Sipsey Street Irregulars: Back home in Alabama, praise the Lord. Rained all the way back, but I was still grateful for having escaped Ohio.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Back home in Alabama, praise the Lord. Rained all the way back, but I was still grateful for having escaped Ohio.

"You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory." -- Thomas Wolfe, in You Can't Go Home Again.

Did I mention that a number of Buckeyes who I encountered (although it would be more accurate to say -- who attempted to run into me) in addition to having particularly nasty and ill-mannered dispositions during this holiday for giving thanks, are accomplished kamikazes with all vehicles ranging from shopping carts to automobiles? Darn near killed me more than once, and gave me the finger as they passed. Sheesh. And to think I was raised among that tribe. I guess it was my fault for venturing out shopping on Thursday and "Black Friday." I was just asking for it.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...: Buckeyes? Hah!

You should come to Miami, FL. Watch people near kill each other before Halloween! In order to get more stuff to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace!

Or no, better not. We need you alive.; November 29, 2015 at 5:08 AM
Roger J said...: Mike,
Welcome back to the South. I lived in rural southern Ohio during part of the '80s, and I remember folks being kind and helpful. Those people were damn near being Southerners. Later, I had to move to Dayton, which was a different world. I guess the experience depends on which part of Ohio you happen to be in. And it may be that rural decline has caused an entire way of life to go to rack and ruin. The quiet farming town I once lived in has been in the news lately for a string of unsolved murders of young women, most of them working as hookers because of drug problems. Meantime, some of our politicos want to bring more "refugees" and "immigrants" rather than solve America's real problems.; November 29, 2015 at 6:00 AM
Anonymous said...: I'm sorry sir that you felt grateful to the escape Ohio, we are not all jerks. I hope you and yours had a blessed Thanksgiving, God bless you sir and I pray for your total healing.; November 29, 2015 at 7:50 AM
Curmudgeon said...: As I used to be married to someone who was raised in Sylacauga, AL and had to spend many excruciating days there (and B'ham) visiting her relatives, I cannot agree with you. I'm a native Buckeye. I lived in the south for 6 years (Mississippi) and I'd rather have honest how they feel folks (like Buckeyes) rather than 2 faced southerners who smile to your face, shake your hand and try to stab you in the back with the other hand.

Personally I've nothing against anyone living where the want but I'm uncomfortable anywhere south of the Ohio river..

Go Bucks; November 29, 2015 at 9:02 AM
Anonymous said...: Don't take it personally, Mike. But it's your fault for entering the world of psychos over the Thanksgiving weekend.
On Thanksgiving Thursday, I do my best to have all my shopping done before that day, to be respectful of other people's right to be home with THEIR families.
As for Black Friday, I DEFINITELY stay at home, and treat that day the same way the ancients did the night of the full moon, when lunatics and werewolves come out to attack.

B Woodman
III-per; November 29, 2015 at 9:52 AM
Christian Patriot III said...: I've lived in Ohio for 15 years and in that time there has been a cultural shift, due to folks from other states moving to Ohio, as well as folks from other lands with no cultural fealty to speak of. It has certainly changed. There are still a lot of good friendly folk around, but I would wager the majority of them, pardon the apparent but not intended slight, Mike, have the sense to stay home on Black Friday. :-)

We travelled as well, mostly the rain slowed us down, traffic was very light with so many people in the malls and stores battling to the death over %50 discounts.

So very glad you made it home safely. I saw some boys with III patches the other day and asked them if they knew what it meant. They gave a vague "war is coming" sort of answer without really understanding what they were talking about. I recommended two movies from around the time of their birth: The Postman, and The Patriot.; November 29, 2015 at 11:25 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Back home in Alabama, praise the Lord. Rained all the way back, but I was still grateful for having escaped Ohio.

6 comments:

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