history

THE DAY BEGINS

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Excerpt from the book PATHWAYS. One of my pathways of life led into the textile mills of South Carolina. This excerpt is about my first shift working in the weave room of the White Plant in Fort Mill, SC at the tender age of fourteen.

THE DAY BEGINS…

If you are into “titles”, my first “position” with Springs was as a spare hand. A spare hand was, in modern parlance, a daily “at-will” employee. I would go in and wait at a specified work bench until the second hand came to us and sent us to do a certain job or if there were not a job, send us back home. I never got sent home even though after many year-long, eight-hour shifts, I wish they had.

There was an almost military type of hierarchy in the weave room and, I am sure, the cotton mill itself. The plant manager was the general; many “white shirts” in ties were the staff officers; the room managers the lieutenants or captains; and the second hands were the sergeants. Within the “enlisted” ranks there was a peaking order: weavers and loom fixers and over haulers at the top; warpers, battery fillers, oilers, blow-off hands, sweepers, and doffers at the bottom. Spare hands? If the mill had been a caste system, we would have been “the great ignored”…until we screwed up!

My second hand was Coley Spinx.(Sp?) At the time I believed that if I needed to look up the word “intimidating” in the dictionary, a picture of Coley would accompany the definition. A friend of my father’s, the former World War Two Marine had Popeye-sized forearms that sported the requisite Marine Corp Eagle, Globe and Anchor tattoos that all Marines are so proud of. Built like a rain barrel, with arms and legs to match, it was easy to visualize him in his fatigues and wearing a jaunty but useless “tin hat.” With a half-smoked cigar jammed in his teeth, I imagined him defending his squad with a fifty-caliber machine gun clutched in one ham-sized fist and a bazooka in the other. You should probably remember that this was the fertile mind of a fourteen-year-old growing up in a period when kids still “played” war games. I am still in awe of old Marines…and young ones, too.

Fourteen sounds young to be working in a cotton mill…it is, but we did, in fact, have child labor laws in the summer of 1964 – just not like those of today. It had not been that many years removed from ten-year-olds or younger spending ten or twelve hours doing the mind-numbing and body-breaking labor in our industrial plants. As I studied the Industrial Age or prepared lesson plans to teach it, I could not help but contrast the mills of the late Nineteenth or early Twentieth Century with the first mill where I worked. Springs provided their employees with a well-lighted and clean (if any cotton mill can be called clean) working environment that had large restrooms and a cafeteria that produced full course meals, if desired, and if you had the time to eat one. I would find out later working in other mills that these amenities would be the exception and not the rule.

An ill at ease, nay scared, fourteen-year-old “Donnie” awaited his fate in his now sweat-soaked tee shirt and jeans. Eight hours later, the tee and jeans would still be sweat-soaked and anything but clean. Lint, rust, oil, grease, and general dirt combined with the blood from a first hour on the job accident and eight hours of sweat made my clothes look like I had spent the day in a coal mine before being dragged home behind a horse with a terrible case of diarrhea. Come to think of it, my clothes smelled the same way and my body wasn’t in much better shape. I knew what I was going to buy with my first paycheck. A radio? A movie and a meal for my girlfriend? A vacation to Disneyland? Come on… I was only fourteen, had no girl friend and was making minimum wage which I think was a buck twenty-five an hour or about seven bucks an hour in today’s money. No, tee shirts in any color other than white and several pairs of pants made from the lightest cotton duck I could find would be my first purchases. While jeans were fine in the fields where the air tended to dry them and contact with briars required them, the eight hours of constant sweating and an unhealthy intake of salt tablets had left me galled from waist to knees. Baby powder and lighter, softer trousers seemed to be a ticket for the destination known as “on-the-job” comfort.

If you enjoyed this story from PATHWAYS, you may download or purchase it or Don’s other books at the following links:
Inspirational true stories in WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING by Don Miller #1.99 on #Kindle
http://goo.gl/DiO1hcX

“STUPID MAN TRICKS” explained in Don Miller’s FLOPPY PARTS $.99 on Kindle http://goo.gl/Ot0KIu

“Baby Boomer History” in Don Miller’s PATHWAYS $3.49 on Kindle http://goo.gl/ZFIu4V

DEJA VU….

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Am I the only person who sees similarities between the political division and social protest we are experiencing today and the protest and division related to the Sixties? There was unrest as African-Americans oh so slowly gained SOME Civil Rights and social justice. Protests became violent as civil rights marchers were opposed by fire hoses, police dogs and batons. Inflammatory rhetoric was spoken on all sides – the far reactionary right and radical left…AND BY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES. Both the KKK or Black Panthers resorted to bombs, bank robberies, riots and assassinations in an attempt to slow down or speed up the process depending upon their particular world view. Riots in major cities were sparked by MLK’s assassination. I am sure no one of my age can forget the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Young people violently protested the Vietnam War along with other social issues. They burned draft cards or American Flags while facing down policemen in riot gear and Mayor Daily’s political machine. The drug culture of the Sixties with the “Make love not war” Hippy movement gave our parents pause to shake their heads in dismay. Appalled conservatives believed we had a real problem of lacking respect for authority and law and order.

The names of the wars have changed as have the names of the politicians who wage them and the names of the young people who are dying in their stead. Today we are not fighting over political dogmas but rather over religious beliefs…supposedly. The only people winning are those who are paid off to promote war and those who actually sell the weapons of death. It was the same in the Sixties as it is today- war mongers and arms dealers rake in the cash. Even though the weapons have become more efficiently destructive, death certainly has not changed nor has the sorrow or cost in life and devastation caused by those weapons.

We still do not have a religious, political or economic system inclusive to all. The extremists are either still battling to move things along more quickly or to insure that they move back to the way they were. Even the motion picture industry is under fire with protests and a call to boycott the Oscars over the issue of diversity. I hear the same arguments that highlighted the Civil Rights movement in the Sixties reverberating from both sides. These arguments now include lesbians and gays or Christians and Muslims or gun control. Instead of being about societal concerns, student protests seem to be more “me” oriented. I both hope and fear that my perception is one that has been packaged and perpetuated by the media “trolls” on both sides for a deeper, more ominous reason, perhaps for increasing ratings or possibly to create more unrest. With recent police-involved shootings and the “Black Lives Matter” reactions to them, I can hear the distant cries about “police brutality” and to “barbeque a pig” echoing through the fog of time. Our own population seems to be hell-bent on self-destruction …just as it seemed to be in the Sixties and for many of the same reasons.

The ’68 Presidential election experienced some of the same disunity we see in debates for the upcoming 2016 election. The leading Democratic candidate Bobby Kennedy was assassinated by a Jordanian Arab, Sirhan Sirhan, over Kennedy’s pro-Israel position. The left anti-communist, pro-civil rights liberal Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey attempted to unify a party divided over a “civil rights plank” in the party’s platform and failed to do so. Pro-segregationist and state’s rights candidate George Wallace took five Southern states in the election and many other votes away from Humphrey and helped hand “Tricky Dick” Nixon the presidency. Nixon even had his own “Southern Strategy” to pull Southern Democrats into the Republican fold, expediting the Democratic Party’s “liberalization” that began with Truman’s desegregation of the Army in the early Fifties and which gained momentum after Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Earlier there was a “liberal” court ruling overthrowing Plessy v Ferguson for Brown v Board in 1954 that wasn’t fully implemented until the late Sixties and early Seventies. It is both interesting and disconcerting that during the past fifty years, we still haven’t moved past division caused by sectionalism, race, executive orders, liberal courts and the Middle East.

I once stood in front of a US History class and remarked that it was my belief that 1968 was the most polarizing and divisive year since the Civil War. Assassinations, Tet, riots over Civil Rights and the war all boiled over and did not conclude during the Democratic Convention. Later the massacre at Mai Lai would come to light and create more discord over the war…justified I would guess. I also remarked that, as I look back in retrospect, I am surprised we were able to survive it as a country. I don’t know if I could make the same statement today about 1968. With things as turbulent as they are right now, I can only hope that we survive until 2018 to celebrate the fifty years since 1968. The scary thought is that conditions may get worse before they get better.

As the Watergate scandal was still a few years down the road after 1968, what do we have looming in our present day world? Will we be faced with a confrontation with Iran or with Russia or with more race riots? Let us learn from history that names may change but the same thing will continue to happen again unless we have a spiritual revolution… Maybe what we really we need is another Woodstock, world-wide, to finally get people to whole-heartedly desire love and peace and harmony!

LIBERATION

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I read that the Buffalo Bills have hired a new assistant coach. Ordinarily news like this would not find its way out of the city of Buffalo but today it is nationally news worthy. And why would that be? Their new, full-time, specialty teams, quality control coach is a female and the first of her kind. Kathryn Smith is the first full-time NFL assistant coach. This comes on the heels of Jill Welter’s internship as she served as an Arizona Cardinal linebacker coach during the summer. Back in April of 2015, Sarah Thomas became the first female NFL official. I guess these would be major steps in women’s rights. It doesn’t seem that long ago women newscasters were arguing with the league for access to the side lines and, GASP, the locker room. My guess is, once the furor and the abusive and stereotypical comments die down, they will be successful in this bastion of testosterone. I do find it interesting many men still believe that “A woman’s place….”

I have been involved with many firsts when relates to Women’s Rights. I taught for the first female principal in Greenville County, South Carolina, coached the first female to be allowed to play high school soccer and the first coed to play football at the varsity level. I was looking for none of these firsts and had the media not made an issue of it I would not have known. Title IX now that’s another story.

I wrote the story “Liberation” for the book FLOPPY PARTS and with the news of the day decided to dust it off. I hope you enjoy.

LIBERATION
Even though Charlotte, NC was close by, we were sheltered from the rapidly changing outside world. It was a long twenty miles to the Queen City on a two-lane blacktop and, by the way we grew up, possibly a decade in time removed. We had gone through the duck and cover drills that assured us that any textbook would protect us from a nuclear attack provided we took all sharp objects from our pockets. We were raised to be stoic and to be seen and not heard. In some ways we were raised to be “un-included.” Words like duty, reverence and respect were a part of our vocabularies. We still believed in the “American Exceptionalism” of the post-World War Two United States despite the warts we tended to ignore. We were decidedly Republican and my grandmother openly worried more about having a Roman Catholic in the White House than a democrat.

Still, being typically male, I was more aware of my floppy parts than world affairs, and, beginning in the late Sixties, they both got tied in knots.
Even though any available female was fair game and a target for our raging hormones, we had been taught to respect women. It was okay to pursue, but you didn’t lay a hand on a woman. You gave up your seat to women and you opened doors for women. As males, we did this not because we viewed women as weaker but as a sign of respect, the same way we were taught to say “Yes, Ma’am” or “No, Ma’am.” Most importantly No Meant No and not maybe. It was easier in those waning days of the Sixties because the girls had been taught the same way… and they didn’t have The Pill. I admit I may be looking through “rose-colored” glasses because I had been surrounded by such STRONG female role models. I believe with all my heart that women who grew up in rural settings during the depression and World War Two were taught to be stronger than their urban counter parts. I remember asking my grandmother to describe the changes she experienced during the Great Depression. She laughed and said, “We were farming on the lien and it was so hard already we never noticed.” That would be that she was out in the fields with my grandfather doing hard “man’s work.”

Regardless of my beliefs, all of them began to change as I welcomed the new decade and my address changed to Newberry. There were many movements spawned by the period. Native American Rights, Gay Rights and environmentalism were a few that joined Civil Rights during the “Age of Love”. Also, there was my favorite – Women’s Rights. There was one positive about the Women’s Liberation Movement – bra burning. Whether they were wearing a bra or not, women deserved to have the same rights as men despite the chauvinist argument “I don’t know why they want to climb down off of their pedestals?” After watching MAD MEN I wonder how high that pedestal actually was and who really had the power. I am sure this portrayal was “exactly” the way it was in the Sixties.
Liberation was a battle ground where if you picked sides you were either labeled a eunuch, if you agreed with the cause, or a chauvinist pig if you didn’t. Most of the Newberry coeds were southern gals (Is my chauvinism showing?) and had grown up under the same Biblical tenants as mine. The “times they were ah changing” and it wasn’t unusual to hear discussions about “Who should pay for the cost of birth control?” or “Who should make the decision about getting an abortion?” Fifty years later I still avoid expressing opinions on those questions because to do so would be to spoil for a fight.

Women’s Lib finally tied me in knots in the early Seventies. I remember walking up to the campus library door and seeing the reflection of a coed approaching me from behind in the door’s polished glass. Her reflection was dressed in bell bottoms and a pea coat, fashion staples of the period for those individuals who took political positions somewhere left of center. I also had time to notice her really short dark hair and the narrow, hawkish shape of her face. Nevertheless, I paused and opened the door for her. Smiling, I nodded my head and then got my ears pinned back. With a face that truly had turned hawkish she spat, “What are you asking me to do? Inviting me into to your male-dominated world? Baby Dicked Chauvinist Pig!” If you are waiting for my snappy comeback, hell may freeze over first. I still don’t have one. I should add, she still managed to enter the library ahead of me through the still-opened door but then so did the next fifteen people as I stood with jaw “slack and agape.” Baby dicked? Where did that come from?

Despite wearing khakis, oxford cloth and penny loafers during most of my adult life, I find myself embracing my “Old Hippy” side with flip flops, blue jeans and tee shirts to accommodate my move to the center left of politics as I have retired. Hawaiian shirts are a far cry from bells and pea coats but I wear them proudly. I believe in equality above all else. Equal rights, whether racial, gender, sexual, religious or economic, should be our goal as a country or as a people of that country. Women should have the same opportunities to succeed or to fail as men and it should be for the same pay. I was again sheltered when I chose teaching as my vocation. Teaching opportunities and pay were always equal and, as far as pay was concerned…Sorry, wrong movement. Now, I don’t know about upward mobility into administration but I do know that if I were ranking principals, women would take the top two positions as the best of the many I have had. The best one asked me during my interview in 1974 if I would have a problem working for a woman. She kind of leaned in as if she were going to tell me a dirty joke when she asked me. I thought, to myself, “I want this job so badly I would work for an orangutan.” To her I simply answered, “No problems whatsoever, I love women. My mother was a woman.”

I think there might have been a price for the equality so deserved by women. I read more about the rise of attacks against women or spousal abuse and see that doors are not opened and seats not given up nearly as often as they used to be even here in this hotbed of Southern chivalry. I guess I should add despite a little hawk-faced witch from 1970. Could that be the price that women pay? Maybe they did knock themselves off of their pedestal.

During the late Seventies, athletics were equalized due to Title IX legislation…except it wasn’t, at least in the school district in which I toiled. Rather than add resources to girl’s athletics, resources were taken away from men’s athletics which left a bitter taste in most male coaches’ mouths. I remember being told that, as a baseball coach, half of any money raised by my baseball team could be spent by the softball team whether they participated in the fund raiser or not. Luckily I had great relationships with my softball coaches and this never happened. Everyone didn’t have those great relationships that I fostered with malice and forethought.

While sitting quietly in a graduate course that included a study of the distribution of monies for athletics, a young female coach commented that it did not matter. “God Football” gets it all and until they fire all of the football coaches, girls would get nothing. At a break I could not help myself and strolled over to advise her that, while her feelings might be warranted, expressing them in an open forum might not be the best idea, especially if she were looking for a job. I also pointed out that football paid the bills and probably was what allowed her to have a job. She said something about having to “audition instead of interview” and that she was not “giving up the cause” just to get a job and that “maybe I should wait until my advice was asked for.” Her bell bottoms and pea coat were showing and no good deed goes unpunished. Several months later as we were looking for a girls’ softball coach, I received a call from my principal informing me that he was sending a prospective coach to be interviewed. Yeah, it was her and the look on her face was priceless. No, she didn’t get the job. Instead, we hired a softball coach who was also an offensive line coach. To her credit, she didn’t back down either, but then I am sure she knew she was doomed from the start. Does this make me a chauvinist? I don’t think so… but I do admit to being a realist.

If you enjoyed this story you may download it and other “STUPID MAN TRICKS” in Don Miller’s FLOPPY PARTS $.99 on Kindle http://goo.gl/Ot0KIu

OUR FIRST WINTER

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I normally post on M-W-F but decided to post this in the expectation of the two snowflakes that we may receive here in the foothills of Greenville County, South Carolina. I hope you enjoy. For some reason the forecast of possible snow has lost its appeal since I retired from teaching.

OUR FIRST WINTER OR HOW LONG WAS IT BEFORE THE DONNER PARTY BEGAN TO EAT EACH OTHER?

We moved into our little piece of heaven in November of 1987 over Thanksgiving break from school. We had five short days to get it done. Thirty years later we are still trying to finish unpacking. No, just joking…maybe. It was a close thing. Mr. Copeland really didn’t want to leave so he dragged his feet. His second wife, a woman thirty years his junior, wanted to leave and go back to her little piece of heaven in…Union County? The things we do for our ladies! He finally just gave up packing his “treasures” and departed. He left a whole bunch of stuff behind – books, papers, old records, even a bed. A complete set of 1956 edition Funk and Wagnall’s remained where they had always sat. Okay, younger readers, there used to be a company called Funk and Wagnall that produced encyclopedias. They were sold in grocery stores and…Encyclopedia? Oh no! Think of it as the boring part of the internet in book form. Books?

From Mr. Copeland we also “inherited” several pickup truckloads of junk. I had a 1972 blue Chevy work truck. Let me say, it looked older than its fifteen years and the two hundred or so thousand miles it had on it. Driven hard and put up wet, the paint was so bad that whatever was not rust was filmy oxidized blue. There was just enough metal to hold the rust together. The “powers that be” at our condominium complex had requested, nay demanded, that the truck not be left on the street to be seen. As I finished loading the last of Mr. Copeland’s “treasures” and began the five-mile trek to the trash dump, my faithful steed gave up the ghost or so I thought. As I coasted to a stop at the base of my drive I had just enough forward momentum to pull off to the side. A day or two later a Hispanic gentleman stopped and asked if it was for sale. I said it could be. He asked what I meant and I answered him saying that he would have to get it running. This began a really odd form of bargaining. He countered with, “If I get it running, what are you asking?” I said, “That depends. If I have to unload the trash $300. If you unload it, I’ll let it go for $250.” He unloaded it. You know, I kind of miss that old truck.

We were in our new home, well new to us. At that time, we were “younger” and stupid. We had five fireplaces and a wood stove to go with a thirty-year-old fuel oil furnace as we faced our first winter. Okay, wood stoves and fireplaces take wood and we had plenty of deadfall wood lying around but did I have a chainsaw? No, I did not even have an axe. I had not used a chainsaw in a decade. With no heat upstairs, just a couple of fireplaces, I was going to have to reintroduce myself to one. Did I have a method of transporting said wood? Oh yeah, I had just sold my truck.

That winter we received seventeen inches of snow over two days during a late winter storm. With temperatures refusing to climb above freezing, everything shut down and we were stranded for a week. With a forecast of a hundred-year storm, I purchased a chainsaw and in lieu of a truck, a wheelbarrow. “Barrowing” loads of wood sure made me miss my old Chevy. At least, we wouldn’t freeze to death if we lost power.

Our little piece of heaven is located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains at the foot of what is known as the Blue Ridge Escarpment, or according to my Funk and Wagnall’s “a long, steep slope, especially one at the edge of a plateau or separating areas of land at different heights.” We sit a little over twelve hundred feet above sea level and our land rises to about fifteen hundred feet behind us. We don’t get a lot of snow at twelve hundred feet compared to what we get at fifteen and, in contrast to our northern brethren, even our big snows are lacking. Before you Damn Yankees snicker just understand seventeen inches of snow in South Carolina is like six feet of snow in Buffalo. Linda and I actually live in an area known as the Thermal Belt that is, for some reason not understood by me, a little warmer than the surrounding areas. We usually have to go “in search of snow” because of the extra warmth we receive. Again let me say it will still get cold! It especially gets cold in an old 1880’s farm house that had insulation blown into the walls about 1956. Sixty years later, insulation or not, in winter the house is still…BURRRRR!

Seventeen inches of snow closes everything in South Carolina…okay two inches will close us down like Blue Laws on a Sunday. The mere hint of snow or ice sends people into a frenzy of shopping…for milk and bread. At one time there was a theory suggesting that the dairy farmers had entered into some type of cabal with the weather services to boost milk sales. “Just sayin’!” I mean… why not a frenzy of canned goods buying? Sardines will last. With sardines, crackers and mustard I’m good for a while, especially if you replace the milk with beer or Jack Daniels. Should you not also see an increase in peanut butter and toilet paper sales?

In a song by Jimmy Buffett, “Boat Drinks,” the singer laments the cold weather and being stuck watching a hockey match. “I just shot six holes in my freezer; I think I’ve got cabin fever.” I understood the feeling. With three puppies, Linda and a TV that received only two channels “some” of the time, my incarceration was fun…for about forty-eight hours. Even hiking in the snow got old since I had forgotten to get insulated and waterproof boots. After five days of this misery, I was willing to try anything; however, with a Volkswagen bug and a Thunderbird our options were limited. We found out that the little VW got around in the snow pretty well once it could clear the drifts. I swore I would never be without four-wheel drive again and haven’t been since! Funny thing, after I bought it, I have needed it only once…for snow. But I must confess that I do use it often to haul wood…lots and lots of wood.

WORK TO BE DONE

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“In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies…but the silence of our friends.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Harry Smith, the longtime NBC journalist once posed the question, “If Dr. King was still alive today what would he think about present condition of Civil Rights in the United States?”

I grew up “white” in the Fifties and Sixties in the South. Like most preteens or teenagers, I wasn’t a particularly socially aware person and believe I was somewhat sheltered from the realities of race relations by both my family and the area I grew up in…or it could have been my own form of “white privilege” rearing its head. I have very vivid memories of the stories that played out on our black and white RCA. School desegregation in Little Rock, Freedom Rider buses burning in Anniston and nonviolent marches and protests turning violent in far off places like Selma. I remember wondering why white folk so angry? One outcome was to make me wonder if I should have been angry too.

Throughout these times, filling my TV screen, Martin Luther King was quite visible and the center of much of what was going on. I remember a man with a powerful, yet soft baritone voice and a slow Southern drawl to go with it. I would not fully comprehend the full power of his voice or his personage until I watched a History Channel presentation on his “I HAVE A DREAM” speech, too many years later, as I tried to explain the impact and power of his words to a “lily white” US History class more than twenty years after his death. Sometimes I truly find myself quite late to the dance.

As hard as he worked to promote positive social change, I also remember the furor created when John Conyers and Edward Brooke co-authored a bill to recognize King’s birthday as a holiday. It would be fiercely opposed not only in the South, as one might expect, but also in states like Arizona. Arguments against its recognition included King’s beliefs on “Marxism or Communism” and his stance against the Viet Nam War along with personal attacks that I won’t speak to. South Carolina, my home state, would be the last to recognize it in 2000. I really don’t have to wonder why.

As I finally return to Smith’s question, I would believe Dr. King would be disappointed. He would recognize there has been some improvement in “individual” race relations but would find we still have a framework in place that is systematically discriminatory toward large numbers of our population. I believe he would say that we have lost ground overall and become less willing to cause any type of meaningful change. I also believe Dr. King would point a finger directly at our government shenanigans starting with a President who should have done more for race relations and trailing down to a Congress that would not let him. Dr. King’s biggest disappointment, however, would be reserved for “We the People” because we are ALL still “judged by the color of (our) skin,” (rather than) “by the content of (our) character.” I would also add judged by our creed, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and lately our political orientation. Like Harry Smith, I believe Dr. King would say “There is much more work to be done.”

Don Miller’s authors page https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR1p7QBN-yUWs1bOs47zAoMreKP53kpsAFiOvGMKCjhOffcnqjhHneB4zMk&ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

WE THE PEOPLE…

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I am being lazy today but since only nine of you read this the first time I decided to reblog.

WE THE PEOPLE….

I hear variations of the same question, “What are our kids being taught in schools today? Why don’t we know MORE about ‘THE LAW’?” I will be honest, after spending over forty years in the profession, most of those years as a social studies teacher, I must answer, “I don’t know.” I would also point out from what I have seen, MANY OF THE PEOPLE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT DON’T KNOW THE LAW either…nor do they know the history behind the law…and they are my age. I do believe we are getting exactly what someone has asked for…A LESS THAN AWARE ELECTORIATE. How else do you explain continuing to elect and re-elect the same idiots…on both sides of the aisle? How else do you explain allowing our constitutional democracy to turn into an oligarchy…not that most of us can even define it. Let’s keep education on the back burner why don’t we. Pay now or pay later I guess…and continue to add to the profit lines of the already very, very rich and corrupt. All righty, that’s the wrong soapbox.

Remember Civics? It was a course I took in junior high school. Now, in my part of the world, we don’t teach it anymore. Instead of Civics, a little Constitution is taught along with South Carolina History in the eighth grade. In high school, US History and Constitution is required in the junior year along with Government and Economics in the senior year. A total of less than a year devoted to the laws and rights we enjoy and Economics taught when Seniors are afflicted with the nearing graduation disease, Senioritis. Why don’t we donate a little more time to our own Constitution? Do we really need to teach World History before the Renaissance again and why DID we get rid of recess?

I have to admit, constitutional law in the eighth grade or during middle school is probably not a good idea. Were it left to me, middle schoolers would be locked up and not let out until high school. From my own remembrances I learned more about the little brunette girl and her rapidly expanding chest than anything about the First Amendment. From my middle school teaching experiences, I would say this hasn’t changed…LAWD HAVE MERCY THE RAGING HORMONES! My junior year? I did a little better with US History and but again learned very little about the Constitution. This time it wasn’t the fault of the much more mature brunette girl. I CAN remember my teacher telling us about dropping an “Atomic Bum” on Hiroshima. “Bum” was the way he pronounced it, “Bum” instead of “Bomb.” I admit to having a vision of a “glowing hobo” falling from the bomb bay a B-29. Not any remembrances about Constitution though.

Kidding aside, may be, I admit Civics in the Sixties was a little akin to “indoctrination.” Despite being taught otherwise in primary school George Washington could not have thrown a silver dollar across the Potomac. It would be several years before I came to that realization as I stood at the edge of the Potomac gazing at Washington a mile or more on the other side. I don’t know about the cherry tree either but have my doubts.

I believe our laws and rights should be taught with an emphasis on how our government really works rather than how it is supposed to work. Maybe this time with a little less emphasis on “my government right or wrong” along with “I’d rather be dead than red,” and more about truth “warts and all.” When I took Civics it was still about “American Exceptionalism” and defeating the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Viet Nam and Watergate changed those dynamics. Maybe we should try to get over Viet Nam and Watergate, not forget them…actually learn from them. Maybe when the politicians and our government learn.

In some ways social studies has become an afterthought in today’s educational environment…along with “related arts.” English, along with the math and sciences, are considered more important because they are what we test on. Despite this and other limitations, if I were to find myself back in the classroom teaching again, SHUTTER-SHUTTER, I would teach US History and Constitution outside of the box. I would start, not at the beginning but, where we are now and work backwards to understand how we arrived at where we are now. War, Social Issues, Civil Rights, and a myriad of other issues, in no particular order, along with a heavy dose of the Constitution would be themes that I would attempt to help the students come to grips with…and possibly myself.

Don Miller has written three books which may be purchased at http://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM
Inspirational true stories in WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING can be downloaded for $1.99.
“STUPID MAN TRICKS” explained in FLOPPY PARTS for $.99.
“Southern Stories of the Fifties and Sixties…” in PATHWAYS for $3.99.
All may be purchased in paperback.

“SNAPSHOTS” from PATHWAYS

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SNAPSHOTS an Excerpt from Pathways.

As I stare across my computer screen I can see my backyard framed like a photograph through the French doors leading out to our, for lack of a better word, patio. My wife has turned our backyard into a cluttered and jammed wildlife preserve–accent on WILD—and it is inevitable that I would think of my grandmother. Her “rock garden” was just as jammed with flowers of all types and sometimes with wildlife, too. All were thrown together in a helter-skelter manner. My favorite flowers were her tall and colorful hollyhocks. I have tried to grow them all but with not nearly the same success. Her backyard was just as tangled with privet hedge that had grown so high it had formed a canopy which seemed to form secret rooms. I think if I were to try, I probably could write a book about my grandmother and never run out of material in the lifetime I have left. I consider myself very lucky to have had her for as long as I did – almost forty-nine years as she died just a few weeks short of my forty-ninth birthday. I’m also greedy because I would have liked to have had her even longer.

As jammed as her rock garden was, her vegetable garden was not. Every morning she went out to the garden to chop down any weed before it could get a foothold or to hand-pick any critter that might chew on a leaf. This devotion is something I have a high regard for as I have moved toward organic gardening. Everything was quite orderly but her flowers were not. This difference was just one of several contradictions. One of the wisest and most well-read people I have ever known, she attended public school only until the eighth grade. She seemed to crave information but only if it didn’t interfere with time better spent in her garden. Even then, on rainy days, I would catch her gazing wishfully out the window. Most of her reading material revolved around her “Classics” – plant catalogs, crossword puzzles and religious materials including, but not limited to, the Bible. Despite being one of the most religious people I have ever known, she rarely set foot inside of a church and I wish I had taken the time to ask why. For some reason a belief the church might be filled with hypocrisy comes to my mind but that is my own cynicism showing. It might have just been she just didn’t like being cooped up. When we “stayed the night” due to our parent’s work schedule, she did not tell stories to put my brother and me to sleep. Instead, we played “finish the Bible verse.” To this day when I hear a parent tell a child to “Be Still”, I have to add, “…and know that I am God.”

Pathways can be downloaded on Kindle or purchased on Amazon using http://goo.gl/v7SdkH

IF YOUR SNUFF’S TOO STRONG, IT’S WRONG…

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The following is an excerpt from PATHWAYS, a book about growing up Southern in the Fifties and Sixties.

A strange pathway I follow. Despite having imbibed no distilled spirits of any type, I find myself following a mental path involving snuff, Arthur Smith, my Great-Grandmother Griffin and trying not to lose my cookies on a sideline in Spartanburg. Where do memories like this come from?

I grew up with Arthur Smith. Anyone remember Arthur Smith and the Crackerjacks? I would understand if you had never heard of him, but you need to do a little research…look up Arthur Smith. I always thought he was just some old guy with a country group who sang through their noses. He hosted a radio program on WBT in Charlotte Carolina Calling and later the first country-western television program to be syndicated nationwide for thirty-two years.

Smith hosted a morning show first on WBT Radio and then on WBTV. Through this medium I was forced fed “old time” country music by my grandmother and parents. They listened as if it were a religious experience. Country music of the Fifties included the likes of Red Foley, Ernest Tubbs, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams along with Arthur Smith and the Crackerjacks. It is as far from what we call country music today as liberals are politically from conservatives. What I believed to be a “regional” country music “wannabe” celebrity was quite successful on a national stage and even helped to pen “Dueling Banjos” from the movie Deliverance.

What do I remember about him? A commercial tune for Tube Rose Snuff. “If your snuff’s too strong it’s wrong, Try Tube Rose, Try Tube Rose.” For some reason all I hear in my mind’s ear is Arthur, Brother Ralph and sidekick Tommy Faile singing the commercial. Later in the early Seventies, I sat on a quilt at an open air “hippy fest” listening to Sweet Baby James Taylor humorously singing the same tune. Weird what you remember…

Should you desire to read the end of this, and other stories PATHWAYS may be purchased in book form or downloaded using the following link http://goo.gl/6yB5Ei

MAW-REESE an excerpt from Pathways

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This EXCERPT is from the short story MAW-REESE and is a story that takes place in the Fifties. It is about how the issue of race raised its ugly head and got into the way of a friendship.

We had played together every Monday for the previous two years… every Monday when the sun was shining…regardless of temperature, since we had turned four. A lot of my memories have become muddled with the passage of time or the fact I was just four or five, but there are bits and pieces that I grab on to and, if I hold on tightly enough, they will turn into memories. My recollections of Maw are quite clear. Mondays were Nannie’s wash days and she still held on enough to the old ways that she did her wash outside even though a wringer washing machine had replaced her washboard and tin wash tub. There wasn’t enough room inside the house for the washer, especially after an indoor bathroom had been added to what was once a back porch. Water was boiled on the old gas range and carried outside to the washer. After the clothes were washed or sometimes “blued” in the old, claw foot style bathtub, they were hand cranked through two rolls called a wringer, an act that scared me to death. I was always fearful a body part might get caught up in it. The clothes were then hung out to air-dry or freeze if the temperature was too low. On days it was not in use, the washer became my personal spacecraft or tank and, despite my fear, they possessed a hand-cranked machine gun or pulsar cannon.

Miss Maggie Cureton was Nannie’s wash woman and friend even though during those days saying your friend was a “colored” wash woman was not something a white woman could admit. After Paw Paw died and Nannie moved in next door with us and our new-fangled washing machine and dryer, Miss Maggie became obsolete but was not replaced. Miss Maggie just became Nannie’s fishing buddy. I’m not sure a woman would like to be described as “thin and wiry” but it is the description I must use. Miss Maggie looked to be as tough as harness leather with strong muscles roping her thin arms. She was also as black as the end of a burned stick and always wore a kerchief around her head, unless she donned a huge straw hat given to her by my grandmother. While small, she could pull her weight and then some when lugging around baskets of water-soaked sheets or stringers loaded with fish. My fondest remembrance of her was the way she addressed me as “Honey Chile.” Her endearment was a little more loving than being referred to as one of the “you chaps” which was as close to an affectionate utterance every received from my grandmother.

One Monday morning Miss Maggie did not come alone but brought Maw and his two-year-old sister Bessy along with her. Maw’s mother, Maggie’s daughter, had found work at a church in Lancaster and would later marry a minister. Maw and Bessy were Miss Maggie’s grandchildren. While Maggie was ebony, Maw and Bessy were not. They were more the shade of the rich Luzianne coffee and cream that my grandmother drank. Their skin was shiny and seemed to glow in the morning light which accented their reddish hue. I heard them later referred to as “redbone” and was too young to understand the dynamics of someone who was bi-racial. The shine of their skin was due to the perspiration caused by their already hot and humid walk across the wide, sometimes cotton and sometimes hay field that separated their home from ours. Maw was my age, a few months older, and stood with his right foot planted firmly on the ground with his left nervously tucked, toes curled, under his instep. Both he and his sister were barefooted and dressed in hand-me-downs as was I, but I had not had to navigate the stubble and briars left behind from the last hay cutting. While only slightly older, Maw was already a half-head taller and several pounds heavier. Not intending to be stereotypical, Maw was the athlete I wished I could have been.

You may read the end of this story and others by downloading my book PATHWAYS on Kindle or purchase through Amazon at the following link: http://goo.gl/v7SdkH

TEACHING ISLAM?

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Former students, help me out here. Not just my former students, any former student. Do you remember being taught anything about Islam during “World History before the Renaissance” or Comparative Religion courses? I keep seeing such an outcry against teaching anything about Islam. Do we not need to know our enemy? Wait, I do not want to be misunderstood…I don’t think Islam is our enemy any more than I believe Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism or Judaism are our enemies. I probably should have mentioned Animism and Jainism to because I mentioned them when I taught comparative religion. Okay Confucius taught a way of life based upon mutual respect and technically is not a religion, I guess, but I taught it just like I did the others. It would appear I might have failed with the concept of respect. I also did a unit on modern terrorism. Daesh or ISIS weren’t our enemies then but Al Qaida was, along with several dozen (or more) other terrorist groups running the gambit of all religions along with people who claim to be atheist.

All terrorist are not Muslim nor are all Muslims terrorist. According to multiple sources, all biased I am sure, Muslim terrorism caused less than ten percent of the deaths due to terrorism recorded on US soil since 9/11. One source, http://www.washingtonsblog.com, siting the START Global Terrorism Database, states that since 1970, only 2.5 percent of terrorist acts carried out on US soil were Muslim. But, I digress.

Why would we not teach comparative religions or for that matter comparative cultures? Do we just ignore what we don’t want to understand and refuse to recognize the contributions made by Africans, Asians, Muslims, Catholics, and Mormons…etc.? During the Middle Ages “Western Civilization” was somewhat stagnate and backward…until Christian knights went off to fight the barbarians who called them infidels. Despite losing the “Holy Land” and actually killing more Jews and Christians than Muslims, Crusading knights brought back more than they left with. In addition to unknown foods and spices, they brought back a real concept of medicine based upon science rather than superstition, algebra, clocks, water wheels, and the modern acoustic guitar. Okay I have digressed again but am sure thankful they brought home the guitar and got one into BB King’s hands. They could have left algebra behind.

I’m not a fan of the Common Core and certainly am against lesson plans trying to convert our children to Islam…or any religion which I doubt Common Core does. As a teacher of social studies, conversion was not my function and in my part of the world is not allowed in public schools. However, teaching all religions from a cultural or historical standpoint is…and should remain so. Not teaching Islam would be akin to Nazi’s burning Jewish books, ignoring Protestantism if one were a Catholic or maybe ignoring the contributions of Mormons in our own West. As I have been told repeatedly from certain flag wavers, its history and we can’t ignore it…nor should we. We should also practice what we preach.