During the 1960s, my father would always plant a huge garden. Our farm was hilly, so the garden was on a higher elevation than the house. The earth had a bit of red clay mixed in and, after planting, the ground would be concrete hard. We didn’t water the garden that much, but all the plants thrived. Pole, bush, and lima beans, tomatoes, cabbage, mustard, collard, and turnip greens, potatoes, irish and sweet, black-eyed peas, lettuce, sweet corn, summer squash.
I remember the beans and black-eyed peas because we would snap/hull beans and peas for hours. We would spread old newspapers in our laps, get a lapful from the bushel basket, and snap/hull until the bushel baskets were empty. My mother would then dip the beans, I think, in boiling water and fill quart freezer bags. Those vegetables usually lasted the winter.
That picture sent to me to show me some of the bounty of my friend’s garden brought back memories of hot summer days on the porch, swatting flies, sometimes reading a headline that caught my attention, and idly talking about everything and nothing.
So many names–Sonya Massey–there was no reason for the sheriff’s deputy to kill her. It’s a good sign that the sheriff is not defending the deputy. A long time ago, someone I knew in law enforcement told me that many of his colleagues were would-be criminals who were afraid of jail, i.e., as law enforcement, they believed they could commit crimes with no consequences. Many of them did. Not so much killing, as stealing, raping, extortion, etc. From what I read, the deputy was one who never should have been in law enforcement. For him, it was a means to commit crimes and receive no punishment.
Before COVID, I visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, informally known as the National Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. It was a hot, hot day in July and the sheer number of names on the steles was heartbreaking and enraging. None of them deserved to die at the hands of a rabid barbaric mob of white evilness.
I binge watched Making Sense of the Sixties, a documentary by David Hoffman that was aired on PBS in 1991. I don’t remember that much about the sixties. We lived on a farm, which was in the middle of nowhere. We had newspapers, Jet, and Time Magazine, but everything that was happening, the assassinations, the riots, everything was far, far away. We went to the library where I would get stacks of books, some way too mature for me, but my mother rarely policed my reading and the librarian certainly didn’t care. With all the book banning and oversight that’s taking place today, I doubt I would have been able to read any of those adult novels I was fond of. Funny, I never checked out what would one deem age appropriate books. Those books were of no interest whatsoever.
I was surprised that there was no mention that the Viet Nam War, in all probability, was not really fought because of communist aggression, but because the oil companies thought there was oil in the Gulf of Tonkin. The corporations did not find the deposits their preliminary surveys showed were there, so there was no need to continue the war if there were no corporate profits to be had. (I read this a long time ago and a quick scan of the internet could not verify this, but knowing the U.S. and corporate greed, it is plausible.)
As predicted, the Republican Party is doubling down on its sexist and misogynistic smears of the VP. Do the Republicans really think that if a woman says these awful thing that somehow that legitimizes its racism and misogyny? What we know is the Republicans have no bottom…the party is a bottomless pit of racism, misogyny, and evil. The Republican Party is now the party of ignorance, evil, misogyny, racism, and dictatorship.
At the 2024 8th of August celebration, I learned something new about my grandfather. I knew the nickname “Puddin”, but I had never heard the nickname “Jim Dandy”. My sister said she had heard it before. She’s older and remembers more of the time when we lived with our grandparents. A google search of “Jim Dandy” says that it was probably initially associated with baseball and means someone or something that is especially fine or admirable.
I wonder what my grandfather was particularly good at? Making whiskey, beer, alcoholic beverages? I heard that he was quite good at that. For some reason, he stopped and the only alcohol I recall being made was the wine my grandmother made.
I also found out that a cemetery where a lot of relatives were buried is being abandoned. The church…a rural church…has closed. Its members have either died or moved away. Land is either being developed or the ownership thereof is being consolidated in a few people. GMO corn and soybeans appear to be the main crops. But, it’s not about the crops, it’s about the government subsidies that flow to the owners of the land. These landowners are rich and politically powerful if the anecdotal evidence is to be believed.
Local lore–I saw an example of how history gets twisted to the point that there is little truth in the end story. The origins of the 8th of August are murky as I wrote last year. However, there are some facts that are easily verified. One–there is no way that the 8th of August, a celebration of the emancipation of the Slaves, was first celebrated in 1865. Kentucky did not secede, so its slaves were freed with the ratification of the 13th amendment in December 1865.
In the 1982 article in the Courier-Journal titled A Day of Jubilee, local lore had the date of the first celebration on or about 1869. Initially, the 8th of August was a celebration of the emancipation of the Slaves. Now, in 2024, it is a fundraiser for the Baptist Church with little mention of its origins and with tee shirts emblazoned with incorrect information about its origins being sold and proudly worn. My sister liked the design of a particular t-shirt, but she made the mistake of sending me to the vendor to ask if her size was available. I read the back of the t-shirt and I did tell the vendor that the history was wrong. The vendor said that they were repeating local lore. Who, I wonder, is spouting this local lore? All the elders who knew a smidgen of the history of this celebration are long gone and they did not do a good job of passing their knowledge to later generations. My sister got a t-shirt, but not that one.
A long time ago, I spoke to one of the Elders who was quoted in the 1982 Courier-Journal article and in the history of Todd County written by a white woman. The Elder told me that she couldn’t tell me too much because she was planning to write a book about the Blacks in Todd County. I was only interested in my family, so we had a very informative conversation. She did not have any children and she never wrote that book and her stories died with her.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Martin Niemöller
*Picture courtesy of dmjeff
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