Special ops warriors Dylan and Dakotah maneuver their drones for the final assault on a wedding in northern Afghanistan. They boys are part of a top-secret Special Forces unit called “Joint Task Force Sponge Bob.”
The Department of Defense issued a stern “n0 comment” statement today following a New York Times story detailing how military brass at the highest levels of all the services approved and established a top-secret special operations force. According the the Times article, the military has already operationalized the unit, codenamed Joint Task Force Sponge Bob. When fully deployed, the force, which is based in Orlando on property adjacent to Disney World, consists of elite three-to-12-year old boys who have been highly trained in drone warfare.
“The concept is very simple,” a source deep in the Pentagon was quoted in the article. “We’ve embedded snippets of code in every video game installed on every gaming platform in the country. We’re tracking high scores, sure, but we’re also tracking learning curves. How long does it take for a kid to become proficient? What’s his upper limit of skill? Will he take candy bars and juice boxes as pay?”
According to sources with intimate knowledge of the project, military commanders have been “over-the-top happy” with the results so far.
“Who’d have thought even five years ago that we could be projecting this type of flexible, scalable lethal force in return for some Hershey bars and the occasional trip to the Magic Kingdom?”
The Times reported that the only concerns so far have been behavior-based, such as the time an 8-year-old threw down his controller and ran screaming to his bedroom after completly missing a Afghan village he had targeted for destruction. His older brother later took out the village and gave the younger boy credit.
“While these guys are true heroes in every sense of the word, some of them still need their stuffed toys and blankies,” said a senior officer who was granted anonymity to discuss the top secret program. “By the time they turn 11 or 12, they’re pretty much past that stage.”
One of the great things about the internet is one’s ability to discover and explore nooks and crannies, stumbling upon amazing things. Amazing in every sense of the word.
The other day on my way to look up something else, I wandered into a far-off corner of the Web, a place where reenactors gather. Reenactors as in (mostly) guys who dress up in costumes from a bygone era and build camps and fight mock battles. It all looks pretty healthy but it’s, you know, weird. But weird in a “Wo! I knew this stuff existed, but not on this SCALE!” kind of way. Interesting way. But NOT in a way that would tempt me to participate in any way. I just wanted to make that clear.
To me, reenactment is sort of like NASCAR; I don’t know anything about it except what has osmosed into my brain. Because NASCAR has so successfully infiltrated our popular culture, we know stuff about NASCAR even if we have no interest in it whatsoever. Reenactors don’t create that kind of buzz, which is probably a good thing.
In contrast to NASCAR’s TV contracts and product-promotion tie ins; reenactors have the occasional billboard reading: Civil War Reenactment Labor Day Weekend!
So reenactment and reenactors populate the hinterlands of the internet. Once I got into the interlinked websites, I was fascinated. I learned that the Civil War is only a part of the Reenactor Universe, a universe that spans continents. In the UK, they play out the wars of the Empire such as the conquest of India and the wars between the Saxons and the Britons in the 6th century. There are even pirate reenactors!
Once a body has found a good reenactment era “fit” and gotten in touch with some fellow travelers, it’s time to get geared up. Because of the Internet, this is vastly easier than it once was. There are plenty of websites out there willing to help you out. Some sell historical clothing. Then there is Smoke-Fire.com, the Wal-Mart of reenactor paraphernalia!
OMG they sell stuff for KIDS! Can you imagine being the child of an avid reenactor?
“But Daddy, I don’t WANNA go to the Battle of Shiloh this weekend! They say I can’t text or talk on my phone.”
“You can go two days without that phone!”
“But Daddy…….”
“Don’t make me flog you!”
One thing to be aware of: there are a group of reenactors called “Farbs” that are looked down upon by the more hard core participants. Farbs are reenactors who spend relatively little of their time or money maintaining authenticity with regard to uniforms, accessories, or even period behavior. A ‘Good Enough’ attitude is pervasive among farbs, although even casual observers may be able to point out flaws. Anachronistic clothing, fabrics, fasteners (such as velcro), snoods, footwear, vehicles, and modern cigarettes are common issues.
If you’re interested in starting a group, I’ve taken the trouble of tracking down an article on how to get started.
More “must-have” links:
Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Norman and British Living History
Ancient warfare (Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, etc)
Skirmish Magazine (multiple eras)
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I have been lax in my postings. I’ve been working on a new website, MountVernonCreates.com, to feature the many ways people here express their creativity. I hope it goes well beyond the visual and performing arts (although those alone could fill a website). Their are some very cool people around this area doing some creative things in food (Lincoln Cafe…ahem, which made the finals of last year’s national Cochon 555 competition), growing (the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) groups) gardening (of course, Mt. Vernon has a club!), and so on.
It’s got a calendar, events listing, pretty spiffy! If you have any interest at all, please take a look. The response from the MV creative community has been incredible!
PS: In progress is a piece on enactors…you know, the guys who dress up in Civil War uniforms and play war on the weekends. It started out laden with my typical snark but as I learned more about the hobby, I discovered it is a world-wide phenomenon. I was amazed. There are enactors who do ancient Greece, the Arthurian era, the British Empire in India, Napoleonic Wars, you name it. Suffice to say it goes well beyond the American Civil War. Soon. I promise!
I have been lax in my postings. I’ve been working on a new website, MountVernonCreates.com, to feature the many ways express their creativity. I hope it goes well beyond the visual and performing arts. There are some very cool people around this area doing some creative things in food (Lincoln Cafe…ahem, which made the finals of last year’s national Cochon 555 competition), growing (the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) groups) gardening (of course, Mt. Vernon has a club!), and so on.
If you have any interest at all, please take a look. The response from the MV creative community has been incredible!
PS: In progress is piece on enactors…like the guys who dress up in Civil War uniforms and play war on the weekends. It started out laden with my typical snark but as I learned more about the hobby, I discovered it is a world-wide phenomenon the more I became amazed. There are enactors who do ancient Greece, the Arthurian era, the British Empire in India, Napoleonic Wars, you name it. Suffice to say it goes well beyond the American Civil War. Soon. I promise!
Free at last!
The Iowa Caucuses (Cauci?) are over and everyone in our Hawkeye State is sleeping it off. Every four years, we are subjected to criticism that Iowa is too old, too white, too Christian, too homogenous, too Clem-Kaddidlehopperish to deserve the honor of being first in the nation in selecting presidential candidates.
Typical Iowan at caucus
You want to be first ? You got it. About this time, the only people who would fight you for it are the Iowa television stations that have been minting money for several months now. The rest of us have been on the receiving end of the attack ads. They were everywhere: local news, Wheel of Fortune, the Khardashians, Iron Chef, Sports Center, even the test pattern. Once you’ve had the opportunity to sit through a 30-minute Newt Gingrich infomercial, the Seventh Level of Hell doesn’t look all that bad.
The media makes a big deal out of the fact that Iowans go out on a frigid January night to caucus. Trust me, it ain’t all that altruistic; it’s the only way we’ve found to get away from the political ads.
The kingmaker who couldn’t pull the trigger
Representative Steve King (R-Far Right Fringe) has missed the bus. He coulda been a contender instead of a bum, which is what he is. Yep, the Man Who Would Be a Kingmaker snoozed through his opportunity to have an impact on the Iowa caucuses. He dithered. He fiddled while Rome burned. He pulled the old Rip Van Winkle.
Rep. Steve King: Fast asleep when his ship came in.
His refusal to endorse a candidate means if he tries to take credit for the most excellent showing of Big Rick Santorum (not to be confused with Little Rick Perry), he must also take blame for the total campaign collapse of his friend and fellow-wingnut, Michele Bachmann. In other word, he didn’t move the needle even a little bit. We can only hope he follows Bachmann into well-deserved oblivion. Iowa will be a focal point during the general election but King will be a non-player as the GOP tacks toward the center. His role leading up to the presidential election will be to dutifully round up and deliver the evangelical votes for the Romney campaign.
Our Lord and Savior one of few endorsements not on Santorum’s list
According to a Wikipedia entry no doubt maintained by the Rick Santorum campaign (with a little assistance from the Holy Ghost), Santorum received endorsements from several major Iowa conservative leaders in the fall of 2011. Prominent social conservatives Bob Vander Plaats and Chuck Hurley, both leaders of the Family Leader social conservative advocacy organization, praised Santorum’s conservative record on social issues. Sioux City conservative talk radio host Sam Clovis cited Santorum’s beliefs in “a constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility, strong national defense and unflagging devotion to life and traditional marriage.”[22]
Other endorsements include Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz, Cornerstone Church pastor and evangelical leader Cary Gordon, and bestselling thriller novelist Brad Thor.
Just sayin’.
Toasted!
Michele Bachmann
Within hours of finishing last among a weak field, Michele Bachmann, a congresswoman from neighboring Minnesota, announced she was “suspending” her campaign. In today’s political lexicon, “suspending” means “running away with your tail between your legs like a whipped dog.” But hey, it’s not like we didn’t get a chance to get to know Michele. Remember when she was the “frontrunner” because she “won” the Straw Poll? This tells us two things: 1) the Straw Poll is not a serious thing; 2) the national media are desperate.
I will miss her. She filled a lunacy gap in the Clown Car and did her best to make even Donald Trump look presidential. Her candidacy offered a glimpse into the Pit of Doom where the 1630s Puritans meet 21st century Revolutionary War re-enactors. In Bachmann’s world, the line between reality and delusion is never clear and is often crossed. God bless us all.
We won't have the governor of Texas to kick around anymore
It was a long slog, America, but we Iowans did what we’ve been called to do: we winnowed. We did the dirty work so you don’t have to. We’re down to one. The media, hungry for anything to expand beyond and dilute their preternatural fixation with kidnapped blondes and psychotic mothers who kill their kids, will figure out some way to gum the results of the Iowa caucus like a toothless hag working on a slice of white bread. It’s all a sham. Ladies and gentlemen of the universe, Iowa presents your GOP nominee, Mitt Romney!
We’ve learned a lot about the candidates in the past 18 months (like dentist-chair time, the time leading up to the caucuses drags out so that minutes seem like…well, hours). We learned that Texans have elected the closest approximation to Bozo the Clown that doesn’t come with orange hair and gigantic shoes. We learned that Michele Bachmann’s husband’s name is Marcus and that he casts out demons. We learned that Ron Paul is even crankier than he was in 2008. We learned Herman Cain is ALL man and that 9-9-9 upside down in 666.
666: Number of the Beast and 9-9-9 upside down
We also learned that green trumps white. White, as in 91% white (and vastly whiter for self-identified Republicans). Green as in the color of money. Rick Santorum, who right now is thinking he is coming out of the Iowa caucuses riding on the shoulders of Uncle Moe Mentum, has in reality just become the next target of Restore Our Future, Romney’s Super PAC. Restore Our Future, carved up Newt Gingrich like roast beef on a Sunday brunch sideboard. And it only cost a few million dollars.
Santorum, who as one wag said, ran a fantastic gubernatorial campaign in Iowa, ain’t got game. If you’ve been paying attention over the past, oh, forever, money = game. Santorum has no money and no organization. What he does have is the evangelical, anti-gay, anti-21st century base who could have coalesced around Rick Perry or Bachmann. When Santorum (who brings new meaning to the word “froth”) takes away your votes you have some serious wound licking to do.
We can now call him “Big Rick” as opposed to Perry’s “Little Rick.” But Big Rick has problems beyond money and organization. For one thing, he’s a single-issue candidate. Oh sure, he’s cobbled together some economic talking points and he’s cut and pasted something that looks like a foreign policy, but Santorum’s only issue is his stance against gay people. And folks, he’s on the wrong side of public opinion on the gay thing. It’s been obvious for a long time that the American public is vastly more tolerant of gays than the GOP will admit. Bashing gays seems more and more akin to dog fighting all the time: it’s patently offensive. But it’s a hot-button issue with the evangelicals who took over the Iowa Republican Party back in the days of Ronald Reagan.
Besides, it’s the economy stupid and Santorum, who was a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania back when earmarks were the unapologetic oil in the legislative machine, can’t really run on an economic reform platform beyond making sure there aren’t any illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for those $5 an hour hotel maid and fruit-picker jobs.
So it’s Mitt. In retrospect, the whole thing seems like a bad Clive Cussler novel. There’s a beginning, a lot of incoherent plot twists and then a predictable ending. As I’ve said all along, Romney is the only near-sane person in the crowd. Sane, perhaps, but ruthless. By using his PAC to do his dirty work, the Mitten has done his best to keep his cardigan clean. It will only get worse as we enter the general election cycle. These days, politicians don’t seem to give a rat’s ass what the landscape looks like after they’ve achieved their near-term goals. Win now and worry about the mess later.
Newt Gingrich's inner troll is about to be unleashed
This is not to say there won’t be some entertainment ahead. Newt Gingrich, who seemingly tried to keep his inner troll under wraps here in Iowa, has signaled that he’s pulling out the long knives to seek vengeance on Mitt for all the attack ads funded by Restore Our Future that sank his campaign. Newt Gingrich crying foul is like Genghis Khan complaining someone broke a gentleman’s agreement.
Let’s hope Newt’s anger burns hot enough to keep things interesting at least through Memorial Day. I am not getting my hopes up. Newt’s money is going to dry up and I don’t think he’s the type to self fund a campaign of retribution.
The other interesting plot line will be how the Tea Party, which was so full of itself just one year ago, reconciles itself to Romney. He is as old-school as they come, essentially a centrist Democrat pandering to the wingnuts. If the Tea Partiers don’t rise up to fight him, they’ll be consigned to the vacuum cleaner bag of history. If nothing else, that will make the right wing of America a lot less interesting. It will also be the death knell of the subculture of retailers selling tric0rn hats and colonial waistcoats.
We just got back from Colorado where we celebrated a late Christmas with our daughter, her boyfriend (I dunno what else to call him…I bet the French have a couple of words), and the grandsons who are six and nine. While I could bore you for a good while by telling you stuff, it’s best if you go do your own stuff. OK, just one story: The boys and I were on our way to a movie (The Chipmunks. I’ve never seen so many no-star reviews.) I was telling them I’m looking forward to seeing them more when I retire. “When is that, Bepa?” asked the older one. I rough-counted and said, “You’ll be 15 and your brother will be 13.” To which the younger shouted, “Yay! We’ll have phone!”
Many years ago, a then-famous professional wrestler named Macho Man Randy Savage was being interviewed on television just before a match. When asked for a prediction about the outcome, Savage turned to the camera, jabbed an index finger toward the lens and said, “I predict pain! Pain and injury!”
As I look ahead to the New Year, I am sorely tempted to be Savage-esque. The biggest political event, the presidential election is shaping up to be 1) very, very nasty; 2) very, very expensive; 3) very, very divisive and 4) very, very disappointing. But on the other hand, it will also be 5) very, very entertaining.
Let’s get real here folks: The only Republican who isn’t a stone’s throw from the asylum is Mitt Romney. He’s a good-looking, very wealthy former governor who acted very much like a centrist Democrat when he was running the Massachusetts state apparatus. By all accounts, he’s smart, capable of analytic thinking when he wants to be, and quite probably better presidential timber than Obama was four years ago. But he’s gone all creepy and sycophantic to the Tea Party. The result has been this very weird serial repudiation of his own actions, which if he would own up to them, would get him a lot of votes in the middle. The fact that two-thirds of the GOP loathes him has been the story so far.
The winner of the Republican race will face off against the champion, Barack H. Obama. If the economy gets better, he’ll win. If it doesn’t, he might still win. The Republicans are doing everything in their considerable power to sandbag the economy. Obama seems to be finding a voice, and hell yes, that voice is about the haves and have-nots in America. Reagan would never have allowed that to happen. He always calibrated his message to align it with the middle. As long as the tax structure was woven into a quasi-folksy line of BS that included “morning in America” and fighting for freedom even if it meant invading Grenada, Reagan’s ass was covered. It also helped that he didn’t get multiple thousands of Americans killed in wars that bankrupted the treasury. In short, he talked a good game which is why he is called “the Great Communicator” by those who worship him.
Wait! I got off on a rant! I started out with a look ahead at 2012, so here we go!
January — Following up on his twin wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, a triumphant Ron Paul headed to South Carolina and Nevada with high hopes of sealing the deal on the Republican nomination. With his vast ground forces consisting nearly equally of college students and cranky nursing home residents, Paul hit a solid wall in South Carolina when he refused to repudiate charges that he wanted to shut down the Parris Island Marine Corps facility. His fate in South Carolina was sealed when a SuperPAC funded by a coalition of advocates for tattoo parlors and brothels began running vicious anti-Paul TV ads.
February – Oddly enough, Ron Paul’s campaign was resurrected only days later in Nevada when a SuperPAC funded by a coalition of advocates for tattoo parlors and brothels began running TV ads strongly supporting him. As a side note, a large contingent of cocktail waitresses at Caesar’s Palace formed their own PAC, which they named the “Pro-Paul Harem”.
March — Continuing the Paul-Caesar’s Palace connection, the candidate escapes an assassination attempt in the casino on March 15. Bloggers and the chattering class in D.C. begin referring to him as “the new Julius Caesar.” For Paul, Super Tuesday (March 6) dealt his presidential ambitions a serious blow when he mistakenly thought it was Super Wednesday and didn’t show up. Super Tuesday ended up being Super only for newly announced candidate Callista Gingrich, who swept all 10 states whose delegates were up for grabs that day, including Virginia where she officially changed her name to Mitt Romney in order to get on the ballot. The sweep put her in a commanding position to claim the nomination but she frittered it away less than a week later when she visited her husband, candidate Newt Gingrich, in the hospital where he was being treated for laryngitis to serve him with divorce papers.
April — As T.S. Eliot said:
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
April 2012 was indeed a cruel month for the Republican candidates. Michele Bachmann’s hopes suffered a major setback when her husband, Marcus, was discovered in an airport restroom stall with a pitching wedge and a stuffed penguin. Gingrich dropped out after a surgery resident at the Mayo Clinic “accidentally” removed his vocal chords during a tonsillectomy. According to news reports, Jon Huntsman was kidnapped, a tragedy that was compounded when the kidnappers sent the ransom note to Mitt Romney. Oops.
Speaking of dried tubers, Ron Paul continued his quixotic pursuit of the GOP nomination even as a rehabilitated Herman Cain and his new wife, Callista Gingrich-Cain, re-entered the race with the backing of the Koch Brothers. Political bloggers couldn’t resist themselves, saying the race was down to three: one black, one blonde, one befuddled.
May — The month of May witnessed three critical events that completely upended the nomination race. Ron Paul, who had benefited significantly from the accidental silencing of Newt Gingrich, suffered a broken leg during the Kentucky Derby while watching the race with his son, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. After many hours of consultation with the finest veterinarians, Paul was put down. A plaque commemorating him was erected at Claiborne Farms and his cremains interred next to Secretariat.
More race-day excitement unfolded later in the month during the Indianapolis 500 when Michele and Marcus Bachmann were discovered inflagrante delecto with Indy driver Danica Patrick and the entire pit crew of Patrick’s team mate Marco Andretti. Although Bachmann claimed she was “just taking a closer look at the STP decal”, amateur videos tell quite a different story.
Finally, in a Memorial Day tragedy that will forever mark the holiday, frequent presumptive front runner Mitt Romney was badly injured when he tripped coming down the steps of his campaign tour bus during on swing through Tennessee during his “Just Tell Me What To Believe” tour. The spill knocked out Romney’s two front teeth, removing the main reason anyone had ever supported him: he looked presidential. After the accident, he really looked more like Goober from the Andy Griffith Show.
June — Because of the incredible run of bad luck and rash of injuries among the GOP candidates, June 1 found Texas Governor Rick Perry trailing only “none of the above” in the race for the nomination, a remarkable showing given the fact that Perry hadn’t left Texas since January. His amazing staying power was attributed to the fact that his SuperPAC, Patriotic Religious Zealots to Preserve the 1880s American Way, had raised and spent more than $2 billion during that period, most of it from oil tycoons and the Koch Brothers. Insiders noted that the Koch brothers had contributed more than $1.5 billion to each of the candidates, figuring that owning the American government was worth a few billion dollars.
Roused from his slumber in Austin, Rick Perry asked what month it was and re-entered the race for three reasons (you know this punchline).
Meanwhile, the suicide rate among mainstream Republicans spiked around Arbor Day when the approval rating of their party dropped to less than five percent (although if inmates in various mental institutions were include, that number rose considerably).
The first half of 2012 was capped off in the final week of June when Mitt Romney publicly destroyed more than 10,000 CDs of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and called for the arrest and imprisonment of Donny and Marie Osmond.
Meanwhile, Jon Huntsman outlined his foreign policy to a gathering of six people in Missoula, MT.
Next time: July through December 2012
Soyrietta on her 88th birthday in 2009
Today is my mother-in-law’s 90th birthday. Hooray for Soyrietta. I honestly didn’t think she’d make it.
Soyrietta’s been living with us since late September 2010. Up ’til then, she’d lived by herself in Iowa City. Then she took a tumble, fractured a hip and had surgery. Broken hips at age 88 when you already have some other health issues are very dangerous. I think we all kinda-sorta figured this was a fork in the road that didn’t lead to someplace good.
It’s almost 15 months later, the hip healed up amazingly well and she is helping do laundry every Thursday. My t-shirts have never been folded so nicely! Last Saturday night, we all went to a brass band concert and then drove around a bit and looked at Christmas lights. She was really tired when we got back but it was obvious she’d had a great time.
I know she really misses her buddies in Iowa City. She misses going to exercise class at the indoor pool at the Iowa City Rec Center and she misses going to Panera afterward. She misses driving and going to church and being mobile. As I’ve watched her make big adjustments to her life with us, she has taught me many things about growing older.
A few weeks ago, Dixie sent out a call to her buddies reminding them the Big 9-0 was coming up. With the five that came today, Soyrietta has gotten 54 cards. Friday night, about 15 friends came by to sing her Christmas carols and Happy Birthday.
Dixie and Soyrietta at Dixie's non-birthday party, Oct. 2011
Soyrietta (pronounced like Sarita — she was named after the daughter of the local doctor) was born in a town called Cashiers(pronounced CASH-erz) in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. It’s an incredibly beautiful part of the USA. The people there are great storytellers. Dixie’s cousin, Thomas Franklin Dillard, has a bunch of stories about bootleggers and cars that drove off the mountainside (“It was a ’56 Studebaker, Steve, and that car’s still down there.”)
Cashiers is high-dollar real estate these days with the rich people from Atlanta and Florida buying second homes in the mountains where it’s a whole lot cooler in the summer. Back when Soyrietta was growing up, it was hardscrabble Appalachia where people put ringer washers out on their front porch as a status symbol. Soyrietta got married when she was 14 (her parents disapproved) and had Dixie’s brother Tom when she was 16. Life hasn’t been easy for her but she’s the toughest person I’ve ever met. More than 60 years of smoking (and about that many enjoying the cocktail hour) and she’s made it to 90. Smoking is going to get her but she’s not going easily. She is the absolute living epitomy of Dylan Thomas’s words:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Soyrietta is very, very sweet to me, oftentimes giving me credit for something Dixie’s done and always giving me more credit than I deserve. I think she’s a little freaked out by a guy doing all the cooking but I only do it to get out of doing dishes. It sounds bad to say this but sometimes I think she flirts with me. We have dinner together every night. Before she moved in, Dixie and I would usually eat separately. (Remember, we spend an hour and a half in the car together commuting every weekday). Now, we get caught up on who came by — hospice, Meals on Wheels, Pastor Ed, the UPS guy — and talk about her day. It’s been great to have her here when we need the cable guy or a repair person comes by. If she wasn’t here, we’d have to be missing work to let them in.
Dudley and Soyrietta resting after working the crossword puzzle
She’s become big buddies with Dudley the Cat. She talks to him all the time and complains when he doesn’t come down and sleep on her bed during the day. Apparently she hasn’t noticed that he’s a hod or so shy of a full load of bricks. If she has, it hasn’t prejudiced her against him. Come to think of it, she probably views me the same way which explains why she’s so nice to me.
I like to make her laugh. One night I was re-telling the story of how Dixie and I met and got engaged in less than a month. I told Soyrietta that after we got engaged, I told Dixie the only thing left to make my life complete would be to have my mother-in-law live with us. I said that now she was living with us, I have attained Nirvana at last. She knew I was making that up and laughed.
Another time (last story, I promise), Dixie went up to the Lincoln Wine Bar with her buddy, M.B. Soyrietta said, “Dixie’s going up to the wine bar on a Thursday night?” I told her she just wanted to spend some time with her friend. I asked Soyrietta, “Didn’t you ever go out with girlfriends?”
“Not until later in life,” Soyrietta said.
I replied, “Dixie’s 60. This IS later in life!”
So Soyrietta is 90 and that’s way more later than life than the vast majority of humans ever see. I won’t lie and tell you it hasn’t been without its stresses. Dixie’s dad is in declining health and early this fall her dad had a stroke and I was hospitalized with a really funky gallbladder. With taking care of her mom and me, and worrying about her dad, Dixie got pretty stressed out.
Soyrietta and I had always been friendly but over the last 15 months, we’ve become friends. One thing I know for certain. When Soyrietta does crosses over to the other side, I am going to miss her ever so much more because of the time she spent with us.
Happy 90th, Sweetie!
We continue our series, The Really True History of America.*
While stock car racing’s roots run all the way back to the days of the chariot, in America its history goes back at least to the colonial era. As early as 1760, Earl “Jimmy George” Washington, a cousin of our nation’s first president, was careering through downtown Fairfax, VA in a carriage covered with decals for Boar’s Head Ale Lite, Ye Foxe and Hounde Tavern, Lobsterback Uniforms and Boots, NAPA Buggy Parts, the Colonial Action Army, and Sam’s General Store Clubs.
Colonial racing fan. "Show us thy bosoms!"
Because of his aggressive driving style and pugnacious attitude, he was known as “Ye Olde Intimidator” and developed a devoted fan following. Those fans were known for their penchant for drunk and unruly behavior. They would often stand on street corners, yelling “show us thy bosoms” at members of the fairer sex. The less reputable ladies would comply. Each year, Fairfax hosts a National Stock Buggy Racing Re-enactment. You can see a video clip here.
Andrew Jackson. He once beat a driver to death with a silver-headed cane.
The sport faced an existential crisis when Gen. Andrew Jackson of Tennessee was elected president. Until that time, federal support for wheeled racing had risen and fallen. During the presidencies of southerners, it spiked and when a northerner took office, it plummeted. The thinking going in was that Jackson would be good for racing. Um, not so. As it turned out, Jackson was a big fan of horseracing and he felt that wheeled racing was starting to pose a threat. Jackson revealed his prejudices when he beat a driver to death with a silver-headed cane at a track near Chattanooga, crying “you monstrous cad, you monstrous cad,” as he delivered the rain of fatal blows.
Just before the outbreak of the Civil War/War Between the States, Wayside Chester Garner, a young Iowa bicycle mechanic and tinkerer, invented the first stock car. It was powered by a steam engine, a steering tiller and four wooden wheels. Garner was afraid of the car to drive it. He turned instead to his friend Dale Kenny Petty. Petty was a natural. With incredible vision and magnificent reflexes, he immediately took to the vehicle and was soon playing it like a cello. For two summers leading up to the War, Garner, Petty and their entourage made a comfortable living challenging (and beating) buggies, wagons, carts, phaetons, and even galloping horses pulling nothing at all. Petty and Garner had a falling out over Petty’s demand for more pay and no yellow M&Ms in his dressing room. The Civil War/War Between the States intervened. Neither survived the War. Garner died while being mugged by a gang he had sought out to pay a member $100 to enlist for him in the Union Army. Petty was killed when the heel of his boot caught in a crack in the sidewalk, pitching him directly into the path of an onrushing bicycle with the big giant front wheel. Petty died instantly and the wheel was ruined. It was was repaired by Garner and was the last known bicycle component he ever touched. He climbed aboard the train heading off to his army company and never returned.
Stock car racing maintained an even, if somewhat down-scale presence in the American psyche throughout the last half of the 19th and first half of the 20th century. A major leap forward was the invention of the internal combustion engine in Germany. By World War I, American youth had already begin “hopping up” their cars.
Stock car driver Fireball Roberts in 1933
When the Depression hit in the 1930s, a young man named Bill France headed to Florida to 1) find meaning in his life; 2) look for work; and 3) see how fast old cars could go. He ended up in Daytona Beach, which had drawn dozens of similar young people who were biding their time waiting for surfing to be invented. Before long, the sands at Daytona were littered with blown engines, dropped transmissions and abandoned human body parts. Being unable to find work, France invented the National Association of Stock Car Racing (NASCAR) and settled in to wait for television to come.
It wasn’t until after WWII (AKA, “the Big One”) that racing began to go mainstream. Young people, adrift in the 1950s and with a taste for liquor honed in lonely European and Pacific outposts, began learning the ropes from bootleggers in the piney woods of Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia. Before the decade was over, stock car racing (and its poor cousin, demolition derbies) had spread to county fairs across the country.
Jimmy Carter's campaign promise: "A camshaft in every pot!"
NASCAR was officially recognized as an American institution when Jimmy Carter established the cabinet position, Secretary of Stock Car Racing. Carter nominated and the Senate unanimously confirmed Col. Beauregard P. Dayton of Florida as the first secretary. Secretary Dayton, whose great-great-great grandfather had founded the town of Daytona Beach, Florida, served only five weeks in the position before choking to death on a biscuit at a fried chicken restaurant. His body was placed on a catafalque covered with endorsement decals and placed on train to take him home. Millions of Americans lined the tracks all along the route, paying silent tribute to the Colonel. The entourage took a detour to the Bristol, TN track where more than two thousand former drivers, mechanics and pit crew members actually took showers and put on clean clothes for a moving service.
By 1990, NASCAR had replaced thoroughbred racing as America’s Most Popular Sport Where You Watch Stuff Run Around On An Oval. Discussions were underway to open the sport for parimutuel wagering but once regulators realized the general moral turpitude of the average driver, the conversation was quickly ended. The potential revenue was replaced by convincing advertisers such as Tide detergent to spend millions to have their logos emblazoned across the hoods of the cars. Think about it. What does Tide do? It makes your clothes clean. Do stock car fans care about clean anything? I rest my case.
It’s just three days from Christmas (unless you’re Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or heathen) and you might be panicking about a gift for that Bubba-Who-Has-Everything on your list. Why not give him lessons at the Dale Jarrett School of Stock Car Racing, where he can drive more than 165 mph. It might be a way to cross him off your Christmas list permanently!
In closing, I offer these quick assessments of some prominent stock car figures:
Junior Johnson – The Grandaddy of Modern Racing. Author Tom Wolfe made Junior the subject of one of his earliest Esquire articles. Won the first Daytona 500.
Lee Petty – Richard Petty’s daddy, grandaddy of Kyle Petty. Won the second Daytona 500 and is in the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
Richard Petty — The King. He would have been called The God but that would have been sacrilegious.
Dale Earnhardt -- The Intimidator. Died doing what he did best, which was to be a maniac. Secretly, his peers don’t miss him.
Cale Yarborough – The first driver to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Also appeared in two episodes of the TV show Dukes of Hazzard and also appeared in a movie with Burt Reynolds.
Jeff Gordon — The Mama’s Boy. A wuss. Couldn’t hold The King’s feathered hat. The first driver to earn $100 million. Pretty much hated by other drivers, mainly because he speaks understandable English. Is way overexposed in the media, having hosted Regis and Kelly about 10 times. Also has his own video game.
* We invite you to read the entire Really True History of the USA series:
- The Really True History of the USA, Part 1 (June 29, 2011)
- The Really True History of the USA, Part II: The Story of Our Flag (June 30, 2011)
- The Really True Story of How the White Man Bought Manhattan (July 1, 2011)
- The Really True History of the USA: The Role of Women in History (July 11, 2011)
- The Really True History of the Constitution of the United States (July 12, 2011)
- The Really True Story of the Bill of Rights: The First Amendment (July 13, 2011)
- The Really True Story of the Bill of Rights: The Second Amendment (July 14, 2011)