Category: Culture Page 4 of 5

We live in an amazing time. One can pick up a device and within seconds connect with someone living half way around the world via text, images or sound.  Back in the last half of the last century of the second millennium, the more typical scenario was for someone to send a letter which would arrive in a few days or weeks, unless sent to a really backwards area and then it might take months or never show up.  My in-laws sent a telegram before leaving the US to go on the mission field. Arriving at the airport they found no one waiting for them.  The telegram arrived days after they did.  Telephone service was “iffy” at best clear up to the final decade of the century.  When our youngest son was born we called my wife’s parents to let them know.  To do so we had to go to a neighbor’s house and borrow their phone.  We tried three times and never heard a word from my  in-laws.  But we DID get the bill.  About $10 US equivalent PER CALL – that never went through.  So today  when we can use VOIP (voice over internet protocol) to chat with friends and family “in real time”, we are truly blessed.  Using WhatsApp has been a real boost to keeping in touch with my siblings. Email is checked multiple times a day.

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A while back some friends of mine were discussing the origins of an old saying, “The Good Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise”. The question was asked, “Does anyone know if the reference is to a creek (little river, stream, bayou-ette) overflowing its banks, or to the Creek tribe going off the reservation?” It turns out that some folks claim that this goes back to the Creek War of 1813-1814. But those speculating on such origins probably never lived in the backwoods.  Unless someone makes the effort to look through historical documents until they come across some ancient writing in which the words are written (I suspect that some variation of this theme may be found on Cuneiform tablets in some ancient city) we may never know for sure.  But I heavily suspect that the phrase is ancient indeed, arising long before 1813 and the uprising of the Red Stick Creeks.

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There remain about 5 months ’til US elections 2016 and folks are full of doom and gloom.  The gun boards are rife with talk about “What ‘battle carbine’ should I get?”, “What magazines for my ‘battle carbine’ should I get?”, “Who has the best price on bulk ammo?”, “What are you going to do if “Hitlery” gets in?”, etc.  There’s a lot of speculation about what the future holds and “The End Of The World As We Know It” (otherwise known as TEOTWAWKI)  is “just around the corner”. We haven’t seen this much agitation since, well, the past two presidential elections.

Now, I’m no more in favor of “Hitlery’s” policies than the doom and gloom crowd, nor am I a “Trumper”.  This election cycle the words of Charles Spurgeon ring truer than ever.  “Of two evils, choose neither.”  Yet there are folks howling that one or the other of the above mentioned candidates will certainly sink the sunken ship of the American states.

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This is indeed a “Hot Topic” these days.  If you think about it a bit, just by the very name it is obvious that these folks are criminals. If you do something “illegal” you are breaking the law. You may not LIKE the law. You may think the law is unfair. But the minute you disobey the law you are, by definition, a lawbreaker, a criminal.

Now, there’s a scourge across our land and that is the huge number of folks who have entered our nation contrary to the laws of our nation. Or they have come in according to the law – and overstayed their welcome. That is, they’ve come in as students or tourists or whatever – and then stayed as lawn care, cleaning, farming or other workers. There are folks practicing medicine or dentistry to certain degrees in various parts, catering to other folks who are also up in the US illegally – without benefit of a medical or dental liscence. And sooner or later someone’s going to be hurt and what recourse will they have?

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“Fly over country” they call it, “they” being the denizens of the urban blights on the east and west coasts of the US of A.  They look down their noses at those who live there, not having a clue that if it were not for the “hayseeds”, “hicks” and “rednecks”, they would die of starvation in short order.  As Hank Williams Jr. so succinctly puts it,

I can plow a field all day long, I can catch catfish from dusk till dawn.  We make our own whiskey and our own smoke too, ain’t too many things these ole boys can’t do.  We grow good ole tomatoes and homemade wine and a country boy can survive, Country folks can survive!

We came from the West Virginia coalmines, and the Rocky Mountains and the and the western skies. We can skin a buck; we can run a trot line and a country boy can survive, Country folks can survive!!

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