Eclectic Views

    
(Yay Bethesda, Maryland!)
  

    
Ported with the permission of the author:

gratitude.ind 1: Today I am grateful for...
 #1932 of 1937: Jett Rink  (jettrinkjr) Thu 25 Nov 2004 (05:59 PM)


I'm grateful today for Thanksgivings past. Here's one of them.

THANKSGIVING WITH SWEET PEA

From age sixteen until his death in 1960, Sweet Pea Clayton was a
prisoner at America's Devil's Island. I've written about this place
before. Its real name is Cummins State Prison Farm, and it's located
nine miles upriver from my own farm. Though I virtually grew up on this
huge plantation, I was too young to notice the horrors that went on
there. To me, it was an idyll, just the reverse of what it really was.
There were horses to ride, sniff dogs to pet, river patrol boats to
fish from, rodeos and baseball games, and every kind of hunting
including fox, possum, and coon. There was swimming in the river and 
music from the prisoners, mostly blues and jazz, invented and sung and
played right there -- never heard anywhere else; never written down or
recorded, and never again to be revived or recalled. There were swamps
to explore, and there was beauty everywhere – cypress trees standing in
shallow water, berry vines, sumac clumps, sweet gum bushes, blackberry
thickets, tough tangles of wild grape, and great stands of virgin oaks
and hardwoods. I know this is not a realistic view of a prison farm,
but that was the prison I saw as a boy, and that is the prison -- and
these are the people there, especially Sweet Pea -- that I want to
remember today.     

"Pea" was sent up for stealing a milk cow. It wasn't that serious an
offense, and the judge gave him only a ninety-day sentence, but the
county jail was for whites only, and it was full, so it was more
convenient to send Pea to the prison farm. For the first few weeks, he
worked on the long line in the fields. He was guarded by shotgunners
and mounted long line riders, and he was called a "mercy boy" because
he ran water, sloshing from five-gallon pails, from the water wagon to
prisoners who were chopping or picking cotton, or plowing, or cutting
timber, or clearing land, or cutting cane, or performing all the other
kinds of work that go with running a plantation. 

Like everyone else, Sweet Pea was beaten by Cap'n Mose Trotter, a
300-pound bully-sadist who fancied that he had a sense of humor. If Pea
walked the water to the prisoners, even at a fast clip, Mose beat him
for malingering and lollygagging, and if he ran the water to the
prisoners, Mose beat him for sloshing too much out. In keeping with his
sense of "humor," Mose called these beatings "spankings." 

But Sweet Pea was by nature a happy person, perhaps the happiest I've
ever known. He was likeable and agreeable, and he never held a grudge,
even against Mose, who eventually, like everybody else, came to like
him. Soon, Miss Jenny, the warden's wife, brought Pea in out of the
fields and made him a house boy.

He was a model prisoner except that every now and then he'd get
dreadfully homesick for his Mamma. Then, he'd just walk away from the
farm and go see her. Cap'n Tom, the warden, didn't consider it an
"escape." He knew where Pea was, and he'd give him a week or two to get
his visit out and then go get him. The judge would add another few
months to his sentence, and that was fine with Pea. He wasn't counting.
 
I see this story is getting too long, so I'll cut it short. Miss
Jennie didn't want Pea locked up at night with criminals and lowlife,
so Cap'n Tom let him build a little shack on the river about halfway
between the prison and our farm. That's where he lived out his life,
for even after his time had been served, Pea didn't want to leave the
prison. He had grown up there and had grown into middle age there, and
Cummins was now home to him. Cap'n Tom gave him a $1 a year job
patrolling the river, which really meant fishing. He kept a tiny garden
for fresh salads. He had a few chickens. He kept a .22 for rabbits and
squirrels, and if he wanted a beefsteak, he'd make a run up to the Big
House and Miss Jennie would give him one. He hunted deer and wild
turkey for his table, and he trapped muskrats and mink for a little
tobacco money and other small comforts. He kept a couple of old hound
dogs for company and saw his mother on weekends.

My best Thanksgiving ever was spent at Pea's little shack. I was grown
now. We fished through the late afternoon and then about twilight
fired up his wood-burning stove. Pea seasoned the filets and soon they
were cheerfully frizzling in a cast iron skillet. He mixed a salad and
produced a bottle of wine from the prison vineyard. The stars were
beginning to come out; there was an unseasonably warm fragrant breeze.
A great white heron flew along the river, lazily fanning its wings. The
campfire fended off mosquitoes. It was a scene of brooding peace and
quiet, where time stood still.

So my best Thanksgiving meal ever was not turkey and dressing. It was
catfish and fried bread from the prison bakery. Pea lived in that
shack, close to the soil and sanity of the earth until he died. I doubt
there was ever a time in his entire life when he felt less free than
the birds.
  

    
Wow, what a story.
  

    
Ported with the permission of the author:

current 1598: Son of Even More Miscellaneous and Compelling News
 #399 of 469: as jewish as a bacon cheeseburger  (theek) Mon 31 Jan
2005 (06:49 AM)


Taming the Ox: Infamous Canadian bar to soon serve coffee, not beer

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0131nobooze31.html

This story is really a big deal for me. The Ox really was the roughest
toughest bar in western Canada, and on the bus route home from
downtown (my neighborhood, up the street, wasn't as seedy then but
started getting that way much later). 

I got introduced to the seamier side fo life when I was on a bus with
my mother at the age of six watching two women knife themselves to bits
in front of of the Ox, at four PM. 

It was also my dad's after work local, the truck welding shop he
worked at was down the street, and he knew it most when he was a welder
for the railroad.

Years later I worked one summer at a nearby museum, my job was
officially to work as an archivist. Unofficially my job was to be 6'3"
tall and 200 pounds and to stay near the front door. They didn't have a
security budget but they had one for archival work, and they
improvised.  I was also asked to come in early with my souped up Ford
Torino to remove the drunks and squatters from the front door and the
fire escape, armed with a baseball bat and a then-novel cellphone with
a speed-dial to 911.  One day, one of my cow-orkers, a scrawny
gay-looking and fey fine arts student, all blond and dressed in artist
black, wanted to experience The Ox for himself. He wanted to go by
himself and there was no way I was going to let him do that.

We went in there at noon and it was rocking, the hair of the dog in
full supply, all biker and gang colors and various unpleasant smells. A
week earlier somebody had made the news when he had his arm cut off
with a machete.  There he was, at the bar, one arm terminating in a
bandaged bundle and the other one pounding them back.

All the eyes are on me and the skinny blond guy: Back then I was
tanned, dressed in the classic heavy metal teenage trash wear with a
black ponytail that went past my shoulders, so I somewhat fit in. He on
the otherhand looked like a teenage Daniel Libeskind. 

So we go in, order two high-tests (Extra Old Stock Malt Liquor) and
sat at the bar, watching, when a giant of a man, 6'10", comes up to me,
puts his catcher's-mit size hand around the back of my neck and 
particulate-breathes yesterday's menu into me the following words:

"who's your date?"

And then he starts whispering into my ear about how much he had to pay
for my friend's "services". I realize we have to get out, now. Problem
was that he still had his claw wrapped around my neck, which he most
certainly could break if he really felt like it. 

A few seconds passed while my reptilian brain went through survival
strategies, and my buddy, Libeskind, was oblivious and busy taking in
the scenery in full tourist mode, goofily smiling, not realizing that 
he was a few minutes away from having the ultimate tourist experience.

"Order two tall cans, now."
"WHAT?"
"Order two tall cans now, and pay the bill!!"
"WHY? We have enough beer for now."
"SHUT UP and do as I say."

Which he does: the cans come, and I proffer them both to our new
friend, who in the meantime was pulling me closer to him and getting
more friendly and chit-chatting in a manevolent, psychotic way, about
how he killed someone who got in his face once by merely existing. 

I offer him the beers, both of course. He grabs the first, and then
realizes that he has to let go to get the second beer. There's a pause,
in which there is a glint of recognition that something is up,  but
there's also a second beer, and guess which reflex kicks in.

"RUN!!"

So I run, followed inquisitively by Libeskind, followed by the giant
chasing us out the bar and down the street with a beer in each hand
screaming "FUCK YOU!! I'M GOING TO KILL YOU FUCKERS" until he
remembered that he had two free beers, stopped, and stood there downing
them one after the other, right then and there.


http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0131nobooze31.html

Taming the Ox: Infamous Canadian bar to soon serve coffee, not beer

Canadian Press
Jan. 31, 2005 12:00 AM

WINNIPEG, Manitoba - A bar that was once considered to be among the
toughest in western Canada for fights will soon serve coffee and juice
instead of beer and booze.

The new owner of the New Occidental Hotel says he plans to work with
an aboriginal group to offer entertainment and employment services in
the building and that his bar will be alcohol-free.

"There'll still be bars in the area for those who want a drink down
here," Richard Walls said.

When the city briefly closed the bar in 2002 due to health-code
violations, former bouncer Buzz Baizley wrote a letter to the Winnipeg
Free Press capturing the character and brutality of the Ox.

"The Occidental was the last of the old-time, bucket-of-blood bars,"
he wrote. "Miners, truckers, railway men and drifters would all
gravitate towards it when they hit town wanting a wild night. The Ox
always provided wild times.

"I am sure that no patch of real estate in the West beheld more
muggings, knifings, bar brawls and murders than that location at Logan
and Main."

Walls, owner of an interior-design firm, bought The Occidental after
it was shut down in 2002. His dream has been to remake the entire area,
one building at a time. 
  

    

That's an amazing story. I'm glad to have read about it instead of
experienced it firsthand.
  

    
Yep.
  

    
Ported with the permission of the author:

On December 30, 1999, the USS Ancon left Pier 7 in the Canal Zone and
headed for New Orleans. Aboard were the remaining few hundred of more
than 50,000 souls who had once worked for the Panama Canal Company. 

Most of those thousands had long since pulled up stakes and resettled
– mostly in the States, but many were so pissed that the US had
relinquished that 50-mile-long, 10-mile-wide strip of paradise that
they resettled in colonies all over the world. They would not come
home.

I'm told that that voyage to New Orleans was a four-day wake – tearful
goodbyes, hard partying, and lots of shared memories that spanned five
generations.

It had been TR's idea way back to repatriate Zonians to the US as
their careers ended, so that there should be no succeeding generations
to lay claim to Panama (and not the US) as rightfully theirs – to hold,
as the original treaty had put it, "in perpetuity."

But that idea failed, and as generation succeeded generation, Zonians
began to consider Panama "home," and no more wanted to return to the US
than the French had wanted to leave Algeria, or the Raj, India, or the
English Hong Kong or the Malay States that Somerset Maugham wrote
about so beautifully. 

Why should they want to return "home"? In those colonies, middle class
families had been able to live like rich folks back home – nannies,
country clubs, maids, cheap government housing, lush gardens, perfect
weather, golf courses, the works.

All this by way of saying that I recently had a call out of the blue
from an old friend, now an officer in one of the Panama Canal
societies. She told me that large numbers of old Zonians had never been
able to re-adapt to their homeland, the US, and that they're now
returning to Panama. 

. . . . 

It's a sad story in many ways, but there's an unbelievably huge
network of those folks who keep in touch via the Internet, and they get
together, hundreds of them, along the Gulf coast every summer for five
days of golf, hooch music, dancing, feasting, and having a good time.

I'm invited this July, and I'm going.
  

    
Ported with the permission of the author, Skip Smendler, whose website
is www.skipmendler.com.

news 3070: News of the World, Mars, and Beyond (09/13/6+++)
 #140 of 167: unity, not uniformity; diversity, not division 
(smendler) Thu 28 Sep 2006 (06:51 PM)

Excerpt from “General Rules for Public Etiquette on Transport,” circa
2109:

 - When entering a bus, train, hovercraft, or other public transport
vehicle, greet your fellow passengers, face the surveilleur camera,
state your name loudly, show your UID card so that anyone can see it,
and declare your intentions.  For example: “Hi, everybody!  My name is
Frances! Here is my ID! I don’t want to kill anybody today!” Show that
you have no weapons with the traditional “self-patdown” gestures.  

- If the driver or any of the other passengers indicate that they want
to frisk you, allow them, then frisk them in return.  Keep your gloves
on at all times.  When everyone is satisfied, exchange a hug,
handshake, or high-five, depending on the cultures involved.

- To indicate that you want to frisk someone, first bow, and then say,
“It is my right to ask this, and it is your right to ask the same of
me: Let me know what you carry.”  The other will respond, “I recognize
your right, and I have nothing to hide.” Be brief but thorough; the
person has the right to file a complaint against you if you seem to be
dawdling or “getting personal.”

 - Do not ask a Traditional Muslim or FundiBaptist woman to remove any
part of her covering (Muslim “burkha,” Fundamental Baptist “modesty
dress”), or to submit to frisking.  Use your handheld scanner instead. 
Avert your eyes during the process if you are male.

- If you are carrying a backpack or other parcel, open it and show its
contents to the surveilleur, and at least two other passengers.  Do so
whenever asked.  Transparent backpacks are preferred.

- If a passenger does not immediately self-identify, it is the
responsibility of the people in the front seats to subdue the person
and remove them from the vehicle.  Do not sit in the front seats if
you are unwilling to assume this responsibility.

- It is a planetary crime for someone in the front seats to demand
payment or other favors to allow another passenger onto a mode of
public transport.  It is also a planetary crime to conspire with
another person to fake frisking or otherwise collude in bringing
unauthorized goods onto a mode of public transport.
  

    
vc.103: Interactions Between Virtual (or non-virtual) Communities
vc.103.122: Randall T. Swimm (rtswimm)  Mon 5 Nov 07 18:40

 Oh, yes. Physics gets a lot of credit, but it's one of the easier fields
 by comparison. (I'm a physicist.) Chemistry takes on some harder problems
 (more variables to keep track of.) Biology takes on harder problems than
 chemistry (DNA and proteins need more care to understand than simple things
 like polymers.) Psychology, psychiatry, medicine yet more complicated.
 Politics, economics, marketing -- even harder, if you tried to really
 "solve" it.
 
 The best the lower, more detailed disciplines like science have to offer
 the hopelessly complicated disciplines like, oh let's say how to get along,
 for example, is guidelines and analogies.