The days of Ward Churchill as a college professor are drawing to a close. Perhaps he can go to Venezuela and be welcomed by that dictator, but I would advise him to wait a while, for the citizens are rioting in protest as to the closing of the oldest independent TV station. Thank you, communist Hugo Chavez. I will forever be amazed at what is important to the general public in all countries. Hugo Chavez got by with taking control over everything that conceivably would make that country a viable force in the world; Venezuela had it all.
They have a vast supply of oil which is the one thing that is the true power world wide. Without that black gold, entire civilizations would crumble. Try to run anything close to an industry without oil and it will fall flat. “No blood for oil,” they scream, yet they fly in personal jets all over the world to come back and warn us with their doom and gloom sermons. Right. Do as I say not as I do. It worked with my dad, who was an alcoholic, and it never ceased to amaze me that he always wanted his children to be such assets to the world. He demanded and got his children to follow the rules in accordance with what was based on good deportment. I could never have been ‘a girl gone wild’ back in the day. I couldn't have pulled it off. I might have been right beside Mr. Churchill, on my way to the country that once was glorious Venezuela.
This country will become just like Cuba. A former tourist place, one that enjoyed the ability to rise to a real world power. Mr. Chavez will live high until the country sinks into the mire of poverty and sorrow. One night, he will fly to shelter in some other country, leaving the chaos he has created behind. Today he has his version of the Nazi police shooting at his own citizens with tear gas and rubber bullets. They just as well stick it out to the end now. He will do to them what Saddam Hussein did to the Kurds. Entire villages wiped out to quell any thought of revolt. These tin pin dictators are all the same and they can never last. Ownership to the same portion of the dream of humanity is the only thing that will ever work in the long run. There has to be a line that is drawn in the sand, even if it is the smallest shack in any poor country. Nothing else works. Never has and never will. A man or a woman will fight for what is rightly theirs. I would die to protect my little part of the American dream.
I will never forget at the end of Mickey's senior trip, which was cut short due to ‘boys gone wild’. In those days, it could be as small as treating the chaperone's with disrespect. We all know the kinds of families that try to figure out a way around the rules, any rules, no matter how orderly the rules may be. (We once knew someone that had a daughter who went to high school right across from our house. For whatever reason, they decided to lay down rules for each student to park in an orderly manner in the parking lot provided. The dad worked with Jerry in the same company. The dad said to the daughter, “Just park at Jerry's house.” What? But anyway, back to the aborted senior trip. One of these parents decided to go up against the powers that be and wanted to get my dad in on it. “Those boys have a right to a few beers on a senior trip, blah, blah….” Dad listened to them rant and rave and then proclaimed that no, they acted like little heathens, my word not his, Daddy was much more colorful than me. Mickey was promptly put on the kind of probation we dreaded most. The kind that all of us children could take as a deterrent. He had sense enough to give the year round help a small portion of the crop so the help had a share of the proceeds and would stay for the entire year. Those who came out from nearby towns picked up the loose cotton. If you didn't want your fruit, someone would pick it for you. Most of this kind of labor was done on the halves. Private ownership is all that works. Until a society realizes that, it is doomed. It was no different then than it is now. Citizenship is taught at home.
The man that wanted his daughter... well, step-daughter, to park here at our house, well, he had a nephew who was in some kind of trouble who came to live with them. Well, the wife had a romance with the nephew, they divorced, and it all just blew up in their faces. It would just have been so much easier to have just taught the girl, do as the school demands or you are grounded and can walk to school, by someone who had respect for decent people like my dad. The ones who picked up the turn-row cotton and sold it to the local mattress manufacturer. We bought the mattresses. That, dear reader, is democracy at it's finest.
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Great post, Mom. I agree completely about ownership or at least "hope of" and as far as Grandpa goes, he understood morality as well as himself, as much as any of us can anyway. He gave you borders. A child has to have them, because they must be led. While Grandpa didn't lead by example, he did lead. But when he gave his inheritance to his children so that he wouldn't have a chance to drink it away, he understood himself. He understood you and he understood his family. He loved but couldn't give you stability. But he did give you life and he loved and he taught. His weaknesses and sin were for all the world to see. It is those that remain hidden which are much scarier. By loving the song "How Great Thou Art," he also understood his own higher authority and I am certain that alcohol does not kill the love of our God, but instead increases our dependency upon Him and need of His mercy, but it does diminish our obedience.
I'm glad you had this colorful (and to me, scary!;) man in your life. And I will always be honored for the time Dad and I sat for a night at his deathbed. Dad always thought the world of him and I trust Dad on people.
Of course, my main recollection of Grandpa was that I better eat my oatmeal whether I wanted it or not, and I certainly shouldn't defy him. What came over me that morning? Whatever it was, it never came back! lol!
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