One thought that comes to mind is the past week. I have unfortunately been laid-off from work for a while, and to be honest we have hit a bit of a dry spell. My mother has also been out of work too, and her situation is worse (long story there!), and to be honest, when trying to rise above my own limitations it sort of drives me nuts to hear her lamentations. In order to create a little diversion for both of us lately and to diffuse the situation, I have introduced Mom to Google Maps, which honestly is a fantastic innovation since it has street views and you can practically do virtual trips while sitting at the comfort of your computer desk. For some who know me, I have been on this little adventure of self-discovery - family genealogy, researching things from my own past, etc. - and have used tools like Google Maps to aid in that endeavor. One day, I hope to compile all that information into a memoir book, and in a sense writing stuff like this is like a test run of the bigger project. Introducing Mom to Google Maps actually helped her a little, as she was able to also help me with some things, particularly where we used to live in Baltimore when I was a kid, among other things. When she comes up of a day to visit, the amusing little joke we have now is her asking, "So, where do you want to drive today?" It has been fun, but also some other inspiration came out of it too. One thing I recall from my days in Kirby, WV, was the local radio station, WELD-AM in Fisher, WV, a little town on a backroad between Moorefield and Petersburg. Although a country station back then (and I am not a huge fan of country music, save Western swing of course!) WELD was also a source for much of the local happenings. And, music aside, there was a sort of comfort to listening to that little station - it was as if you got to know the announcers. Some of you old fogeys like me remember the local AM stations, so I know you understand what I am talking about. That was in the days before greedy corporations swallowed up the local stations and screwed up their formats. It was the same on Sunday nights, which as you may recall from my earlier work I listened to Henry Boggen on WBT-AM out of Charlotte, NC, the station that basically introduced me to vintage big band music and is largely responsible for the 1170+ CD collection I have over here to my right today. Good music is so hard to find these days on the radio dial - I honestly hardly listen anymore to radio save the rare occasion I can pick up XM stations, which do broadcast a lot of what AM used to. Local AM radio though was so comforting then, and like Saturday morning cartoons now it is unfortunately a fading memory that only a few of us share, as the Millenials don't have a clue in most cases. It is a shame what they miss out on, isn't it?
The old WELD radio station, Fisher, WV
Speaking of things committed to memory, I heard in the news this week that the old Piggly Wiggly stores are closing. We never had many of those in northern West Virginia where I was from, but I do remember them vividly when I used to visit Dad in Brunswick, GA, as a kid. Also, back in my early college days, there was a Piggly Wiggly near the campus in Graceville, FL, many of us students relied upon for our shopping needs. I always liked the Piggly Wiggly stores, as they were a lot more homey and less frigid than your typical supermarket. Back when I was a kid, there was a similar chain with a store in Martinsburg, WV, called Acme Grocery. Last I heard about the latter, it was bought out by Albertsons, which itself has downsized here on its home turf in Florida. Things I remember which are now closed or forgotten - must be my age, as I am sitting on the doorstep of 44 now. Grocery stores, AM radio stations, restaurants...so much good stuff, and so many good memories too.
What is even more shocking is the number of people in recent years I have known a significant part of my life that have passed away. Recently, due to having the time to work on it in lieu of my unfortunate layoff, I compiled all the obituaries I have collected over the years in a large GBC'ed book that I am placing on the shelf with other memorabilia for easy reference. It seems like the older I get, the more obituaries I collect. I have gotten to the point that I look through local papers of places I grew up in to see if anyone I know has met their maker yet, and then I print out the obituaries to add to my book. Bizarre and pathetic? Maybe, but at the same time it is also a humbling reminder of my own rapid approach of the half-century mark in a few short years - well, that and the rapidly-graying hairs on my head and my expanding middle - I don't even look like the same person I was, as I looked almost malnourished when I was in my teens and twenties. The recent change of seasons has also awakened another harbinger of my approaching agism - for three weeks I have had probably the worst aches and pains in my right arm and elbow, largely due to an injury I suffered as a toddler in which I broke my right elbow. Who needs Al Roker when you have Art Thrytis, right?
On a more serious note, it really gets to a person after being laid-off for a while too. You work your butt off to hone your skills, have good and raving reviews from your former bosses, and also have striven to get a higher education, and no one pays attention. I plan on soapboxing on this a little, because it has really been sticking in my craw for a number of years -it isn't going to be the most politically-correct thing to say either, but who cares. It is no big secret that Corporate America is all about big bucks, and they don't care what they do or who they step on to get that wealth. Originally, capitalism was designed for the cottage industry, the "mom-and-pop shop," and the ambitious individual who wanted to make a living by turning a passion for something into something profitable. Then, two things happened - the Industrial Revolution and Big Government. Many of the biggest and oldest corporations today were birthed by "Robber Barons" who drove the Industrial Revolution, and they got where they are by the worship of the Almighty Buck. Quality took a back seat to mass-production, and what happened was that cheaper, inferior quality products flooded the market and made the rest of America lazy. In the process, we lost quality. These corporations have gotten so greedy now that in Bolivia a few years back one greedy corporate raider in San Francisco started "patenting" water, and as a result many native Bolivians were wrongfully arrested, their properties confiscated, and their livlihoods ruined all because they collected rainwater in a barrel. My question to the greedy potz in San Francisco who caused that mess is this - how can you patent a basic element of life that God created? Yet, a greedier government upheld the corporation, and warred against its own citizens because of it. In the US, the consequences have been even more dire. If it weren't for corporations, and the bureaucratic mess in Washington, DC, that empowers them, we would not have had the ugly racial issues that have plagued us since before the Civil War. What I am saying is this - we were taught wrong about the Civil War. It was not fought to liberate slaves; it was fought because Federal government couldn't regulate the slave trade, and Northern corporations that wanted a piece of the action incited the events that led to the Civil War as a result. I truly believe that had the South been left alone, slavery would have ended on its own - many states in the South had ended the slave trade by the time the Civil War started, and it would have been only a matter of time before true emancipation of the slaves would have taken place (example - Wilburforce in England). But, greedy politicians and corporate executives had other plans, and didn't have the patience to wait because they wanted to take over the South for themselves. As a result, what followed the Civil War was 100 years of race tension, and today it has encouraged a mentality of entitlement in some sectors of the African-American population, which "plantation pimps" such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, James Cone, Jeremiah Wright, and others have made a lot of money profiting from exploitation. Now, you have some Blacks acting the same way some Whites treated their forebears, and we have Washington and Wall Street to thank for it. Does it sound like a conspiracy theory? Maybe, but evidence speaks for itself. Unfortunately, this facade of entitlement - under the guise of other names such as "affirmative action" and "political correctness" - has cost some hardworking people dearly. There are many White families now - in particular my native Appalachia - that cannot get jobs despite having the good qualifications to do so, and it stinks. Why is that? Well, to avoid appearing too "discriminatory," these companies like hiring some fat Black chick who likes wasting more time talking on the cell phone instead of doing the job she is paid to do, and God forbid she gets fired - oftentimes, such a person is not even qualified for the job, and they get it based on skin color rather than skills and experience so that some idiotic "affirmative action" quota can be met and the company can avoid litigation over alleged "racism" should a termination be warranted. All the while, qualified candidates are passed over. Some other corporate execs like hiring attractive young 20-ish women so that they can ogle their body parts - this is called "image consulting" by the talking-heads who claim to be "human resource experts," but the only consultation happening is some horny old millionaire exec ogling his hot young secretary's cleavage. Yes, feminism and "women's lib" have come a long way (a lot of radical feminists are lesbians anyway, and they support this crap because they like ogling too - there, I said it; ooohh, call the "hate crimes" police!). Again, truly skilled and qualified people who worked their butts off get passed over for mere erotic aesthetics. Welcome to 21st century postmodern America! I could say more about this, but I won't - I will be devoting a whole article to that in the future to be sure anyway.
What do we talk about next? I need to go a more positive direction now as I have soapboxed and may get myself into hot water if I say much more! We mentioned Robert Newton Peck, an author I became familiar with in the fourth grade and later got to know personally as a mentor and friend. The book that introduced me to his work was part of a series of small children's stories based on his childhood called Soup. The Soup books were something I could relate a lot to - the exploits of a small-town kid and his buddy going on adventures, getting into mischief, etc. What I was reading, as a matter of fact, was in many cases what I lived, although 50 years difference - the Soup series is set in 1930's rural Vermont, and I grew up in the 1970's and early 1980's in rural West Virginia. The title character, Luther "Soup" Vinson, actually reminded me a lot of my old 3rd grade buddy Sim Taylor in Brunswick, GA, and as I read the books, I pictured Soup as looking a lot like Sim. Wild imaginations, fishing, doing outdoor stuff - essentially, that is what I did as a kid too. As a kid, I read a lot - my elementary schoolmates today still razz me about reading the whole set of World Book Encyclopedias in our 5th-6th grade classroom then, and I also had read entire cookbooks, a bunch of stuff on World War II history, a whole set of storybooks, and a 3-volume collection of Bible reference books Mom owned. At the age of 13, I had read the entire Old Testament as well, and appreciated its history too. I also loved atlases - to this day, I love just sitting down and taking an atlas or map, and studying it. Back even in the late 1970's and early 1980's, kids were still encouraged to read - what on earth happened in the past 30 years?? Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the true American success story family on the popular Duck Dynasty series, said that although he grew up in the 1950's his family lived like it was the 1850's (Phil Robertson, Happy, Happy, Happy {New York: Howard Books, 2013] p. 9) - in my case, I grew up in the early 1980's and we lived like it was the 1930's. I am one of the few kids my age from my era to attest that I attended elementary school in a 3-room schoolhouse, for instance. I also am very familiar with outhouses and other such "luxuries," as we often had to live like that for periods of time. Also, we didn't have much television, and oftentimes I entertained myself with reading books, listening to AM radio, and it also allowed for the burgeoning musical interest I developed later. However, in the day hours, especially in the summer months, my time was spent outside. At that time, I could read something in a book, it would spark an interest, and then I would try to re-create it somewhere. It was called in those days imagination - many kids today, made into couch potatoes with their gadgetry, don't know the meaning of the word. To them, creativity means wearing skinny jeans in a Starbucks somewhere and coming up with new text codes to share on their Facebook or Twitter accounts. And skinny jeans - seriously, what on earth??? I am in agreement with my mentor Robert Newton Peck when he wrote on that subject this gem - "I'm sick of seeing blue jeans. Denim bores me almost as much as a Meryl Streep movie. why, in any one school, are some teachers dressed so neatly and others dressed as slobs?" I have never worn blue jeans in my life, save when maybe I was very young, and find them somewhat distasteful. And, now there is this skinny jean phenomenon - a man's 'nads were not meant to be scrunched up like that, and besides, they look pansy. Again, this may get me some 'hate mail," but I could care less - skinny jeans look ridiculous. As for Peck's observations on schools, it equally applies to churches, especially this "contemporary" crap - boys, tuck in those shirts and pull up them pants, and girls, dress more appropriately for the Lord's house, please! Anyway, those are just some observations.
My friend and mentor, author Robert Newton Peck
That being said, the hour is late and I have rambled enough, but will return soon.
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