Heritage

SOT IN OUR WAYS

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SOT IN OUR WAYS
“Grace changes us and change is painful.”
-Flannery O’Connor

Grace aside, for Southerners anyway, change is not only painful it is damn near impossible. Most Southerners don’t like being told what to do, how to do it…or being told no you can’t do it. Statements like “I’ve done it this way for (fill in the blank) years” are the norm along with colorful expletives accompanying any attempts at change.

We are known to dig in like mud turtles, even when faced with the fact that what we are being asked to change to is a hundred times better than what we have. Well, “Bless your heart!” With a new washing machine, my grandmother still did part of her washing in a washtub with a scrub board.

Honestly, sometimes I’d like to have a phone with a rotor instead of the one that provides me with a hundred contrasting functions including my wife being able to find me by pushing one button…and don’t get me started on my wife and her Missouri mule-like ideas about change. “And just what was so wrong about Windows98?” Southerners look at change with a jaundiced eye. Lord help us if the “Gubment” tries to get involved!

Saying the South is conservative used to be like saying that the Grand Canyon is a deep hole. Now it is more so. I fear that any slight liberal shift is due to Carpetbaggers transplanting themselves into our homeland and “rooting” out a place for themselves the same way that a wild hog “roots” out an acorn.

These days Southerners tend to vote Republican and support the party of the “status quo.” If you ask someone why they voted Republican you are likely to get an answer like, “Well, my family has voted Republican since 1964.” But why do YOU vote Republican? “You dummy, didn’t you hear me? I told you my family has voted Republican since 1964!” Southerners do hate to repeat the obvious.

This should explain how unusual it was for Strom Thurmond to successfully make the change from Democrat to Republican by way of the Dixiecrats in 1964 due to a protest “that he said” was against “big gubment” and state’s rights. It worked and he was partially responsible for the flip-flop in the political spectrum that we follow today.

I consider myself moderate simply because I will expect some change in my life. You know, change in underwear type things. No, I try not to be held hostage to any party politics, but it is hard. By saying that I am a moderate, places me so far left of some of my acquaintances that many of them think that I might as well be standing next to Karl Marx.

There are Southern liberals. Many are African American or, if white, we tend to hide our liberalness and admit to it privately only to a voting machine. Please be aware that I am speaking of Southerners born and bred, not damn Yankees.

If a Southern liberal’s friends or family were to find out that they voted for a Democrat, this revelation would be accompanied by looks that you would expect from your baptist minister if he caught you coming out of a liquor store or “Hooters.” Never mind asking why he was there because we are also big on “Do as I say do not as I do.”

Before I go on with my tirade, I should point out that our “set in our way-ness,” while a Southern white attribute, is not a trait limited to one race. My friend Butch, who is African American, is as conservative as they come, and it has rubbed off on other members of his family. Of my generation, his loooonnnng pontifications would make a Kentucky colonel or GOP politician proud!

It surprises me how much our world view is comparable despite our differences in race. I attribute this to our rural upbringing that included chopping cotton and corn and working in textiles along with parents and grandparents who would “switch deem legs.” Despite this similar history, I imagine he has voted Democrat since 1964. Why? “You dummy, didn’t you hear me? I told you my family has voted Democrat since 1964!”

I don’t understand why people in other parts of the world consider us to be uneducated and backward just because we are conservative and inflexible to change as a piece of rebar. I just thought that “tongue in cheek.” Despite improvements, our school systems still rank lower while obesity, poverty, and numbers of unwed mothers still rank higher than the rest of the nation.

The world view is of a fat, tobacco chewing redneck who is a high school dropout sporting “shit-caked” work boots and wearing a “South will rise again!” belt buckle. Usually, this redneck could stand a bit of dental work on his four teeth and is much more concerned about the Second Amendment than any other aspect of “gubment.” His mate is barefooted and wearing a dress she made herself from a feed sack. “Sugah Pie” is pregnant and showing to be quite far along despite having a babe in arms and another, a year older, in a dirty diaper and tugging at the hem of her dress. They will not have to worry about having three in high school at the same time much less college.

In front of their single-wide is a rusting pickup truck on blocks whose engine is leaking vital fluids as it sits on a sagging picnic table next to it. Yes, there is a redbone hound asleep under the truck. Is this an accurate portrayal? Hell no…and, unfortunately, hell yes! The climate is changing but for those of us who are not “sot in our ways,” the change is slow. Oh God, I may be a liberal! Please don’t tell anyone! I will try to do better.

I now live in an area of South Carolina that has become known as the “Dark Corner.” Once I thought it got its name because of our location regarding the mountains to our west that block the sun as it slips beyond the horizon. To “sorta” quote Yogi Berra, it does “get darker here quicker” but that has nothing to do with the name. Oh no.

One local historian suggested that the Dark Corner somehow got its name because Unionist and Confederate deserters invaded the area “hereabouts” to defend themselves against a “gubment” that wanted them to uphold slavery that the deserters had decided was a “rich man’s” war to maintain the “status quo” or in the case of Unionists, a “gubment” that wanted them to rebel against the Union. In and around 1864 they decided to unite and began to fortify the nearby mountains and dare the Confederate Army or local constabulary to show up. By that time, the CSA had its hands full elsewhere and there was no confrontation.

I find it interesting that since the Flag issue in my state landed like a wet cow patty dropped from a B-52, there now seem to be way more Confederate Battle Flags around. I wonder if any of my tradition-laden friends realize the “checkered heritage” of where they live. “Nope, cause hit don’t matter ‘cept that the sumbitch ‘gubment is tryin’ to take my flag!” Damn Right!

The name Dark Corner was first used during the Nullification Crisis and solidified during secession, to quote “They were staunch Unionists during the nullification and secession crises and on the outbreak of civil war were slow to support the Confederacy. ‘Few Dark Corner men. . . have volunteered,’ a Greenvillian wrote in August 1861. ‘It is to be hoped that some light will break upon their darkness.'”

Another example of old traditions dying hard is the production of “tax-free” distilled spirits. Through the depression and into modern times, the Dark Corner was known for its production of moonshine. Not just any moonshine but what has been described as a particularly “fine moonshine.” That is not an oxymoron.

The smoothness supposedly came from the water. In the late Seventies it was also known for producing a particularly high grade of “killer weed” known as “Glassy Mountain Gold.” Weed did not replace moonshining because moonshining was the traditional drug of choice and “the good old boys ain’t about to change.”

During the depression poor families resorted to illegally distilling spirits to pay their taxes and to make a living that the “gubment” was attempting to take away, according to their “way ah thinking.” Well, this is 2022 and it is still being made. One morning in the late 2000s, I stepped out to begin my morning run and was assaulted by the sharp smell of sour mash cookin’. Several years later I found a broken down still on a stream located on my land. They could have, at least, offered me a taste!

I was somewhat shocked to see the face of the father of one of my former players pasted across my TV on the Six O’ Clock News. He was, and is still, a respected “gentleman peach farmer” of high means. His offense? Making “shine.” His defense was that his daddy had made it and his daddy before him and…. He did not need the money to pay his taxes or even take the kids to Disneyworld, nor is he very apologetic. It was a time-honored tradition to make the “family recipe” free of “gubment” taxes and he was “sot in his ways.” My guess is that despite the hefty fine that he paid, he is still “sot in his ways.”

Most of the Southerners I know don’t make shine and have more of their own teeth than I do. A few wave the flag and chew tobacco. Many of us own rusty old pickups. One even has the engine out of his. It’s in his double-bay garage, the one he built to work on his cars that includes a hydraulic lift rack and engine hoist. There is nothing but food on his picnic table and a German Shepard to guard it all. Despite his lack of a college degree, his home, garage, and farm are a lot nicer than mine.

Uneducated? Not where it counts, it would seem, because they don’t award degrees for common sense and work ethic. He doesn’t chew, dip, or drink his spirits out of a Mason jar and is more likely to be in flip-flops than in “shit kickers.” Jimmy Buffett meets Mr. Greenjeans? He also doesn’t wave the Battle Flag, but he is as Southern as the day is long and, I think, more of what the New, New South is about, despite being set in his conservative ways. Yes, he does still vote Republican. “You dummy, didn’t you hear me? I told you my family has voted Republican since 1964!”

“PEPSI COLA”-A LESSON IN PREJUDICE

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In the early 1960’s our Southern heritage was being assaulted with Yankee government mandates to end “separate but equal” in favor of desegregation “with all deliberate speed.” The Deep South was deliberately dragging its feet. Alabama’s flamboyant governor George Wallace probably expressed our segregationist attitudes best when he attempted to stand up to that Yankee government exclaiming, “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Our own native son and segregationist Strom Thurmond said, “All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools, our churches and our places of recreation and amusement.” Strom would even help lay the foundation for today’s modern GOP when he exchanged his Democratic blue for Republican red because Democratic President Lyndon Johnson stabbed the Solid South in the back by signing into law the Civil Right’s Act of 1964. Thurmond claimed it was in protest of big government and State’s Rights. Sound familiar? Wasn’t Strom a candidate for president on the Dixiecrat ticket? Since Strom’s defection the only Democratic presidential hopeful to take a majority of deep Southern states was Jimmy Carter from Georgia. Considering how well that turned out, I doubt that will happen again. Two years prior to the Civil Right’s Act of 1964, in 1962, the debate over the Confederate flag flying on the Capitol grounds would begin when the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia was raised over the Capitol Dome to commemorate the Civil War centennial…and to “shoot a bird” at the federal government’s attempts to push us toward desegregation.

Despite it being racist times I don’t remember my community being a racist hotbed. It certainly wasn’t a hotbed of racist rhetoric. There were plenty of pro-segregationist meetings in our little part of the world, though. Community meetings with the School Board, superintendent and principal were held in, what I thought back then, was the spacious auditorium of our school. I remember the principal and superintendent, along with the local school board fielding questions from a packed “white” house. One question that was never quite answered was “What are we going to do about those Negro ‘Bucks’ walking the hallways with our daughters?” I realize now how fearful some parents were that their daughters were going to be carried off and raped…or worse, that they might willingly walk off on their own before giving up their most prized gift—gasp!—gladly.

Despite this not being an original thought, I believe that race relations in South Carolina (you may insert racism) is the product of fear that has plagued South Carolina since slavery days when the slave population outnumbered the white population. That fear manifested itself in the “well-founded” terror of a potential slave revolt on one side or the prospect of reprisals caused by revolts on the other. In a few accounts, it would appear that reprisals were carried out because there might have been a brief thought of a revolt. This dread would be continued and intensified after the Civil War. Panic mounted over the contemplation of retaliations by the former slaves and that their “unbridled African passions” would be unleashed on our innocent white female population. (What were the African ladies doing?)

The centerpiece of our hate was the resentment by white supremacists, a majority of the white population throughout the South specifically and the US in general, that we were going to be groveling at the feet of black lawmakers. The old “loss of status bug-a-boo” was primary on the minds of old white “planter class” who had had the power and wanted it back. While some blacks were elected, all of that would change with the end of Reconstruction and the antebellum status quo would return and be maintained with De Jure legislation that became known as Jim Crow laws. Later this would be upheld with the Supreme Court railroad case Plessy v Ferguson which made “separate but equal” the law of the land and which intensified the trepidation and hate on both sides of our heritage.

Separate but equal did not seem to be a problem in Indian Land. It did not seem Brown’s “with all deliberate speed” could be an issue at this time but, for reasons that eluded my six-year-old mind, people were worried. We did not have a huge population of African-Americans and none of them were carrying spears or wearing leopard skins like in the Tarzan movies. They tended to live around Van Wyck, the brick making capitol of the state, or out past Uncle James’s farm which might as well have been in…deepest Africa. Maggie Cureton’s family lived way, way, way across the road and by the 1960’s they were long gone.

While I had seen African-American males I would not meet my first African- American adult male until the very late fifties when we remodeled our house. A black brick mason with the interesting name of “Pepsi Cola” Mobley was hired to add the brick veneer to our original home along with the two new rooms added onto each end.
“Pepsi Cola” was a stud, as were his two sons who served as helpers and apprentice brick layers. It was their responsibility to carry the bricks and “mud” to their father as he did the placing of the brick runs. I found the whole endeavor to be interesting but not nearly as interesting as the “colored” folk who were carrying out the tasks. The acorns did not fall far from the tree! Close-cropped “steel wool” hair over clear ebony skin; they possessed the whitest of stereotypical teeth below broad flat noses and wide cheekbones. All three were powerfully built with muscles bulging and glistening with sweat from handling and placing the bricks. “Pepsi Cola’s” decades of brick work had given him shoulders so wide I doubted his ability to walk through a door without turning sideways along with hands that were beaten, scarred and as rough as the slabs on the side of my grandparent’s barn. All three started the day in tattered yet clean tees and denim pants that had patches patched over patches. As the heat of the day intensified, shirts would be discarded exposing broad, powerful chests that were covered in tight black curly hair. Curiously, whenever my grandmother or mother stepped outside, there was a bit of a scramble to put their shirts back on. “Pepsi” was gregarious, singing Negro hymns and laughing his way through the day or “holding court” for anyone near by, which was usually the eight or nine-year old “little man” that was me. I found him to have the most interesting accent to go along with a lot of words that began with “dees” ended in “esses.” His sons were the exact opposite – quiet and, I would say, somewhat sullen. In hindsight, my guess is that there was little way to wedge a word in edgewise with “Pepsi Cola” around.

I learned a lesson of the times during the course of the remodeling. Sent to carry a jug of water out to the workers, I asked Mr. Mobley, “Mr. Mobley, would you like some water?” “Eyes do, Eyes do, indeeds, Little Man,” he answered with his best grin. In turn, I gave the sons water and returned to my grandmother who informed me of my grievous faux pas, “You don’t refer to ‘coloreds’ by mister unless you use their first name.” Okay, “Mister Pepsi Cola!”

For me and the rest of South Carolina, Separate but Equal would hold on tenaciously until my senior year when “token integration” was introduced. Over the next few years, mainly 1969 and 1970, full integration and busing would rule the day when made possible by the threat of losing federal funds instead of earlier threats of federal troops which could not help but bring back references to Reconstruction. Scenes of angry whites meeting buses carrying black children had been broadcast nationwide on our little black and white television since 1957 in Arkansas. Luckily these scenes were not played out in our little corner of the world; however, throughout the state white families fled their public schools, preferring instead to turn down federal subsidies and send their children to private schools bearing names of Confederate generals and politicians. Forty-five years later many of those “academies” still exist, especially in areas that can be described as socially and economically lacking and whose public schools are still predominantly black.

Most of our fears have not been realized. Our most prized possessions it would seem, our women, were not carried off and gang-raped by angry blacks. I guess some white supremacist would say that things are worse because there are A LOT of BIRACIAL folks walking the streets and country roads of the South today. I wonder by what means they got here? Oddly enough, there is even one in the White House! Could it be that most of us are finally overcoming our fears?

I wrote this in the language of the times and it was not meant to offend anyone…except racist and white supremacist. I hope I was successful.

BARNS AND BUTTERMILK

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Sitting across the road from my house is an old red barn. Some one hundred and twenty years ago that same barn sat on land that was part of an original two-hundred-and-fifty-acre tract of farmland formally known as The Bramlett Place. By 1987, when we signed over our lives over to it, that original tract of land had shrunk to eighty-five acres which was eighty more acres than we were looking for.

The original tract had been dispersed to who knows where. I know part of it was sold as a tract of land across the road because, at some moment in history, the original barn was separated from the farmhouse by what is known today as Scenic Highway 11 or the Cherokee Foothills Highway. My garden is located directly across the road from the barn and there is not a day that goes by that I don’t commit the deadly sin of envy because I covet the barn. I guess it could be worse; I could be coveting my neighbor’s wife.

I love old barns. I stop and take pictures of old barns and try to visualize how they would have looked in their “hay” day. I have even drawn plans for my own barn that I am going to build one of these days, if that day ever comes before the sands of the hourglass run out. I love what I would call old southern barns that aren’t tobacco barns, although even tobacco barns beat the gambrel or saltbox roof…for looks. For some reason I associate gambrel-roofed barns with the barbarian part of the world located above the Mason-Dixon Line. I’m sure that, for usable space, gambrel roofs allow you to put more hay in the loft but how much hay do you need for one horse and one cow?

I associate barns with my youth. One plow horse and one milk cow were all we had, and our barn didn’t have those nifty advertisements painted on the side either. “Visit Lookout Mountain”, “See Rock City” or “Drink Coca Cola” would have been nice, but you could not have seen it from the road anyway.

My grandparents’ barn was a slab-sided barn. For the uneducated, slabs were the outer bark covered planks that were first trimmed from the log that is being processed. Because a log has a rounded surface, slabs cut from a log had one round side and one flat side. Since they were cut from different sized logs there was no rhyme or reason for their width. This made them only useful as barn siding or for burning in a wood stove or fireplace. We did both.

My grandfather and his brother, Banks, ran a sawmill during the winter months to help make ends meet until my grandfather began working full time at Springs Mills. The sawmill itself consisted of a large rotating circular saw blade that was turned with a pulley belt attached to an incredibly old tractor. I do not know this for sure, but it makes the story in my head warmer to believe that Paw Paw not only built the barn with his own hands but also built it from the lumber that he and his brother milled themselves. True or not, that is the story that I have decided to believe.

As a child that barn seemed huge but, as I sit here as an adult, I realize it could not have been that big. It had only a pair of stalls on one side and a tack room and workshop on the other. It was separated by an entry way large enough to accommodate an old wagon and various plows, planters, and a drag-harrow. Above it all was a loft that was a child’s dream of a playhouse…until I found the twenty-foot snakeskin. Okay, it might have been a little shorter.

Cowboys and Indians, war games and hide-and-seek were all played in and around that barn and in its loft. One game that almost got out of hand was played after seeing some old western movie where the hero jumps from the second-story balcony onto his horse and, without so much as a grunt, rides off after the desperados.

My best bud decided he wanted to imitate Roy Rogers but because we didn’t have a second-story balcony or a horse at the time we decided to use the loft and his bicycle as stand-ins. That didn’t turn out too well and, thankfully, he jumped first while I was holding his bike. Ouch! Not that I was a chicken or anything, but I decided quickly that I didn’t want to imitate him. I wonder if he ever had any children.

One of the first clear memories that I have as a child is of following Nannie, my grandmother, into the barn at dark thirty to milk the cow. Winter or summer, clear or rainy, it did not matter. The cow had to be milked and it was milked every morning before my grandfather returned from his third shift at Springs in his ’49 Oldsmobile Rocket 88.

During the spring and summer, after a breakfast that always included fresh milk, biscuits, grits or oatmeal and eggs, he would trade the Olds for the plow horse and head to the fields before finally going to bed in the early afternoon to rest for his next shift that began at ten that night. My clear memory is of Nannie milking that cow while squatting on her heels in the manner that only country folks can seem to achieve. The memory must have been of an event that took place in winter because my memory is of the steam first rising from the water Nannie used to wash the cow’s udder and then from the milk itself as it hit the cold milk bucket.

Before being refrigerated, the milk would be placed in a clear pitcher and allowed to separate. Cream would rise to the top and be skimmed off and used for baking or to “whiten” the bitter Luzianne coffee with chicory that my grandparents preferred. Of course, there would be raw, unpasteurized milk for the rest of us.

Once a week it would seem, leftover milk would be poured into a churn and turned into sweet, pale-yellow butter and its byproduct, buttermilk, which unlike the butter, was not sweet at all. While I cook with it, buttermilk is not something that I have ever developed a taste for so. I got lost on that path around home.

I remember meals that involved leftover cornbread crumbled in cold glasses of buttermilk. In my mind’s eye I see both of my grandparents wiping their mouths after finishing off a glass of buttermilk and smiling in such a way to make me believe it was the best liquid libation one could have. Eventually the “buttermilk gone bad” would be fed to the hogs.

Periodically, I drink a little buttermilk just to remind myself that I still don’t like it and that I don’t really know how you tell if buttermilk has gone bad. Aside from what was used to make biscuits, it all could have gone to the hogs. Luckily, my youthful memories are as rich as the raw unpasteurized sweet milk in my grandmother’s milk bucket. There are only a few memories that remind me of the soured buttermilk we fed to the hogs.

SONG OF THE SOUTH

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I really can’t think of anything that I dislike about living in the South…ummmm…humidity and mosquitoes can be found anywhere. Right? And sometimes we only have two seasons – “damn cold to damn hot”… in just the blink of an eye. I remember a “damn Yankee” football player from the early 90’s who had joined us from one of the “I” states, Indiana I think, and who, before our first August football practice, explained to me that “I can handle the heat. It gets hot in Indiana, too.” An hour later, after his eyes had rolled back in his head, I was cooling him off with ice water-soaked towels and forcing him to take sips of Gatorade. Yes, it does get hot in Indiana but, “It ain’t the heat here. It’s the humidity!”

Mosquitoes are just a fact of life in the South and I praise God that they don’t grow to the size of vultures. On a trip to the coast, I remember making an impromptu nature call where the only facility available was an old fire road in the middle of a pine forest off Highway 17. As I completed my task, I looked down to ensure nothing got caught in the zipper and could see a cloud of mosquitoes attempting to make off with my man part. Itchy and it was in November! #*&%^*! And I did zip up too quickly!
So, heat, humidity, and mosquitoes notwithstanding, I love everything about the “real South”…although sometimes I have had a hard time finding the real South that hides in the paradoxes that we, as Southerners, seem to embrace…or ignore. A quote made by many – “We prepare our tea with hot water, then cool it off with ice, sweeten it with lots of sugar and then add lemon to make it sour” -illustrates just one of those paradoxes. So in regard to the “real South”, it is hard to find something when you are not sure what to look for.

Most of my education about this “real South” came via a black and white TV or books, although there were a few trips to the Center Theater in Fort Mill or the drive-ins located in Rock Hill or Lancaster. I remember seeing the movie To Kill a Mockingbird with my parents as a pre-teen and I certainly did not understand the dynamics of the movie until I read the book as a young adult. Even then most of the dynamics escaped me. In the Heat of the Night was another movie with the same dynamics. By 1967 I understood the racism and the Jim Crow laws that went with it but, because of the home of my youth, I paid little attention to those dynamics. I hate to admit that I did not see Gone with the Wind until college. After reading the book I wondered how it actually found its way to the silver screen. For those of you who live above the Mason-Dixon Line, the mansion Tara, Scarlett, Rhett, and Ashley, along with dozens of happy slaves that went with the movie, was just the way it really was— wink, wink— in the “real South.” One of my favorite movies, despite the fact that I grew up on the wrong side of the equation, was John Wayne, William Holden, Constance Towers, and Althea Gibson vehicle The Horse Soldiers. I believe it did capture the best and worst of both sides during the later part of the Rebellion, including the gallantry and brutality on both sides. The scene based upon a real-life attack by the Virginia Military Cadets still sends chills up and down my spine. Ah! There are those pesky words: REAL LIFE. At least the movie scene ended with only a spanking instead of the deaths that did occur at the Battle of New Market in May of 1864.

For some reason, probably out of boredom, I picked up one of my father’s novels – a historical romance novel that took place near Antebellum New Orleans entitled The Foxes of Harrow by Frank Yerby. Later I also read its sequel The Vixen and several of his other works. I don’t know if it was the underlying eroticism or the fact it was a historical novel (I’m pretty sure it was the underlying eroticism!) but I was hooked. I believe that it colored my thinking, especially when I read and saw Gone with the Wind. There were no stereotypical and happy, “Aw shucks, Massa” darkies in Yerby’s books. It would be much later than I would realize that Yerby was bi-racial. A Georgian who experienced enough racism to leave his country for Spain, he would posthumously be inducted as a member of the Georgia Writer’s Hall of Fame. Paradoxes again; I would guess?

The South that I grew up in was as far from Tara as it was from the sun, even on the hottest day. It certainly wasn’t The South I read about. The South I grew up in would have been more like Mayberry without a main street and could have been portrayed in “Song of the South,” by Alabama not the Disney movie by the same name. That movie took place during Reconstruction and has been accused of being racist because of such characters as “The Tar Baby.” Because of this alleged racism, I haven’t seen it in years even though I find myself singing “Zippidy Doo Dah” on occasion. This example almost makes my point that we need to recognize the paradoxes of our history that include racism and segregation. That history is as diametrically opposed to my home and Tara. The mansions and associated lifestyle, the fine gentlemen and beautiful women, along with the happy slaves that were portrayed in these movies and many of the books that I read, seemed to be a far cry from the people and farms that I envision from the window of my mind. There certainly were few, if any, African-Americans, stereotypical or not. My history or my heritage, the story of my grandparents and parents, would be better portrayed in Alabama’s words:

“Cotton on the roadside, cotton in the ditch
We all picked the cotton but we never got rich
Daddy was a veteran, a southern democrat
They oughta get a rich man to vote like that
Sing it…
Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain’t nobody looking back again”

Unfortunately, after the Charleston massacre and the firestorm that erupted around the Confederate Battle Flag, it would appear that we are looking back again and some are singing “Away, Away, Away Dixieland.”

Common Ground

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Excerpt from “Winning Was Never the Only Thing…”

“There is a long hair that doesn’t like the short hair
For being’ such a rich one, that will not help the poor one
Different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and Scooby dooby doo-bee
Oh, shasha, we got to live together”
“Everyday People”-Sly and the Family Stone

I was not a happy camper. As I returned from my early Sunday morning run, I had gotten a text from former player and student Jamie Bennett. He was preaching at his childhood church, Gethsemane National Baptist Church.

Jamie, now James to everyone but me, would be described, according to my religious upbringing, as a Lay Minister. He does not have a divine degree and is not ordained in a traditional sense although within his own church he has been ordained.

I had heard him preach before He is a good preacher and a true man of God. So why was I not a happy camper? It had been my intention to go to church after completing my run this Father’s Day. It was because he is a BLACK man of God preaching to a BLACK church.

What do I have against black men of God? Nothing except that they attend black churches whose services tend to run awfully long . . . and then some. I knew my wife was not going to let me out of this one. Well to be honest, my conscience was not going to let me out of it either. Being invited meant a lot to me, especially on Father’s Day and going was more important than an early lunch and an afternoon sitting in the sun. I just hoped my stomach would agree with me.

Both Jamie and his brother Boo, or Carolus as he is now known, played for me at Riverside. Both were pitchers, both were outfielders and they both had their struggles hitting pitches that bent. During the late Seventies and early Eighties, I taught with Jamie’s and Carolus’s mother Carol Ann, but it was when my wife came on the stage that our families became close.

Linda Gail had taught most of the Bennett-Brooks clan elementary physical education. Linda Gail and Mother Carol Ann developed a bond that gradually expanded to include both sides of the Bennett-Brooks family: grandparents, dads, sister, brothers, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and many cousins, who were, in some cases, many generations removed. This is a huge family. They rent motels and cordon off city blocks when they have their family reunions, and it seems Linda Gail taught them all.

More importantly, they are tight. Tight like a moonshiner family from the Blue Ridge. Mess with one and you find yourself messin’ with them all, especially the sisters and sisters-in-law. By the time younger brother Carolus had come along, Linda and Carol Ann’s bond had strengthened to the point of a sisterhood of sorts. So, honestly, my relationship with the family expanded when I came along for the ride as Linda became matriarch, Grandmother Chancey’s adopted daughter.

Okay, I was wrong. I cannot totally come back to Jamie and his family until I give you some personal history and further confessions. This story really has less to do with religion but has everything to do with cultural differences which involve religion and a gazillion of other diverse variances between the races. It is called diversity, right?

I was a child in the Fifties and a teen in the Sixties and am a product of all the prejudices that were taught to me during that period. Even though my family was one of the least prejudiced that I knew of, I do not say that with pride because they were still prejudiced. I recognized that there was a separation between the races in addition to cultural differences even if I didn’t quite understand them.

Watching the nightly news, I saw buses burned, church bombings and fire hoses along with German Shepherds turned loose on masses of black people while I attempted to enjoy my Birdseye TV dinner. It did not make me particularly proud tof my prejudices whether I understood the dynamics or not. Now that I understand the dynamics,

I have spent the best part of fifty years trying to both get over and to atone for my prejudices. Most of the time I have been successful although there have been times that I have reverted to the prejudiced hick I don’t want to be. The good news is that unlike a lot of the other prejudiced hicks, I feel bad about it when it happens, pray for forgiveness, and thankfully, my prejudices rear their ugly heads less and less as time marches on.

Much of my racial understanding is as conflicted as is my racial makeup, which I am certain, is made up of all recognized races except Oriental – and who knows, I do have a love of Chinese food.

Nannie’s best fishing friend in addition to being part time hired help, Maggie Cureton, was “colored” and in my mind’s eye I can still see them both sitting under a shade tree gutting and scaling their catch, joking, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company. It was the same when there was ironing or wash to be done.

They had a lot in common. Both had lived hard before and during the Great Depression and had lost their husbands. Before and during the depression, Nannie and Pawpaw had farmed “on the lien” while Miss Maggie and family were sharecroppers. Either way their lot was a hard way to make a living. While Nannie treated Miss Maggie as if she were white, I was once taken to task over referring to black brick mason Pepsi Cola Mobley, which was not his real name, as Mr. Mobley. Nannie informed me that you didn’t refer to “coloreds” as Mister. Miss Maggie, Mr. Mobley, Confliction! I should have called him Mister Pepsi Cola.

It is hard to understand and easy to fear what you have never interacted with. I had little interaction with other races during my pre-teaching years. Occasionally I played with the Cureton grandchildren, but it was rare, and it certainly did not increase when I went off to primary school.

Despite the Brown vs. Board of Education court ruling, blacks and whites did not attend school together. Here in South Carolina and in most of the Deep South, when our state governments heard “with all deliberate speed” we focused upon deliberate rather than speed. So, as I entered the first grade in 1956, my class was “lily white.”

The Cureton grandchildren were bused eighteen miles away to an all-black school. It was still that way when I entered junior high school and high school and did not change until my senior year when “token” integration was forced upon the state by that “Yankee” government in Washington. The eighth grade Springs twins, Charles and Leroy, became our “tokens.” Nothing changed when I went off to college either. Newberry College was so white it would blind you in bright sunlight. I did work with a few African Americans but even in the cotton mill in the sixties and seventies, African Americans were few and far between and all were older adults. Even as I developed friendships in my teaching career, I felt that there was always a wall of distrust that kept friendships from developing as deeply as they might have. Thankfully by the time I had gotten to the end of my career that had changed. There I developed deep friendships with people of many races; most that I hope will survive for the rest of my life.

Jamie was not the first African American that I coached nor was younger brother Carolus the last. I have been lucky to coach many fine young men, some who just happened to be black. Because of Linda’s relationship with Carol Ann, Carolus and Jamie became the first that I developed a relationship and understanding with that went deeper than the classroom or athletic field. With most of my players, white, black or in between, I keep up with those that I can, enjoy the interaction when we cross paths and consider them all to be special, but basically they have their lives and I have mine. That is not the case with Jamie and Carolus. They are a part of my life and I am proud of what they have accomplished. It has also led to understanding. When I say black now, it is simply an easy way to describe who I am talking about. You know, “The black kid that pitched for me back in the early nineties that gave up that gonzo shot to Chad Roper” or the black kid who was an All State singer, church goer, and outstanding student, diligent son to his sick and dying father and a rock of strength to his mother. In other words, the great kid who just happens to be black.

The same thing could be said about Carolus although our understanding may have taken longer and it was not my fault. Carolus lived on my route home so it was inevitable that, by mutual agreement between Linda Gail and Carol Ann, I would be enlisted to become a taxi and would drop him off from practices. What ensued was a very long, silent and for me uncomfortable five mile drive. Carolus would not speak unless spoken to and then would only answer in the shortest possible manner. The only Carolus-initiated communication was the “Thank you” that I got when he exited my truck, and I got one every time I dropped him off. I should point out that I am quite sure that listening to Willie Nelson and George Jones while riding around in a big Ford four by four made for an uncomfortable trip for a young black male as well. With adulthood, all of that has changed except for his thank yous.

These drives were not quite as uncomfortable as I remember the first Bennett Fourth of July party my wife and I attended. It was a lesson on what it is like to be in a minority and the way that I am sure a lot of my black friends and acquaintances felt when they showed up for parties hosted and attended mostly by whites. It did not help that I knew maybe ten of the fifty plus people there and the only person that I would guess to be more uncomfortable would be the “lady of ill repute sitting on the front pew at church.” I don’t think that I imagined the stares and silence that greeted us as we came through the door. I am sure there were a few questions like “Who are they and why are they here?” running through some people’s minds. With introductions and explanations this changed, but that wall I talked about earlier was still firmly in place. Over the years, the party has become much more comfortable. I am sure that the walls of distrust still exist but believe that many holes have been opened up in it. As I sat and gorged myself on pulled pork and ribs along with some of the best potato salad of all time, I became involved in conversation with Uncle Butch, a member of my generation. It did not take long to realize that we did not grow up much differently despite our skin color. Our roots were stuck firmly in the soil and the textiles that were produced from it. The only difference was the color of our skin and the distrust fostered by slavery, Jim Crow and the racism that is still evident today. Funny odd, now, twenty years or so later, if we are unable to attend the party for some reason, our absence is a source of concern.

Today I look at racial diversity as a smorgasbord of delights. I believe we should just focus on how diversely different people party. How can you be distrustful of people who produce such wonderful food? My life without Latin, Soul, Oriental and Cajun foods would not be life ending but life would not be as joyous, especially without a Belgian or German beer or maybe some Tennessee whiskey to go with it. Someone might as well play some Blues, Reggae or a little Zydeco to help the atmosphere along. It is just as easy to focus on the positives about diversity as it is the negatives and again with knowledge comes understanding. I thank the Bennett’s friendship for that.

Incidentally, the service that Jamie preached was wonderful and thought provoking. Brother Carolus sang, large portions of the Brooks-Bennett family were in attendance and the service was uplifting and motivating in every way. I think every person there shook my hand and wished me a happy Fathers Day. Their pastor gave me a huge bear hug and has been in contact twice since the service. Truthfully, we did “make a joyful noise unto the Lord” and because of that I don’t remember it being a longer service than normal. In fact, it might not have been long enough.
“Winning…” may be purchased through Amazon using the link: http://goo.gl/Saivuu

A Quest

/ cigarman501 / 1 Comment

One Southerner’s search for the truth about his Southern Heritage and Hate

The aftermath of the Charleston Massacre has caused me to examine one of the very cornerstones of my life – my Southern heritage as it relates to “War of the Rebellion.”  Recent calls to remove monuments and rename buildings has renewed this examination.

Born on an Easter Sunday (April 9, 1950) a mere eighty-five years to the day the most revered man in the South, General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, I grew up re-fighting “The War of Northern Aggression.”

As a child I really did not understand any of the dynamics of our Civil War and, at one time, could not understand “why” North Carolina had invaded South Carolina and “why” much of the fighting had taken place in far away from Virginia or “out west.”  In my defense, I was very young and uneducated.

I thought that it might have been something like the Gillette “Fight of the Week” and held in a neutral ring. This was in 1957 and I know it was this year because of my favorite TV series – the one year wonder “The Gray Ghost” – aired only in 1957. This program is what caused the “why” questions to first be asked as it chronicled the exploits of Confederate cavalry commander John Singleton Mosby and his men who rode rings around the foolish “Damn Yankees” located in distant Virginia.

A year or so later, after the worst decision since James Buchanan sent the “Star of the West” to provision Fort Sumter, “The Gray Ghost” was canceled. By this time I had had a geography lesson or five and my program of choice became “The Rebel” starring Nick Adams as a former Confederate soldier and aspiring journalist named Johnny Yuma.

Complete with Rebel kepi, Colt revolver, and a sawed-off shotgun, Yuma traveled the Texas countryside righting wrongs and defending the weak while making amends and trying to come to grips with what he had experienced during the “War of the Rebellion.” He would then write about his travels and adventures in a journal that had been given to him by a friend. I too wore my kepi and packed my cap pistols proudly as I defended the chickens and hogs around my grandparent’s old barn.

Both Mosby and Yuma were heroic figures, Mosby in real life, although maligned like James Longstreet for choosing to serve in Grant’s “Yankee government” after the war, and Yuma as a knightly character in black and white television. They were portrayed as chivalrous characters like all of the men who wore gray or butternut and who fought to preserve the Southern way of life against the invading blue-clad Yankee hordes. They were as knightly as the character Ivanhoe in Walter Scott’s book by the same title.

For some reason, “Ivanhoe seemed to be required reading in order to become a true Southern gentleman. I am unsure if I am a gentleman but I have read the book and saw the Robert Taylor version of the movie repeatedly. I confess that I still watch it to lust after a young Elizabeth Taylor whose character Rebecca is the Jewish object of Norman Knight Brian De Bois-Guilbert’s desire as played by a way-too-old George Sanders.

I was too enamored by Elizabeth Taylor’s green eyes to recognize the parallels between the Civil War and the movie at the time but realize now that there were many. The story and movie are about Ivanhoe’s quest to ransom King Richard’s return to the English throne. He led an outmanned and ill-equipped army that featured Robin of Loxley and his “merry men.”

The movie emphasized the cultural strife between the Normans and the Saxons and their class inequalities and also displayed the racism and anti-Semitism shown to Rebecca and her father Isaac. All could be metaphors for the United States during the period leading up to and including the war.

During the climactic “wager of battle,” Rebecca sits stoically awaiting her fate as Sir Brian De Bois-Guibert, who is willing to destroy what he loves rather than allow her to love another, seems to have the upper hand until Ivanhoe prevails and mortally wounds the Yankee at the end. Did I say Yankee? I really meant the Norman knight.

To the point, Ivanhoe was just like our chivalrous young men who rallied to the flag to defend their states. It was always assumed that they would find a way to prevail at the end against the more numerous and better equipped Yankee invaders. Instead, the best the South had to offer spilled their blood and the blood of their enemy. The South was destroyed in the attempt…well…maybe reborn.

A great yarn.  It became much more than a story for those chivalrous young men who rallied to the flag. Two of those young men were John R. and Marion DeKalb Rogers, my great, great, great and great, great grandfathers. Both enlisted in what would be Company H, Twelfth Regiment of the South Carolina Volunteer Infantry in August of 1861.

John, according to family tradition, died of typhoid fever less than six months into his service but died under the flag NONE-THE-LESS. Marion would go on to fight in twenty-eight battles including Gettysburg. Most of these battles were fought under the standard that we know as the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia and were led by the famed Confederate commander General Robert E. Lee. Unfortunately for the South, it would be the Yankee flag and Sherman’s “bummers” who would have the last say in South Carolina and Grant’s Army of the Potomac in Virginia.

According to my great, great grandfather’s military records, despite fighting gallantly in a rearguard action to allow Lee’s Army to escape Petersburg, he and a thousand other Confederate soldiers would be overwhelmed and captured at a Virginia village named Sutherland (Southerland?) Station on April 3. (According to actual historical records the battle took place on the 2nd.) He was lucky as over five hundred were killed in action. This was less than a week before Lee would surrender but not have to hand over his sword to Grant at the McLean House at Appomattox.

After my grandfather’s capture, he would be held at Hart’s Island in New York until his release in July. Of the original one hundred and thirty-seven recruits in Company H, only seventeen made it home alive. M. D. Rogers was one of those lucky seventeen, which for my particular lineage was fortuitous.

After the massacre in Charleston, there was a decision to remove from the South Carolina Capitol Grounds the Battle Flag – the same flag that my granddads times two and three fought under and the same one that many Southerners are now trying to keep flying. Their point has been that the South was not defending its peculiar institution of slavery as one of the reasons to go to war. According to many supporters, slavery was just a “side issue.”

My great grandfathers were part of the eighty to ninety percent who shouldered arms but were not slaveholders. So…they could not have fought to uphold slavery, could they? The war was about regional rivalries. It was about how the Northern economic interests desired to control the South, a “red-haired” stepchild, with illegal tariffs so as to ensure that Southern cotton was cheap when it was acquired by the Northern factories. They wanted to steal Southern chattel and not honor laws that would return Southern property to us. It was an argument over State’s Rights and sovereignty.

When we had had enough and seceded from the Union, the Federals broke a promise and took over an uncompleted fort in Charleston Harbor. Later, when an attempt was made to re-provision this fort, our gallant military opened fire to drive the ship away. Eventually, we opened fire on Fort Sumter itself in order to force the Federal garrison to abandon our newly acquired property and the rest is history…or is it?

A teaching friend of mine and a true Son of the South often makes the argument that Civil War history has been victimized by “revisionists” who have attempted to defame the South with inaccurate and adjusted claims. Until a while ago, a dozen or so years before Charleston, I would have agreed with him. Unfortunately, I believe now that we both have been victimized by what became known as “The Lost Cause.”

I also acknowledge that I will never be able to convince him or other diehard “Sons of the Confederacy” of that victimization. The phrase Lost Cause was coined by Virginia writer Edward Pollard who wrote the book The Lost Cause in 1866. (1)

In an essay about Pollard’s book, Origins of the Lost Cause, Michael Speiser of the University of Virginia states, and I quote because he says it better than I ever could, “In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, a number of white southern writers and political leaders worked to construct a favorable history of the old South and the Confederacy.

Seeking vindication of the white South in the wake of seemingly crushing defeat, they resurrected pro-white southern imagery and ideology of earlier years. In doing so, these advocates for the white South constructed a “Lost Cause” mythology and memory of the Civil War and white Southern history and culture. Specifically, they celebrated the South’s natural beauty and idyllic plantations, supported a white supremacist racial hierarchy in southern society, claimed liberty as a southern principle and the American Revolution as southern heritage, wrapped their sectionalism in a constitutional theory of state sovereignty, and nostalgically glorified the southern past.” (2)

One might want to think of Gone with the Wind or the original Birth of a Nation at this time.The Lost Cause was what I was taught and in turn, I repeated this same history when I taught it, at least at the beginning of my career. My indoctrination was so complete that I would not dig more deeply into my heritage until many years later. My teaching wasn’t about slavery but about Southern rights with “Tara’s Theme” playing in the background.

Most slaveholders held one or two slaves, not hundreds, and only ten or twenty percent owned slaves at all. Most slave owners weren’t abusive. Why would you beat something as valuable as a slave? Would you beat a horse or is that a bad analogy?  Those were the “facts” I was taught.

Scenes of happy slaves singing while toiling in the fields flitted through my mind again accompanied by more strains from “Tara’s Theme.” The North was attempting to commandeer Southern cotton and the profits made on the backs of these happy slaves for the sake of the Northern industry. Dah, Dah, Daaaah, Da, Da, Daah …wait… that was the theme to the “High and the Mighty” not “Tara’s Theme.”

The Lost Cause IS a part of our true heritage, but not our true history. So is the heritage of hate that racism, slavery, the Civil War and its aftermath have left to us…even today. So is the fear that it all fostered…for both races. It is the heritage of both SOUTHERN BLACKS AND WHITES and doesn’t even begin to cover the heritage of Jim Crow, forced prison labor, red lined districts, etc.

Our Southern heritage is not just a white heritage; it is also a black heritage like two sides of the same coin. We all have to recognize this fact and accept it. I believe that we can keep our heritage, both black and white, despite or, maybe, in spite of the hate and fear.

Much like an abuser in a twelve-step program, we must be truthful and that starts with being truthful to ourselves. One place to start might be to recognize that our racism is as much an American phenomenon as it is a Southern one. Northerners, Westerners, African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians also display prejudice. After all, I have had it pointed out to me repeatedly that the North is just as racist as the South, if not more so. Okay… that makes me feel better.

Despite my heritage, I realize that the removal of the Battle Flag was right and a long time coming. I believe that much of what has been discussed about removing other parts of our Confederate history is not only hurting White Southerners but Black Southerners as well. Instead of tearing down monuments or removing the bones of our sometimes conflicted and dark history, whether black or white, why don’t we add to those monuments?  Why don’t we admit to our hate and our heritage.

In South Carolina, for every “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman or Strom Thurmond, there is a Charles Townsend, a Harold Boulware, a Matilda Evans, a Pat Conroy or a former student like Phillip Boykin. Let us remember those folks who have worked hard to unite our South and to move our “multi-racial” society forward. We might also want to remember that like Strom Thurmond or Ben Tillman many of us have some secrets that we would like to hide and forget.

The history that was—WAS… and can NOT be changed…although I have never taught history using a flag or a statue. We must accept and recognize our history, both good and bad. Despite their racism, both Tillman and Thurmond accomplished much good for our state. That statement is not an excuse for their travesties.

We should admit that the flag and our monuments represents two sides of heritage and unfortunately, one of those sides is hate. To say that slavery was a side issue, despite all of the evidence otherwise, simply marginalizes a large percentage of our population. To me, our heritage of racism and white supremacy is not worth doing that.
(1) Edward Albert Pollard, The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates (New York: E. B. Treat & Co., Publishers, 1866).
(2)  http://www.essaysinhistory.com/articles/2011/6

AN INCONVINENT TRUTH…OF SORTS

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This has nothing to do with Global Climate Change or a documentary of the same name produced by a former Democratic vice president but I feel the need to express my belief that while the climate has changed as much as the South’s most revered river, the Mississippi, has meandered, both will continue to do so without help from the human population that inhabits our little blue ball. That being said, I also believe that, despite what superstitious conservatives say, the human population is helping to speed up and worsen the outcome of those changes and that Al Gore did not invent the internet. Hopefully the audience that is reading this has a clue as to what I just said.
There is a problem with history because it is just that—history. We weren’t there and we have to rely upon the writings of others in the form of what are called primary documents to attempt to put together the pieces of the puzzle that is that history. We must also view what is being said using the “light of the times” which has dimmed as time has marched on. Most of us, unless we are historians, don’t want to go to the trouble of pouring over dusty historical texts that are decades old. We want the CliffNotes or we want someone to teach us the history that we need to know and if it is an inconvenient truth we look for a different set of CliffNotes or teachers who support a more convenient truth. We also tend to look at it in the light of our times which sometimes reminds me of that beautiful “honky-tonk angel”… when the harsh light of closing time comes on…not that I have spent any time in honky-tonks lately unless Linda Gail was in attendance and she looks beautiful whatever the light.
For instance, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” Ever heard this statement before? Sure you have. Civics and US History classes or if you slept through mine, Fourth of July celebrations. Sometime in your life you have heard it even if you can’t remember if it is the Declaration of Independence or the Preamble to the Constitution. Which is it? Hint—July 4, 1776. But what did it mean in 1776? That’s right it was the Declaration of Independence but what did “all men” mean. We think that “these truths” meant “all men and women.” The old universal man because we are seeing it in the light of today. But “these truths” didn’t mean that. Our founding fathers could have just as easily said “Only white men of voting age who are landowners are created equal.” No slaves, no women and no white men who didn’t own something. Universal women’s suffrage would not be enacted until 1920 although women in Wyoming territory had the right to vote in 1869 the same year that the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified giving all citizens the right to vote…except women. Male ex-slaves would have the right to vote, although severely abridged, before women and Native Americans who were not made citizens as a group until 1924. I also believe that there are a group of old white guys in blue suits who wish it was still that way. Yeah I’m an old white guy but the closest I will come to a blue suit will be a predominately blue Hawaiian shirt.
As the Civil War is being re-fought throughout social media I keep seeing statement after statement, reported as truth, which as a history teacher has me reaching for the Preparation H or at least the Gold Bond. Excuse my indelicacy but, “It galls my ass!” The latest had to do with the most revered man of the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee and the most defamed man in the Union, Abe Lincoln. Over and over posters stated that Lee “freed his slaves before the war” and that Lincoln was actually a “closet” slave owner. I also something about him being gay but he never appeared to be too happy. From my research, I am not sure how many slaves Lee actually owned, if any, and he may have freed what HE owned but he certainly did not free the ones his wife, and therefore he, inherited from her father until 1862 when the point was mute because the Union Army had already taken over his inherited home at Arlington. Why did he not free them? In his own words Lee stated that he needed them to avoid bankruptcy “and to put things right.” Should this make him any less revered? Should we defame him for having the worst comb over prior to Donald Trump? Viewing it under the light of times, I would say not, but stating what are at best the half-truths in today’s light makes one wonder.
Abe Lincoln a slave owner? Except for a short stint of time in Washington, Lincoln spent his entire life in Illinois, a free state. His family was so poor that his father “contracted him out” to pay for the families debts. Maybe that is where the confusion came from. Lincoln was a type of indentured servant for his own family which is a type of forced servitude but he owned no slaves. Grant owned slaves, as did eleven other former US Presidents but not Lincoln.
While I am on stupid statements about slavery, “There was just as much slavery in the North as the South!” Really? Not including the Border States, which were considered Upper South and in which Delaware was included, only two Northern states, Connecticut and New Jersey, had not abolished slavery by 1848. According to the 1860 census Connecticut had no slaves to free in 1865 while New Jersey had a whopping two hundred and eight-six too many. And while we are at it, Lincoln could not free the slaves in the rest of the United State with the Emancipation Proclamation. It would take an Amendment to the Constitution to do that and it did in 1865.
I was taught that if you were unsure of an answer or were sure you did not know the answer try and “baffle them with bullsh!t.” It would seem that I was not the only person to learn this lesson. I have seen much bul sh!t lately whether is dealt with the Civil War, religion, gay rights or our presidential candidates. Anytime someone states an opinion other than yours, rather than take the time to look up and research a rebuttal, we throw out what are at best half-truths or at worse total lies. When all else fails we just call each other names.