A Childhood in Athens
No Sign of Socrates, Though
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This
article by Fred Reed pretty much describes a place that no longer
exists, but did, and should. It is the America most of us grew up
in
(though many of us grew up in cities, and had a different range of
regulation and lack of it). This article pretty much illustrates
what
the Tea Party would like to bring about: a nation of fewer
regulations, and only those really necessary. And of course with
so
few regulations, a lot of spending becomes irrelevant. Wish I
could go
there today. - Skoonj
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It is common for aging men, worn by the long years of drink and
skirt-chasing and strenuous dissolution in the fleshpots of Asia, or
any available fleshpots, to remember their youth in roseate hues that
never were. But, dammit, we really did go barefoot. And had BB guns.
And the dog could go anywhere it damned well pleased, and come back
when it chose.
Athens, Alabama in 1957 was a small Southern town like countless others
in Dixie with a statue of a Confederate soldier on the town square and
little evidence of government of any kind, which was well since it
didn’t need any. While the South had not fared well in its ardent
resistance to Federal regulation a century earlier, still there was
little meddling by Washington in my years there.
The South’s
martial
displeasure with Federal intrusion was remembered, though: When I moved
down from Virginia, I was to other kids “the damyank on the corner”
until I learned to wrap words in a comfortable padding of syllables, as
God commanded.
On the square. While Southerners are the most patriotic and martial of
Americans, they have the least use for Washington. In which I heartily
concur.
Although my father was a mathematician at Redstone Arsenal in
Huntsville, and perhaps entitled to social pretensions, he didn’t have
any. Consequently I lived as a half-wild disciple of Tom Sawyer. So did
most of the town’s boys. Come summer, we at first tentatively abandoned
shoes. No one thought this odd, because it wasn’t. Soon our soles
toughened to leather and we walked everywhere, even on gravel, without
ill effect.
And nobody cared. Oh sweet age of nobody cared. Child Protective
Services didn’t show up, officious passive-aggressive snots, to carry
my parents away. Today they would, droning censoriously of hygiene and
worms and crippling cuts from broken glass and parental
irresponsibility.
Many of my friends lost feet to these perils. To this day you can see
them rolling about in wheel chairs in their dozens.
Foot-nekkid and fancy free, we went to the Limestone Drug Store on the
town square, piled our ball gloves and BB guns inside the door, and
read comic books for hours. The owner, a frizzzly redheaded man in his
seventies whom we knew only as Cochie, liked little boys. Today this
would be thought evidence of pedophilia and he would be required to
undergo therapy and wear an ankle bracelet. Actually, Coochie just
liked kids. And since it was his store, nobody at corporate got his
panties in a knot because the comic books were read into virtual dust
without ever being bought. The Federal government had not yet regulated
small-town soda fountains to protect us.
Still there, fifty-seven years later. Much changed inside but the
current owners, whoever they are, had the decency to preserve the
orignial soda fountain.
The devastating plagues that swept the South in those years,
mysteriously unrecorded, were doubtless the result of bare feet in
Limestone Drug.
BB guns, I said. We all had them. Most were the Red Ryder model,
costing I think $4.95 in as-yet uninflated currency. Mine was the Daisy
Eagle [Continued]
With
maybe one exception (nobody had a BB gun) Fred's remembrance of his
childhood in Athens, Alabama is identical to mine in Chicago, Illinois
(albeit on the very border of Des Plaines). However, if you
substitute
a .22 rifle and 12ga shotgun for the BB gun, things are identical with
my summers with grandparents in Indiana. I'm betting I'm
not alone.
PS - Don't cut yourself on the satire |
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is stupid; she is a
