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Toxic masculinity

casualties

But instead of Atlanta, my doorstep. And instead of Confederate soldiers, tiny dead baby bunnies.

Okay, two. I found two tiny dead baby bunnies, but it was very impactful. I have to assume Jack left them, as Charlotte has been in all day and any interloper would be unlikely to leave gifts at the door.

The bunny season has begun. Probably anthropomorphizing to think Jack’s trying to get his mojo back. It’s more like the local crop of bunnies have reached that perfect chase-and-murder age.

I didn’t mean to make this Jack Week, but I’ve got nothing else going on and I’m back to ignoring politics.

Changing the subject, they didn’t allow Gone with the Wind on television until the late Seventies, but every so often they’d run it in the theaters. The first time in my lifetime was 1967, in a remastered 70mm format.

My father’s family were rural and small town people, and Tennesseans (meaning family on both sides of the Civil War). This wasn’t really his deal. But my mother’s people were from Louisiana and real live slave-and-plantation owners. There was once dizzying money in my mother’s father’s line (not a penny of which reached as far as me, alas).

Mother solemnly took me to the 1967 screening like it was my first Communion or something. Behold, my child, this is how it was meant to be.

Mother carried herself like royalty. Which is pretty funny since she was born and raised on a pokey little dirt farm in Armadilloballs, Texas.

Comments


Comment from durnedyankee
Time: April 26, 2017, 9:06 pm

Now I’m gonna have to see if the city I live in “incorporated” Armadilloballs.
Cities here ‘absorb’ places like that ya know.
Methinks the irony is lost on the natives.

Coming from north of Boston, silly me thought “the war” was over. I discovered some people still think it’s just a bit too soon to tell 🙂

Texans are much more pleasant about it as a rule though, because after all, Texas really IS it’s own country, we really just go along with the US because we enjoy the chance to ski in Colorado and gamble in Oklahoma without having a passport.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: April 26, 2017, 9:44 pm

As a matter of fact, it was actually Hackberry, Texas. And yes, it was absorbed by Dallas.


Comment from Armybrat
Time: April 26, 2017, 10:29 pm

When I was a kid, my daddy was occasionally stationed in the south. Dixie, as the natives proudly referred to it back then. That’s when I learned about The War of Northern Aggression. Having lived well north of the Mason-Dixon Line for most of the last 15 years, I get the complaints of the south! The north is cold and so are it’s people. Something to be said for the genteel manners of the south….where I will retire in just a few short years.


Comment from Veeshir
Time: April 26, 2017, 10:29 pm

On my first trip from upstate NY to the South (Virginia) in the late 70s I saw some kids at a playground at the campground and I still remember hearing the one kid saying, “If we’d had a few more guns and few more men we’d a-whooped them yankees!”
They didn’t take to me for some reason.

I’m more of a dog person, but I have to respect a cat that pays rent.
Although…I’ve sometimes wondered if the little bird and meese heads on the porch was some sort of warning.


Comment from Mitchell
Time: April 27, 2017, 2:20 am

Another Southerner (Texas / Arkansas) here although I’ve spend most of my life not in the south actually. Dad was in the military so we moved around a bit.

Mom would always waffle between “People are so much nicer in the South!” and “God, people around here are so slow!”


Comment from Deborah HH
Time: April 27, 2017, 2:50 am

That was an awful lot of movie for a little kid, Stoaty. Coincidentally—MY mother took my older sister and me to see Gone with the Wind in 1967, too, when it was re-released. I was fifteen. Esquire Theater in Amarillo, Texas. We dressed up—dressy dresses and high heels, too. My mother wore gloves. (I still remember what I wore—good grief: 50 years ago. Silk bombazine tent dress in jonquil yellow with black lace trim—very short—and black patent kitten heels with fat grosgrain ribbons on the toes.)
Esquire Theater: http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/13306

Oh yeah. My 1970 senior class ring from Tascosa High School (Amarillo) has a tiny enameled Confederate battle flag on it. The school mascot was a Confederate officer riding a horse. Seriously. I don’t know when the school dropped the Confederacy, but now the Rebel is a rootin’ tootin’ Westerner on the order of Yosemite Sam.


Comment from Niña
Time: April 27, 2017, 3:34 am

My cats don’t hunt much, but my daughter’s sure do. She wakes up to presents every day, and I guess it’s been a bountiful year for mousies in eastern Washington this year.

Tell me why autocorrect capitalizes Northern California and Southern California, but not eastern Washington?


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: April 27, 2017, 4:06 am

@Mitchell – Be careful around us “slow” Southerners.
We’re thinking just as fast as everybody else.


Comment from Mitchell
Time: April 27, 2017, 5:17 am

Uncle Al,

Apologies, “slow” in the way she meant was “slower-paced”, not mentally speaking. The South’s distinct quality of unhurriedness is part of its charm but it does get annoying sometimes when you just want to get out of the grocery store without the checker getting into a conversation with you about dinner tonight because of what you’re buying. 😀


Comment from OldFert
Time: April 27, 2017, 9:40 am

I went to Jefferson Davis Junior High School in Hampton, Virginia, back in the early ’60s. Having moved there from New Jersey (being a GI brat), I never did find out if it was down the street from Benedict Arnold Elementary School.

I live in the South now (weather suits my bones, except for the ridiculous humidity).

Been living in the South most of my life. Born in South Japan, lived in South Jersey, Southern Labrador, South Vietnam, Southern Pennsylvania, and a few Northern places.

Despite living in the South, I still can’t view going through something like Sherman through Georgia as a *bad* thing.


Comment from MikeW
Time: April 27, 2017, 2:59 pm

No mention of Gone With The Wind is permitted to run without also mentioning the best sequel, Went With The Wind, starring Carol Burnett (there may be a law on that, I think). I do recall seeing this on TV when it originally aired. Awesome! Oh, how I miss the dynamic of that ensemble cast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1JPQh5rBCw

“Just saw it in the winder and I couldn’t resist it”


Comment from Mr. Dave
Time: April 27, 2017, 5:33 pm

I’m from Weigh Station Closed, Texas.


Comment from Steve Skubinna
Time: April 27, 2017, 6:17 pm

In the midst of a move (father was career Navy) attended Matthew F. Maury in northern VA. Not going to check but I’d bet it’s been renamed long since. Assuming the pantswetters ever figured out who Maury was, that is.


Comment from Subotai Bahadur
Time: April 27, 2017, 8:37 pm

Steve Skubina:

Just out of curiosity, I looked. Mathew F. Maury High School is still open in Norfolk; which I assume is where you attended if your dad was Navy. I think his Confederate naval commission was balanced out by a) his US Navy Commission, b) his international reputation for working on weather forecasting and navigation, and c)apparently he was an opponent of slavery, and before the outbreak of the First American Civil War he was pushing the idea of abolishing slavery in the US and resettling the slaves in Brazil.


Comment from durnedyankee
Time: April 27, 2017, 9:21 pm

Meh, we’re talking about appeasing people who think the Confederate Naval Ensign was actually the flag of the Confederacy.

That’s the Naval Jack in the photo – the battle flag was square. But, as #2 son says, “it makes for good movies Dad” (like watching the trainwreck Miss-Story Channel series “Texas Rising” ).

Maury didn’t make the list of statued heroes in Richmond, so he’s probably safe until some nitwit from somewhere else shows up and gets all offended on behalf of people dead for over 100 years.

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