schedules. I’m trying to decide if this is contrary to his Poor Richard’s quote, “Early to bed, early to rise….”
To continue, “The US kept Daylight Saving Time permanent during most of World War II. The idea was put in place to conserve fuel and keep things standard. As the war came to a close in 1945, Gallup asked respondents how we should tell time. Only 17% wanted to keep what was then called “war time” all year.”
“During the energy crisis of the 1970s, we tried permanent Daylight Saving Time again in the winter of 1973-1974. The idea was to conserve fuel. It was a popular move at the time when President Richard Nixon signed the law in January 1974. But by the end of the month, Florida’s governor had called for the law’s repeal after eight schoolchildren were hit by cars in the dark. Schools across the country delayed start times until the sun came up.”
I remember 73-74 well. Waiting in gas lines only to have them run out as you finally got to the pumps. It was my first-year teaching and I remember gym duty before school. We corralled our little charges in one place, so they didn’t get lost in the darkness outside. Seven hundred of the devil’s minions in a gym.
“By summer, public approval had plummeted, and in early October Congress voted to switch back to standard time.”
So why do we need Daylight Saving Time? In two words, we don’t…unless you are going to utilize that extra hour of daylight after work or school. It is geared toward industry or those with typical “9 to 5” jobs. An extra hour of sunlight to drink another martini on the veranda in the glow of the sun.
My biggest argument against it? Daylight Saving will kill you. It seems to do damage to the human psyche and our health. Studies over the last 25 years have shown the one-hour change disrupts body rhythms tuned to Earth’s rotation. We have more car accidents when people lose an extra hour of sleep. We also know that people suffer more heart attacks at the start of Daylight Saving Time.
But for every argument there may be a counter argument. People seem happier with the extra hour of afternoon daylight, heart attacks be damned, and robberies decrease. Robberies decrease? Candles aside, the biggest argument for it is for saving energy but studies have shown there is little energy saved. And yet we continue to spring forward and fall back.
Arguments to keep it come from the recreational sport world, think driving ranges that want golfers to stop by after work, an extra hour for fisherman to go out and hook a monster, or the Little League world. Arguments against come from farmers who have a harder time getting their dairy products and vegetables to market, usually done in the early morning. Farmers and ranchers are governed by the sun and not a time piece.
So, your feelings about Daylight Saving depends on who you are and what you do. I’m retired. I go to sleep when I’m sleepy and get up when I’m not…well, my puppies have replaced my childhood roosters. I’m sure my puppy dogs wild dictate when I get up. They may not be able to tell the time, but they know when it is mealtime.
Note: 2022 poll by Monmouth University found 61 percent of respondents want to stop switching, while only 35 percent want to keep things the way they are. But those who want to end the madness are divided: 44 percent said they want permanent Daylight Saving Time and 13 percent want permanent Standard Time. With the political madness on display every day why would I guess otherwise?
“Why Should the Devil Have All of the Good Music?”- Variously attributed to Martin Luther, John Wesley, and Salvation Army founder William Booth
First let’s put that myth to bed. There is no evidence Martin Luther, John Wesley, or William Booth said such but according to my parent’s generation we were all going to hell listening to the Devil’s own rock-n-roll.
It would seem each previous generation thought the same thing all the way back to the Middle Ages. I wonder what my grandparents thought about the “torch singers” of the Forties or their parents thought of the Jazz and Blues in the Twenties? I wonder if my mother sat under an “apple tree” with anyone else but my father during WW 2 while listening to Glenn Miller or The Andrews Sisters.
Reading the reactions to Sam Smith and Kim Petra’s performance at the Grammy’s and Rihanna’s performance during the Super Bowl another older generation thinks the younger generation is on the slippery slope to hell and these performers are minions of Lucifer providing a helping hand to their downward haul. It also gives, in Sam’s and Kim’s case, a convenient “Satanic” target for those not happy with the “woke” support of the LGBTQIA+ community and who, in Rihanna’s case, might believe that “Negro” music and the “Devil’s” music are the same.
This is not an opinion piece on how good someone’s music is or is not. I was unimpressed by both performances, but Sam, Kim, and Rihanna were not singing to people in my age group demographics any more than Perry Como or Dean Martin were singing to mine during the Fifties. Many of the singers who sang to my demographic are molding in the grave…except for Keith Richards and Willie Nelson, of course. They will outlive my grandchildren it seems.
To quote Tom Taylor, a writer for Far Out, a site in the UK, “From utterly insane tales of Kiss front man Gene Simmons having a cow’s tongue to the satanic panic of Judas Priest sneaking hidden messages into their songs, the devil is often depicted as the despicable puppet master who makes the marionette of rock ‘n’ roll move. It was yelled at Elvis Presley when his hips were first thrusting pop culture into existence, and it continues to this day in the mutated form of musicians being accused of being in the Illuminati. We may have secularized the slander, but rock ‘n’ roll has always been tarred with the brush of Beelzebub.”
I would have to add Jerry Lee Lewis’ “great balls of fire,” Little Richard “banging your box”, Chuck Berry’s “little ding-a-ling”, and Lew Christie’s “rhapsody of teen-age love gone too far in the rain.” I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Tina Turner seeming to make oral love to her microphone while shaking it in the oh so short skirts and high heels.
Several of these performers were banned from mainstream radio play at various times and Elvis’ hips were not visible on the old Ed Sullivan Show as he was purposely filmed from the waist up. Somehow banning sounds familiar in the light of today. How many from my generation slowed down their forty-fives trying to figure out exactly what “Louie, Louie” was up to on that Kingsman record.
I’d say much of my generation’s devil’s music was more metaphor than ‘out there’, but it was there. And when the late Sixties hit with the dope smokin’, go, go girls dancin’ in cages, and the braless halter tops, it was obvious that Satan had us by the hand and was seductively drawing in another generation with his music instead of using a serpent to tempt with an apple.
Unfortunately, much of the devil’s music railed against by my parents’ generation had to do more with who was singing it rather than what was being sung. The “whitewashed” rhythm and blues and Rock-a-Billy of Elvis, Jerry Lee, and Carl Perkins was bad enough, and don-t get them talkin’ bout those longhaired British boys, but white kids crowded around a bandstand featuring African American singers and cheering while dancing “The Dirty Dog” was proof that Satan was moving among us.
That reminded me of a few “PJ” driven Frat and Sorority parties. PJ stood for Purple Jesus, a fruity concoction involving grape juice and grain alcohol or moonshine that would leave you uttering Jesus’ name in vain from the next morning’s hangover. Jesus’ name but it was Lucifer’s brew.
I never danced The Dirty Dog but my crew cut was present to hear James Brown and Fabulous Flames, Eddie Floyd, Billy Stewart, Otis Redding, and Archie Bell at venues where the performers themselves were not welcomed had they not been singing. Big haired white girls in Bobby Socks jumping around cheering for “The Godfather of Soul” as he pranced about singing “Try Me” was more than some of the previous generation could endure.
In my research I found the “Devil’s Music” moniker dates back much farther than just my lifetime. During the Medieval period music that was not church music nor followed the church’s rules was the Devil’s music. Gregorian chants or be damned!
Madrigals were considered the Devil’s music because they sang mostly about having sex. Ending a piece on a minor chord was also forbidden which gave us the Piccardi third (raising the third of the final chord of a piece in a minor so it cold ended on a major). The tritone was also banned. (I have no idea what a Piccardi third or tritone was or a cold end, but failing to use them must have been bad sending the performer straight to the bowels of hell.) Did you know that most of our concepts of Satan and Hell comes from Dante’s The Divine Comedy and not the Bible?
In modern and American terms, the Blues was considered the devil’s music by both the White and African American religious communities at the turn of the 20th century because of song content tied to drinking and dancing. The Baptist, especially, considered any dancing “dirty dancing” and only one step above the horizontal rumba.
The association of the Blues and Jazz with the Devil carried over to rock and roll and Elvis’ hips. Didn’t Blues great Robert Johnson sell his soul to the Devil? Well…that’s the legend at least.
Drinking, dancing, and forbidden sex were the original reasons. Voodoo New Orleans musicians didn’t help the cause nor did the fears I addressed earlier by middle Americans about their white kids listening to “black” music. Then there was Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath…and now Sam Smith, Kim Petra, and Rihanna. My guess is that protests will continue and someone else will take their place in future generations.
John Lennon of The Beatles didn’t endear himself to Christians in 1966 when he made his infamous comment that The Beatles were, “More popular than God.” Christians everywhere added to the air pollution as they burned their vinyl Beatles records. It was a comment taken out of context and judging from The Beatles’ lasting influence and the decline in the Christian church, he might have been correct.
My generation, the latter-day Boomers who are the standard bearers, along with the Gen Xers they produced, for the “our off springs are turning to Satanism” group. I find such comments humorous. I remember the heat we took for growing our hair long, platform shoes, miniskirts, hot pants, and go-go boots…the Devil’s weed, “Make love not war” and “the summer of love.” Yes, Satan was behind our every move, I guess. Now we do what our previous generations did, point and cry out, “You are going to hell and your music is taking you there.”
I do think we had cooler cars with better music blasting from our AM radios or eight tracks. We dressed cooler with our bell bottoms and flowery shirts with long, pointy collars or Nehru jackets. Grandma before she was Grandma looked great without a bra on under her sweater and in her miniskirt and boots, a Salem 100 held between lips or fingers featuring bright red lacquered fingernails and lipstick. Red, the color of the Devil, right Sam? Right Rihanna? The devil dressed us too, I know our parents believed it.
Those horrible dances we did…unscripted like Pagan fertility dances…some of which were successful, and I wonder how many Gen Xers were conceived in the back seats of cars listening to Chicago Transits’ “Memory of the Coming Good” or Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman?”
Remember the angel and devil scene from Animal House? I had a few of those conversations, the angelic voice on one shoulder was usually drowned out by the devil’s on the other. Some of my escapades didn’t hold up well in the light of day but at the time….
I don’t think my music and the performances of the day took me down the primrose path to destruction. They simply made me hard of hearing. I don’t think Satan had much to do with it. Satan is more about punishment and the evil and temptation he punishes comes from within us.
Generations of young people have wanted to explore the secular world and have run afoul of societal norms written by the previous generations. Is that a sin? Maybe but again, I believe Satan has little to do with it. It is too easy to blame our evils on the Devil and not on ourselves
There “would be hell to pay when he got home. But the devil was in the back seat, keeping time to the music, and hell was a long way up the road. — T.C. Boyle
“On Valentine’s Day, the Spirit Club plastered the school with red streamers and pink balloons and red and pink hearts. It looked like Clifford the Big Red Dog ate a flock of flamingoes and then barfed his guts up.” ― Carolyn Mackler, Vegan, Virgin, Valentine
“Cupid, draw back you bow”
Note to self if you drop a rose bush don’t try to catch it. I’m now oozing blood from five spots on my right hand. Roses have thorns even those purchased from Valentine’s Day.
It seems, every Valentine’s Day is my own version of The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre or a Valentine’s slasher movie. I am sure I will have shot myself in the foot by day’s end but at least my bride hasn’t beheaded me like the original St. Valentine. I’m also sure she has considered it.
When it comes to Valentine’s Day, like Midas, I have a special talent. Everything I touch turns into poop.
I haven’t had a successful Valentine’s Day since grammar school. We filled out cheap, little Valentines for everyone in class. Short little sayings like “Be Mine!” I remember looking at “Be My Valentine” from Big Lamar, the class bully that should have been two grade levels above us. We had yet to become creative with little poems like, “Roses are red, violets are blue. Your feet smell like cow poop and your breath does too.”
My first negative memory of many was a Valentine’s Day preteen party in the early 1960s. The Church sponsored event was supposed to be a dress up, Sunday best kind of gala. A Kool-Aid and cupcake affair. We were Methodist so dancing would be allowed, and I prayed my two left feet would somehow transform themselves. A cute little blonde girl had agreed to “hang out and talk.” My first date.
The day before, the world’s largest zit appeared in the middle of my forehead. It didn’t matter. I’m sure the dance was great, but I have no memories of it because I didn’t get to go. My anxiety over my “first date” was so great I threw up and was kept home, in bed, covered in Vick’s VapoRub, the cure-all of the day. It might have been a stomach virus, but Valentine’s Day has been its own virus since. VapoRub was not the cure.
The dance worked out well for my date. A friend took advantage of the situation, and they became a couple. This weird Cupid moment might have been the high point of my attempts at being a romantic Valentine.
Can you imagine? On average, fifty-eight billion pounds or two point two billion dollars’ worth of chocolate will be sold the week leading up to Valentine’s Day. Over two-hundred and fifty million roses are produced just for Valentine’s Day. That is two point three billion in flower sales. A whopping six point two billion dollars are spent on jewelry. I have contributed with little success.
Love-struck Americans dole out almost twenty-four billion dollars on Valentine’s Day with men spending twice the average. Men will spend on average, one-hundred and seventy dollars to prove their undying love. Women? Half of that.
I’ve all but given up on making Valentine’s Day a special event. Attempts at romantic dinners have ended with food poisoning. I’ve tried poetry, “Roses are red, violets are blue, pizza is hot, and so are you.” I’ve tried to create artistic and rustic birdhouses with tin hearts or a couple holding hands. Most fell apart as quickly as my attempts at romantic expression.
I’m waiting for a masked psychopath to show up to carve out my heart in a real-life Valentine’s slasher movie. Blood splatter replacing rose petals scattered on the bedroom floor.
Speaking of bloody, how did the violent death of a Catholic saint become a celebration of love anyway? There are three suggested stories about three different Saint Valentines. What do they have in common? Martyrdom. Violent death. Two of the accounts involve beheading. Somehow beheading seems apropos. How many of us have lost our heads over someone we shouldn’t have?
That still doesn’t explain cards, candy, flowers, and jewelry but a historical change in Nineteenth Century America does. Prior to this time most marriages were economic rather than romantic despite what romantic writers would have us believe. Even the poor founded their marriages more as economic alliances than romantic love. “Two can live as cheaply as one,” I was told once. Someone lied to me.
This changed in the mid-1800s from economics to romance, or at least combined the two. It also triggered an increase in the giving of tokens of love and it has snowballed from there.
I have taken to giving rose plants as a token of my undying affection. My bride and I plant them in a rose garden next to my vegetable garden in hopes they will bloom as our love has. I dig the holes and let my bride plant them and as soon as she does, they become her responsibility. If they die, it’s on her.
My Midas special Midas touch is still in effect. Damn rose plant has thorns and they have already bitten me. This Valentine’s Day is in fact a bloody one.
Numbers to ponder, some humor, and a bit of Super Bowl history.
“The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It’s part of our culture like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays beyond their meaning, a factor in our economy.” — Bob Schieffer
Inflation be damned, according to one national news organization, Americans will spend some 1.6 billion dollars on their favorite team’s apparel, food, and drink as they celebrate this year’s Super Bowl. That’s Super Bowl LVII which translates to fifty-seven in numbers we recognize. Over one hundred million will tune in to watch the game, one in three Americans, the commercials, and the halftime extravaganza. It truly is more than just a football game and the jury is still out whether that is a good thing or not.
Here are some numbers to ponder. Americans will eat some 1.4 billion chicken wings during the Super Bowl Sunday festivities. It is predicted that we will consume some three hundred million gallons of beer to wash down those wings, and advertisers will get rich as they charge seven million dollars for a thirty second commercial.
If you are in the stadium, a beer will cost you $13-$19 dollars and a hot dog $5. Times have certainly changed.
Last year one billion dollars was wagered legally. It is estimated another six billion was wagered illegally.
The Super Bowl has grown into something Vince Lombardi would not recognize. I watched the first Super Bowl. I’ve watched all the Super Bowls. I guess, unless I go blind, I will watch them all until the “sands in the hourglass” run out.
The first one wasn’t called the Super Bowl. It was the AFL-NFL World Championship Game back then. Not only has the name changed, and you can blame Lamar Hunt for the moniker, but the game itself doesn’t resemble the first one.
More cameras than there are angles, scantily clad cheerleaders instead of pleated skirts, Bobbi socks and saddle shoes, commercials that were sometimes more interesting than the game itself, half-time extravaganzas instead of marching bands and different rules that the officials continue to blow. The only thing that hasn’t changed is me…laughing, are you?
Ticket prices for the first Super Bowl averaged $12, the game was not a sellout—the only non-sellout in the game’s history. The game drew 61,000 fans to the Rose Bowl and was televised to twenty-six million viewers by CBS and NBC. The cheap seats in Sunday’s Super Bowl will set you back $3000 by comparison.
Yes, the Super Bowl has changed, but my love for the game of football and the Super Bowl hasn’t changed…even though I don’t recognize it as the game I coached and played for three and a half decades. It is a more fun-loving, less brutal, still brutal game than the original “three yards and a cloud of dust “version. Much more fan friendly, I guess. Blame the old fun-loving, more offensive minded, pass-happy AFL.
As a young child, fall Sundays were reserved for church and a single football game on CBS. That’s correct…one football game and nine times out of ten it was a Redskin contest. We did have a thirty-minute highlight show of the previous Colts game. It came on just before the real thing, just after church and Sunday dinner, what we Southerners call lunch. I’m sure my father prayed that there would be no long alter calls on those football Sundays. and that any visitors would stay away till the game was over.
Still, I became a fan…of Sonny Jurgenson’s lasers and Billy Kilmer’s wobblers. It didn’t matter who was under center in the early sixties, victories were far and in between. At least I had those replays of Johnny U and the Colts…but they weren’t particularly good either, except in ’59 and ’64.
Most every Sunday, late in the game, my father would make the same observation about the Redskins, “I think they have shot their wad.” The Redskins would continue to shoot blanks until 1982 when they rode John Riggins to the victory in Super Bowl XVII. For clarification, shooting one’s wad related to old muzzle-loading muskets and not…your dirty mind.
In 1960 a new kid dared to approach the NFL block…an always snowy new kid led by AFL Commissioner, Joe Foss. We would attempt to adjust our Sears rotary antenna to distant Ashville hoping the ABC affiliate and AFL game of the week would come into view. Click, click, click, “Whoa! That’s too far, go back!” It didn’t matter, early September or late November, the games always looked like it was snowing in black and white on the old RCA. Later the league would move to NBC, a channel we could pick up without snow and no longer in black and white.
These were the days of the New York Titans, Dallas Texans, Houston Oilers, and a few names that would still be recognized today. No, the Dallas Texans were not the forerunners of the Dallas Cowboys or Houston Texans, but the Kansas City Chiefs, one of today’s Super Bowl opponents and one of the first Super Bowl’s opponents.
The Cowboys were the first NFL expansion team and were briefly known as the Steers. They opened their first season in 1960 as the Cowboys and continue to break their fan’s hearts at every opportunity…at least this century. Da Boys…maybe next year.
The two leagues would eventually merge but not before the 1967 AFL-NFL World Championship played between the Bart Starr led juggernaut Green Bay Packers and the upstart Kansas City Chiefs with Len Dawson under center. The score was close at half-time but a runaway by the end of the game. Green Bay’s smash-mouth brand of football won 35-10 and began fifty-six years of futility as I repeatedly pull for the wrong team. I doubt this year will be any different…nah. Congrats Philly.
I’ll watch to the bloody end. Maybe the score will be close, or the commercials good. Maybe the halftime won’t be controversial, but if it is I hope it is a “nipple gate” moment. I pray Chris Stapleton’s version of the National Anthem doesn’t draw the ire of Twitter fans who will type in capital letters, “JUST SING IT THE WAY IT WAS INTENDED!”
I’ll watch and heft a beer and toast my father…even eat a dozen wings in his honor. I’ll use his favorite phrase when watching a fourth-quarter pass fall harmlessly to the ground…” Well, looks like they’ve shot their wad.”
The only thing to be decided is who shoots their wad and how many of those beers I heft. Go Budweiser Commercial!!!! I miss the frogs.
Don Miller writes in multiple genres. His latest novel is a fictional historical novel that focuses on The Great Depression and the labor unrest it triggered in the South in 1934. The novel is “Thunder Along the Copperhead” and may be purchased in paperback or downloaded at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BJYQ3SSV
Shane Walsh: [about eating frog legs] When you get down to that last can of beans, you’re gonna be loving those frog legs, lady. I can see it now… [imitating Lori Grimes] “Shane, do you think I could have a second helping, please? Please? Just one?”
Lori Grimes: Yeah, I doubt that.
Shane Walsh: [to Carl Grimes] Don’t listen to her, man. You and me, we’ll be heroes. We’ll feed these folks Cajun-style Kermit legs.
Lori Grimes: I would rather eat Miss Piggy. Yes, that came out wrong.
Snappy Repertoire from The Walking Dead
Warning: This is not about The Walking Dead but about my addiction to cooking shows, food, and memories involving frog legs. They do taste like chicken.
Not that I’m ever going to prepare Chicken Kiev or Beef Stroganov, but I watch cooking shows allowing The Pioneer Woman to cause Pavlovian responses cooking brisket with cowboy baked beans featuring burnt ends or Giada De Laurentiis preparing anything. Just stand there Giada, just stand there. Another type of Pavlovian response.
My thoughts raced down a pig trail after a conversation with a Northern friend about what we might have eaten at a restaurant had it been named the “Roadkill Café.” Much of our banter centered around squirrels and possums along with my favorite saying, “flatter than a toad frog on a four-lane highway.”
I pointed out that I had grown up “country rich”, never having to resort to roadkill. I admitted to having been permanently scarred for life cleaning fish and turtles, plucking and gutting chickens, skinning squirrels, and slaughtering hogs to supplement the protein requirements of our diets. I feel fortunate my family drew the line at possum. I did occasionally eat frog legs, the subject of this rabbit hole I fell into.
Later in the day, as I looked for a recipe for fried frog legs, I stumbled across a YouTube video featuring one of the Duck Dynasty boys preparing frog legs. I watched it. Fifteen minutes of my life I’ll never get back. I realized frog legs may taste like chicken, but no one ever shows the nasty side…gigging and skinning little green Kermits or wringing little Henny Penny’s neck.
For some reason, the video reminded of a young lady whose bright light had burned out, who asked, “Why do people raise beef? We can go to the supermarket and buy it.” I’m sure there is a logic there that only she understood. I’m also sure one can find pre-skinned frog legs somewhere but somewhere else there is a frog walking on stumps.
I was first introduced to frog legs when I was quite young. An uncle home from college and a couple of cousins had spent the night gigging frogs…and I suspect, participated in activities my grandmother would have frowned upon involving distilled spirits. Still, they were sober enough to deliver a croker sack of frogs to my grandmother who skinned them and prepared them along with grits and eggs for breakfast.
I remember awaking to the smell of something I was unfamiliar with frying. Sautéing frog legs heavily peppered were literally twitching in butter in a big cast iron frying pan. They were twitching, I kid you not.
Gross alert, view at your own risk
Did you know that Mary Shelly was inspired by twitching frog legs while writing Frankenstein? Sorta inspired. The frog legs weren’t frying but according to the Smithsonian Magazine, Shelley was inspired by the concept of galvanism—the idea that scientists could use electricity to stimulate or restart life. Galvanism, using an electrical current, would cause frog legs to jump. Feel smarter? I wonder if they fried them afterwards.
The French consider frog legs to be a delicacy, but this, according to differing theories, has nothing to do with calling the French the derogatory term, Frog. It is more likely due to the Frog that was a part of the counter-revolutionary flag flown during the French Revolution. No matter what theory do not call a Frenchman a Frog. It’s not nice.
While I was in college, I went gigging with a couple of fraternity brothers and a chemistry teacher. In a flat bottomed jon boat, armed with gigs and flashlights, we paddled the perimeter of a small lake looking for little green eyes glowing in the reflection of our lights. We would paddle in close, gig the frog, and put him in our own croker sack. We might have partaken of some distilled spirits like my uncle but I’m not sure.
All was grand until a snake crawled into our boat. Instead of using an oar to stun the snake and put him back into the water, one of my frat brothers pulled a concealed pistol and put three bullet holes in the bottom of our boat.
The snake? Perfectly safe and still in the boat under the croker sack. The rest of us? Paddling for dear life to get back to the landing while avoiding the snake before we sank. Since that time, I’ve not gone frog gigging again and have only eaten frog legs on an all you can eat seafood buffet a hundred years ago.
It seemed safer to look online and inquire where I might find some preskinned frog legs. Ten dollars a pound plus shipping? Imported? Geez. I guess that is why they are a delicacy. Well since chicken also tastes like chicken, I think I’ll grill up some wings instead.
“It’s not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it’s the most patriotic thing we can do.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
Happy birthday America! Two hundred forty-six years young. The grand experiment…the shining light on the hill…an example for the free world. I think we need a transfusion or take off our rose-colored glasses.
I’m just not feeling it. Oh, I went to the annual Bennett July Fourth eve cookout and gorged myself on ribs, pulled pork, and Carol Ann’s potato salad. But I’m not feeling the patriotism. Even after talking with a young man (57) who had spent the past eighteen years in China, I couldn’t feel it. It was just a backyard cookout to me, and I didn’t stick around for the fireworks. I’ll probably watch the fireworks on TV but then I will think about the fireworks on January 6, 2021,
I’m not feeling July 4, 2022. I am feeling a bit overstuffed from last night. That’s not a good thing either.
The Fourth of July is supposed to be a celebrated, a day to commemorate independence, a day of freedom…”let freedom ring.” It took seven years of war to gain that independence and when the gunpowder cleared there were many still not free. Should I dwell on that?
I try to take comfort in the history of our nation. We’ve rarely been totally united as a nation. Our history is rife with examples of discord, and few examples when we all marched together, in step for a cause. Somehow, we’ve muddled along despite the discord. Well, there was that four-year period during our Civil War. The best I can say is we have a voice that is allowed to express our discord.
The thought really is only responsible for a small portion of my malaise and indifference. I’ve been in my malaise since 2016 and it is darkening. It isn’t my malaise; it is my country’s malaise, my country’s failure to come together on anything. Rare is there common ground. It is us versus them and them are the traitors.
Malaise: an indefinite feeling of debility or lack of health often indicative of or accompanying the onset of an illness. A vague sense of mental or moral ill-being. That is according to Merriam-Webster and sums up how I feel about my country. I fear we are on our death bed.
A post came across one of my social media platforms that gave me pause, “I don’t think America deserves a birthday celebration this year.” That’s what I’m feeling. I’m also feeling that there might not be many more birthdays to celebrate…at least in our country’s present form. America the Beautiful may have an incurable illness and facing life support.
I read a quote made by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart.” Fain is a somewhat archaic word that means pleased or willing.
I hear and see posts from people who, by their own voice, call themselves “patriots” and point fingers at people with opposing opinions calling them traitors. This accusation is not even implied, it is boldly printed or yelled. It is on their standards as they march on city streets, wrapping themselves in Old Glory, their faces covered lest someone might see who the “patriots” are. I never thought I would be accused of being a traitor for doing what I thought was right…even if that thought was wrong.
These people are wedges. If you ever spent time splitting wood, you know the function of a wedge…to split. I believe people are being indoctrinated, nay…groomed to be wedges. Whomever is responsible is doing a bang-up job. I’ve never seen us so splintered…not since 1968 and I think 1968 falls short of the mark when compared to present day, July 4, 2022.
On a personal note, I used the words indoctrinated and groomed purposely. I see it all the time when reading about the educational shenanigans in my home state. Mostly they are directed toward my former peers, teachers.
Along with Critical Race Theory and the word “woke,” these are dog whistles or buzz words to further turn people against each other. They are used to wedge apart teachers and parents and liberals and conservatives.
To what end? To destroy public education in favor of for-profit private schools? That is what I think. Just “follow the money.” Propaganda ads reigned supreme as “big money” from out of state fueled one of the sides and our deep red state ate it up. The same is true when the government gets involved. I am so happy I’m a retired teacher. I guess I could retire as an American.
Last quote and I’ll quit beating a dead mule.
“… patriotism lies in supporting the values the country is supposed to cherish: equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. When our government compromises, undermines, or attacks those values, it is being unpatriotic.” Howard Zinn, WW II vet, historian, playwright.
I believe January 6, did just that. January 6th compromised, undermined, and attacked our democracy. As I have watched the congressional committee my depression has grown. I consider myself to be a sane man most of the time. I don’t know how anyone could watch the videos from the January 6 Insurrection and not believe it was exactly that…an attempted insurrection.
It was an attack on our democracy and I believe on some level, planned. I don’t know how you can question what occurred. I don’t know how you can question what the congressional committee has unearthed.
Yet people do. They question the election, the motivations, come up with more and more bizarre theories. My malaise grows when I think that many applauded as they watched it unfold on their televisions.
Happy Birthday these dis-United States of America. I’m not sure you were ever as great as I thought you were but I’m damn sure you are not as great as you could be.
Some will say, “If you are so unhappy, maybe you should move to another country.” Well, my retort is unprintable.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that over half our population lost the right to control their own bodies this past week. I fear more losses will occur.
“Born in the South. Raised in a Glass” – Cheerwine Slogan
The little general store on the winding mountain road caught my eye and without consulting my co-pilot, Quigley Apples, or my navigator, Linda Gail, I slid the Jeep to a stop in front of the ancient gasoline pumps, Gulf with the old clear tops and decorated in blue and orange. There was copious barking, and not from Quigley. My wife did not like being jerked about.
Photo by Kathy Clark
“Signs, signs, everywhere there’s signs”. The store front sported many antique signs, some with bullet holes, but unlike the song, they didn’t block any scenery, they made the scenery. The store reminded me of the image I use for my blog, a colorized version of a depression era general mercantile in North Carolina…except for the Texico pump.
Original photo by Dorothea Lange, colorized by unknown
Once I quieted the snarling from my bride, we made our way into the breeze created by the big overhead fans and the aroma of smashed hamburgers cooking on a gridle with onions. What a glorious smell. Quigley agreed if his nose in the air was an indication. Linda Gail? I’m not sure but her nose wasn’t in the air. She has no affinity for the smell of grilled onions.
What pulled me up short was the ancient Coca Cola ice cooler which, due to its age, had been turned into an ice box. Soft drinks covered in ice, a weep hole drilled into the side to allow the water to drain into a large, graniteware dishpan as the ice melted. With visions of an eight-ounce coke filled to the rim with a package of Lance peanuts, I reached in and got a surprise.
I didn’t pull out a “Dope”, instead my fingers closed around a Cheerwine. Golly, Gee, Whiz, I haven’t seen one of these in a month of Sundays. Well, I don’t get out much and I tend not to choose soft drinks unless it is in a Cuba Libre or Jack and Coke. What a lovely surprise.
Cheerwine has been around since 1917 but for some reason it is scarce as hen’s teeth in my part of the world, or I haven’t been paying attention. Supposedly it is the oldest continuous family-owned soft drink company in the United States, the Carolina Beverage Corporation of Salisbury, NC. The family of Lewis Peeler, its founder, runs it and has for the last one hundred and five years.
From their website, “Cheerwine has a mildly sweet flavor with strong cherry notes, most notably black cherry; is burgundy-colored; and has an unusually high degree of carbonation compared to other soft drinks. The product was named for its color and taste”. According to Wikipedia, the company website also states that “it made sense to name a burgundy-red, bubbly, cherry concoction—Cheerwine.” The far superior, “Retro Cheerwine”, variant is sold in glass bottles and is sweetened with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. Despite its name, Cheerwine is not really a wine and contains no alcohol. I had scored a glass bottle.
From Zac’s Dinner Menu, Burlington, NC. Note the burgundy color that contains the “strong cherry notes”
As I sipped, I remembered the fountain version sold at the old pharmacy on main street in Monroe, NC that I mixed with another Southern libation Sun Drop. Served with a maraschino cherry, I found it to be better than the traditional cherry, lemon, Coca Cola. There is a drink called “The Whining Pirate” made with Cheerwine and Captain Morgan Rum. I’m getting a bad vibe thinking about praying to the porcelain altar after a few too many Whining Pirates.
The Cheerwine takes me to further memories of the eight-ounce Cokes, Pepsis, and Nehi grape and orange sodas at Pettus Store’s cooler…and the bubble gum machine where a one cent speckled ball got you an eight-ounce nickel Coke for free. With an added nickel I could add a pack of peanuts. Heaven for six cents if I was lucky.
Just for clarification, I used the word “Dope” because the early version of Coca Cola supposedly contained cocaine and the “old folks” called it a “Dope.” Further, if you are in the South and ask for a coke, be prepared to answer a follow-up question, “What kind of coke?” If you actually want a Coca Cola, you should ask for a Coca Cola. The descriptor coke is one of the all-encompassing titles that could include any form of soft drink in the South from Mountain Dews, Sundrops, to Royal Crown Colas. For goodness’ sake, don’t ask for a “soda pop” or it’s shortened version “pop”. You might get run out of town in a northerly direction.
“The Wild West didn’t have much in the way of forensics; when you saw the bullet hole you’d say, ‘That’s prob’ly what kilt ‘im’.” ― P.K. Vandcast
My recent trip to Texas got me chasing a pig trail looking for a “Western” rabbit hole.
I am from a generation that learned Wild West history on the “Silver Screen”, both the large one and the smaller one. Many of the producers of Wild West movies and TV programing learned theirs from “dime novels”, the forerunner of comic books, written about Wild West heroes and outlaws alike, and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show which opened to European audiences in 1887. Much that was learned was not actual history.
I admit I also learned Wild West history through authors like Max Brand and Zane Grey. Later I would add Louis Lamour and Elmore Leonard to my list of western authors read. Since…James Lee Burke’s Holland family series has made the list.
Unfortunately, most of that history, while founded on ‘glimpses’ of the real West, is based upon romanticized lies…romanticized because the truth can be quite boring.
William F. Cody, Buffalo Bill, had firsthand knowledge of the West, he was a rider for the Pony Express, an American soldier, bison hunter, and army scout. He even won a Medal of Honor in 1872. It was revoked in 1917 due to a change in military regulations. The medal was won for gallantry, but Army Scouts were “civilian” scouts. It, along with four others, was restored in the 1980s.
Poster from PBS’s American Experience
More to my point, Cody was a showman and knew what was needed to sell tickets. He sold a lot of tickets. His show would run for thirty years, mostly to sold out crowds, even though Cody had to have help mounting his horse during his later years. The show would tour Europe eight times.
The show featured gun fights, bank robberies, cattle drives, battles with Native Americans and a Wild West version of “Ben Hur’s” chariot race, with chuck wagons. Like any good Wild West show, the good guys always won…usually shooting down a “dark hat” with a six gun.
As many as one thousand actors participated in the three or four hour show and included the likes of Ned Buntline, Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, and Black rodeo star, Bill Pickett. Unlike the early movies, real Plains Indians and other Native Americans were employed, along with many women and Mexican cowboys. Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Chief Joseph, and Red Cloud, all toured with the show. Cody was in some ways an equal opportunity employer.
Rodeo star Bill Pickett-Trend Magazine
His show, along with the print media of the time would go on to influence the motion picture industry during its infancy and to a certain extent still does. The romantic Old West is still portrayed today and is just as inaccurate. Lies build upon lies. This is true of the smaller screen, TV, too.
The first motion picture ever made although that is disputed, was “The Great Train Robbery, a1903 American silent Western film made by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. During the radio days, pre-TV, Saturday Matinees featured westerns. In 1949 the first western debuted on TV, The Hopalong Cassidy Show. By 1959 there were thirty western TV shows and another fourteen aired the following year.
Frame from the Great Train Robbery
Most of those shows featured the steely eyed hero rather than working cowboys, Rawhide and a few others excepted. “Good Guys with a Gun”, square jawed, squinting eyes and a bedrock sense of what is right and wrong…and a way to enforce the right…the six gun. Matt Dillon facing the gunslinger at High Noon. Every Friday night, on TV, the bad guy drew first, and Matt still sent him to his just desserts.
Actual gunfights in the Old West were exceedingly rare, few and far between despite what we would like to believe. Fewer gunfights took place in the middle of the street at high noon. In the cow town of Dodge City, there was only one. There were shootings at the famous Long Branch Saloon but there were no “rules”. Men didn’t face off in the street at twenty paces and the quickest draw didn’t always win.
The famous Gunfight at the OK Corral didn’t take place at the OK Corral, but in a vacant lot behind it. According to all accounts, it lasted about thirty seconds, a gunfight between the bad guys and the not quite so bad guys. Good and bad were not always clearcut in the Old West.
Gunfights were violent affairs where not one, but several gunshots were usually fired. Six shooters were wildly inaccurate. Often onlookers were hit. And unlike in the movies, easy shots were often missed. Often the two shooters just continued firing until they had completely emptied their pistols and called it a day. If no one was hit, drinks might follow with a lot of backslapping. “Belly up to the bar, boys.”
Gun slingers weren’t even called gun slingers. The more authentic terms for the period would have been “gunman”, “pistoleer”, “shootist,” or just “bad man.” The term gunslinger wasn’t used until the 1920 movie, Drag Harlan. The term was adopted by Western writers and movie makers after the fact.
Most experts on the Old West also agree, it was not the “fastest gun” who won. Most gunfights went to the more accurate shot with the coolest head. Those same historians also agree, if you were shot dead it was probably with a rifle or a shotgun…and likely from behind. Like today, long guns, repeaters like the Henry or Winchester, were preferred because of range, accuracy, and rate of fire.
Still, many associate the American West with the “good guy” with a gun, the lone knight in black instead of shining armor ala Paladin in “Have Gun, Will Travel”. A Colt Single-Action tied down against his thigh instead of a sword. Overall, they are both myths, even though with most myths…there are kernels of truth.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Westerns. “High Noon” with Gary Cooper’s Will Kane I consider to be the greatest Western ever put on film…maybe the greatest film period. Man versus man, man versus elements, man versus himself. A moral dilemma, stay and fight or take his new bride and run. Kane is loyal, brave, and prideful…even when abandoned by his own town.
Will Kane (Gary Cooper) in High Noon ABC News
Will knows that it would be easier if he and his wife merely ran away from killer Frank Miller and his three henchmen, but Kane is emphatic, “They’re making me run,” he says. “I’ve never run from anybody before.” His bride saves the day and Tex Ritter provides a song now playing in my head, “Oh, don’t forsake me oh my darlin’….”
Scenes from High Noon and Oh Don’t Forsake Me Oh My Darlin’ at the end
Westerns shouldn’t be remembered just for their inaccuracies. Hollywood has reflected American culture at its best and its worse, against the backdrop of the politics and social issues of whatever time they are produced. I grew up during the Cold War and cowboys were a bit darker than Roy Rogers or Gene Autrey singing as they rode into the sunset. John Wayne in The Searchers and Alan Ladd in Shane are early examples. Clint Eastwood as the antihero “man with no name” in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. Westerns were uniquely American even when they moved to Italy.
Westerns have provided a vehicle to discuss thorny issues in American history too. Dancing with Wolves, Brokeback Mountain, Django Unchained, The Harder They Fall all made political or social statements.
According to director Quentin Tarantino, “One of the things that’s interesting about westerns in particular is there’s no other genre that reflects the decade that they were made and the morals and the feelings of Americans during that decade [more] than westerns. Westerns are always a magnifying glass as far as that’s concerned.”
I wish our culture weren’t tied so tightly to guns and the fictitious “good guy with a gun”. I have to believe the Westerns my generation grew up with contributed to the mindset. You’re not manly enough if you aren’t willing to settle it man to man with your fists or a gun.
Gun culture is so uniquely American that it is estimated that Clint Eastwood killed almost four hundred victims to the cheers of his adoring fans. According to MovieBodyCounts.com that is good for fifth place on their top twenty-five behind Arnold Schwarzenegger. Don’t despair, Clint was tops in western movies, but John Wayne didn’t make the list. John was more selective about who he killed. Having an internet site devoted to body counts should tell us much about the culture we have created.
Clint Eastwood in a “Fistful of Dollars”
In the American West created by the likes of Max Brand, Zane Grey, or Buffalo Bill, the “good guy with the gun” always wins, kisses the girl…or his horse, and rides off into the sunset. I wish this were true in real life. In real life the good guy is usually out gunned and ends up dead.
Ravings of a Mad Southerner 