NGFF_20 Promo 1: Pat Shields

Walt Disney's Song of the South and Joel Chandler's Uncle Remus. A Controversy of Nothing?

 I'm not big on speechifying, but I do have opinions. Opinions are like arm pits; everyone has a couple, right or wrong is up to them that are on the receiving end of the opinion.

 I found a copy of Song of the South...the original 1946 version while searching for a fiddle tune on the Tube. I watched the whole thing with bated breath to see if I remembered right the story. It was pretty innocuous, considering it has been banned for years!

I was in first grade at Chase Street Elementary School in Athens, Georgia. the whole school walked Uptown to the Georgia Theater to see that movie. I LOVED it. 

It is with sadness I say that political correctness and censorship have stormed the libraries of America, deciding who can read what. 

I love Uncle Remus stories. I have all of them including one that I probably owe $100,000 in overdue fines ri the Chase St. School library.  I recently found and bought another copy of Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus, His Songs and Sayings.   I have two copies, but who knows when the book burnings might begin. 

My mother and grandmother read them in dialect, something I strove to do early on. I can read a pretty good version of the dialect that Joel Chandler Harris gleaned from his black plantation contacts from middle Georgia cotton plantation to the rice plantations in Costal Georgia. His dialect is still the "standard" today. I use poetic license in my telling of these stories.

I was a musician working in rural schools of Braxton County WV. My Mama had read us the Jack Tales and Grandfather Tales collected by folklorist Richard Chase in the hills of Kentucky. 

singing for hours a day in classrooms takes its toll on the voice, and to rest my voice, I began to tell them, Kids were mesmerized. They told their parents about the Story Man that came to school. Parents and grandparents began to come on the days I was scheduled at a school. They enjoyed the stories as much as kid!

I was running out of material. I decided to try Uncle Remus' Brer Rabbit and the Wonderful Tar Baby. The teachers even laughed. Later, an older teacher said it brought back memories of her grandfather telling her that story when she was a girl in WV.

Storytelling is a fact of life in the South. A good storyteller can transform us to a place in our head called imagination...TV and movies can't do that. Those mediums fix and image in your mind that is indelible for life. The story may be captivating, but the images are fixed. No imagination needed. Try to remember the images that were conjured up in your brain when you heard the story of Hansel and Gretel...

Song of the South is a Disney movie and does depict the Old South, but on closer examination, after Miss Sally told Remus he couldn't see the little boy anymore in the movie, Remus decided to pack his belongings and leave the plantation. An enslaved person wouldn't have that option

 Many stayed where they were...on the plantation after the Emancipation. There was stability, a roof over your head and food. You workedat what you knew, yes, but you were free.

I was cautioned not to tell Brer Rabbit stories at public places as they were racists, degrading, offensive to everyone who heard them. A family member was horrified that I even knew them. Well, fact is I loved other black books that were banned ie Nicodemus, Little Black Sambo, and the Grimm Fairy Tales,

My objection to banning books is that children, young adults and adults watch TV. There are far worse scenes of murder and mayhem in a Marvel "Superhero" movie than were depicted in Song of the South. Get over yourselves, people.

When Dr. Suess books came on censorship chopping block, as they are now, something has gone weirdly wrong with this country. The Lorax movie offended the timber industry? PLEASE tell me lumber jacks are not that sensitive.

 My favorite Suess book, printed in the late 40's is "Who Knows What You'll Catch in McElligot's Pool".  most people have never heard of it. It's no longer on library shelves because it depicts a fish one might catch in McElligot's  Pool with a fur hooded coat...and Eskimo Fish. It is considered as offensive to Eskimo people (opps) as they are Native American, and the image is degrading. Hmm.

 I leave you with this question; would you rather hear a good storyteller weave images in your mind or watch yet another murder mystery on TV?

 

Things found that were never lost

 For the past couple years, I have been slowly slogging through the treasure trove of writings, pictures, postcard and flotsam and jetsam left behind by my 10 Lancaster family uncles and aunts.

All my mother's siblings lived well into their 90's. They came from humble beginnings in Floyd County, Virginia. and were scattered to the 4 winds of the Great Depression and WW 1 and 2.  They became lawyers, teachers, businessmen, nurses and executive secretaries. Not one returned to the farm. The Lancaster family had been on the farm for over 200 years.

My mother, Virginia Ruth Lancaster Shields was the last of the 10 siblings and died at 102 in 2000. Being the longest lived, she became the recipient of all that was Lancaster. 

The oldest, Attaway, was born in 1899; the youngest, John Kyle Lancaster, in 1923. They saw much and went far, but no one of them ever returned to the 70-acre farm, except for a few weeks in the summers.

 These brief summer gatherings of the 10 siblings, their wives and children (my cousins) were magic. Music, hikes, visiting old haunts and cemeteries, breakfast at Mabry's Mill, swimming at the white rock, frog gigging, walking to Leonard Smith's store for penny candy and visits with neighbors and family kin were a whirlwind of activities...and over too soon.

All Lancaster's were endowed with a gift of storytelling, music and wanderlust. We cousins were overwhelmed and awed at the experiences they talked of. Their early childhoods, the Great Depression, the World Wars. I think we cousins were blessed and never fell far from the orchard of the larger-than-life family trees we were born to. 

I know grass never grew under my feet. I can tell a tale as well as any of them and leaned my music by osmosis from the entire Lancaster/Phlegar clan! I still have Uncle Red's banjo with the skin head with the faded words to Ground Hog written on it.  

I was the recipient of Uncle John's LG-1 Gibson guitar. He gave me incentive to really learn to play. I found the guitar in a closet and had it restored. it has traveled many years to on stage gigs, jams and festivals.

As I was going through the prodigious mounds of pictures and writings, and hundreds of penny post cards, I began to see how connected they were to their mother, Rachel and to each other.

These cards seemed to me the " text messages" of the day. Most of them written to my grandmother. These cards and letters provided much insight into the daily lives and fortunes of my uncles and aunts. 

Uncle Robert Lancaster was a prodigious writer; a lawyer with a Ph.D. in Juris Prudence. He was Fulbright Scholar, and lectured at Bagdad University, University of Tokyo and a long history in the Administration at Sewanee, formally known as The University of the South. He had a great compassion for people and a wonderful Ben Franklin sense of humor.

Uncle Red once told me. "Patrick, you never let your schooling interfere with your education." I look back and say he was right... one's experiences are the sum total of one's education. He was a multifaceted personality, lawyer, scholar, hunter, musician, carpenter, writer, and influenced many a young man at Sewanee. The student body had a nickname for him...called him The Red Dog due to his uncanny ability to know exactly what mischief was afoot on a campus of 600 young men, trapped on a mountain top, miles from civilization. "Men," he would say, I've been young and done it all myself, hard to fool and old red dog."

I found this the other day in one of "Uncle Red's" lecture notebooks, in which he was outlining the Russo American foreign policy of the Nixon administration for a Political Science lecture. Typed on onion paper and folded neatly between the pages...

" I had 12 bottles of whiskey in the cellar, and my wife told me to empty the content of each bottle down the sink---or else.

I began the unpleasant task. I withdrew the cork on the first bottle and poured the contents down the sink, with the exception of on glass which I drank. I extracted the cork from the second bottle and did likewise, with the exception of one glass which I drank. I removed the cork for the third bottle of shiskey and poured the contents down the sink.

I pilled the cork from the fourth sink and poured the bottle down the glass, which I drank. I piled the bottle from the next glass and drank one sink out of it and threw the rest down the glass. I pulled the glass out of the next sink and poured the cork from the bottle. I then corked the sink with the glass, bottled the drink, and drank the pour.

When everything was emptied, I steadied the house with one hand, counted the bottles. corks, glasses and sinks with the other, which were twenty-nine, and as the house came by, I counted them again. I finally had all the houses in one bottle which I drank.

I'm not under the alchofulence of Incohol, but thinkle peep I am. I'm not half so thunk  as you might drink. I fool so feelish, I don't know who is me, and drunker I stand the longer I get."

I took My Uncle Red's Political Science class as a freshman at Sewanee. I failed, as you might imagine. I was never destined to become a Sophomore at the University of the South. 

I left before Finals in the spring and hitchhiked home to Athens, Ga.

What's Next!

The Only Constant Is Change

How quickly things change. It's fall, again...my 84th! 

Nights are cooler than last month, day are shorter (YUK), leaves are changing, deer coats have gone from brown to gray and I wore my first pair of big boy pants yesterday. The garden is slowing down...okra, peppers and eggplant fading, collards and cabbage are kicking butt. I received word Walmart has Christmas Decor in stock.

We are approaching my least favorite time of year. Long cold nights and short unpredictable days. Grey, white, brown are not my favorite colors...but living in the South, winters ain't  that bad. I had my 20 years in WV. A friend in  Vermont and moved here. He remarked on his first summer here that in Vermont summer consisted of July 4th and 2 weeks of poor sledding. He was amazed that you could do stuff outside all year in Georgia.

One of my Ah Ha moments of change came one night a few years ago as i lay in bed on my stomach, reading.  I looked up to see and old man staring at me through the window only to recognise the reflection in the window was my own self!

 I started laughing.

 Janice called from the other room, "What's so funny?"

 "There's an old man looking at me through the window!" 

 "Nothing new about that, I see that same old man everyday!" 

Hmmm!

Further down the rabbit hole...

I never went to the doctor much until I did. Now our life's event planning revolves around Dr. appts. I don't know really how that started, but the same malady seems to be afflicting everyone I know. It get in the way of civil society. The scenario goes thusly.

 I say, "Hey, let's go play some tunes with so and so tomorrow."  "I'd like to, but I got a Dr. appointment; you know, if you miss one you'll have to wait for 2 years to get another one." or "I've got to take Mama to her Dr. appt. today, can we do it next week? I've got cataract surgery tomorrow."

I'm an early 1941 model human bean, and doing pretty well, I think. "My Chart" seems to think otherwise. I suppose my medical specialist are just that...they see more and more of less and less. 

The the picture they paint is not rosy; you got a heart is weak, your eyes can't see, you have terrible knees, you need two shoulder replacement...and a new hip followed by, you need to lose 60 pounds, plus, you have high cholesterol, your A1C ain't where I'd like it...and that's just the beginning. Time to jack me up and put a new me under the old one?

I suppose they want to keep us octogenarians around as an investment in their children's college education. The Hippocratic Oath our Doctor's take; Do No Harm is encouraging, but their prognosis after the probe and scan will scare hell out of you. I can guarantee you there is always another pill after a visit to the Medical Complex. The vultures in the Pharmacy are just across the street. 

I'm sure my insurance company would like to be rid of me...and hundreds and thousands of "baby boomers" who affect their bottom line. 

It might come to just that...health care as we know it for old people might just dry up. "Ya'll just hurry up and die...we can't afford you baby boomers anymore." I hope to keep going as long as they make spare parts. My siblings and I are on the right side of 80.  Every TV add seems to be a new pill to cure everything from flat feet to falling down stairs, ie "You're  old, grey and only in the way, obsolete, retired and need of 30 pills a day."

Some days I feel so damned unnecessary. AI, Bit Coin, cars that drive for you and talk to you. Car ads seem to  tout the sound system, leather seats and air bags, and climbing sand dunes in a mimi van... not the reliability of the vehicle. 

How do old folks navigate such? Your own your own...pretty much. Don't have a computer, lap top, tablet, cell phone? Might as well be in a time capsule or a museum for extinct life forms. Indeed, things change faster than a shooting star and the technology disappears just as fast, replaced by some other gadget.

But, friends, I have to say, as I look around at what my wife and I have accomplished at the end of our long dirt road: the pottery shop, tractor shed, green house, acquisition of another 15 acres, improvements to the property, things have changed. More importantly, it is still quiet peaceful, and I can  take an outdoor shower without the police showing up and arresting me for indecent exposure. 

That may change...this place used to be a cotton field in 1948 according to Dept. of Agriculture photos taken after WW2.

 WHAT! that was nearly a century ago. I'm 84! How'd that happen!

I think we should all embrace changes in our lifestyles as we age...we don't have a choice really. Here are my suggestions:

Love and cherish those who you do...they are the rope that will pull you out of any hole you dig. 

Take time to watch a good sunset, and may you have earned a porch swing from which to enjoy it and reflect on your day's accomplishment (s) with a glass of wine and a partner. 

Play and work as you can; don't sit with the sitters and knit with the knitters. Enjoy and nurture friends. They are your lifeline to the past...the ones who remember when.

Above all remember we, all of us, will relinquish our place in the choir to another voice...again and again and again. We will be remembered as long as someone says our name.

It is the Way.😎

Time crawls by like a snail in a foot of snow on the way to a funeral.

 Ever wonder if the weeks' vacation you have waited for 51 weeks will actual happen?

 Ever wonder where summer went and why it stays so cold outside for so long?

 How long did it take for school to let out for the summer every year?

How long did it take for Christmas to come in December.

At 15, how long did the magic year of 16 to roll around and the coveted driver's licence to come to fruition? 10 years? 20 yrs... definitely 20.

These are rhetorical questions I know...but our expectation and time are in juxtaposition. We want time to pass quickly, or more slowly. It's an agenda we all participate in.

Are we the only animal on earth that has anticipatory notions? 

Nope.

My cat knows when it's 5:00...and wet food dinner time. She parks herself in front of you and stare. She can hear the spoon hit the dish a mile away.

Pavlov's dogs salivated when a bell was rung and I think all animals in our care have the same built in clock. It's 5:00 somewhere!

In my experience with cattle, blowing the horn on the hay truck brought more cattle to field. Feeding time would find most of them gathered in the same place in the field as yesterday, and they also knew the sound of the truck motor before I came into sight.

Anticipation slows our concept of time. In an emergency situation every second seems an hour...or a year

A friend and his Dad were waiting for his Mom to go out to dinner. "What's taking so long, my friend asked. Dad replied, "Time waits for no man and only 15 minutes for women." 

Reminds of a song written by a blind fiddler from West Virginia. Composed in 1929, it became commentary on the Great Depression and the struggles of poverty and societal change. The song became a significant work of social commentary and was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2020. 

To wit:

There once was a time when everything was cheap,
But now prices nearly puts a man to sleep.
When we pay our grocery bill,
We just feel like making our will

I remember when dry goods were cheap as dirt,
We could take two bits and buy a dandy shirt.
Now we pay three bucks or more,
Maybe get a shirt that another man wore.
Tell me how can a poor man stand such times and live?

Well, I used to trade with a man by the name of Brown,
Flour was fifty cents for a bag of twenty-four pound.
Now it's a dollar and a half beside,
Just like a-skinning off a flea for the hide.
Tell me how can a poor man stand such times and live?

Oh, the schools we have today ain't worth a cent,
But they see to it that every child is sent.
If we don't send everyday,
We have a heavy fine to pay.
Tell me how can a poor man stand such times and live?
This song was originally posted on protestsonglyrics.net
Prohibition's good if 'tis conducted right,
There's no sense in shooting a man 'til he shows flight.
Officers kill without a cause,
They complain about funny laws.
Tell me how can a poor man stand such times and live?

Most all preachers preach for gold and not for souls,
That's what keeps a poor man always in a hole.
We can hardly get our breath,
Taxed and schooled and preached to death.
Tell me how can a poor man stand such times and live?

Oh, it's time for every man to be awake,
We pay fifty cents a pound when we ask for steak.
When we get our package home,
A little wad of paper with gristle and a bone.
Tell me how can a poor man stand such times and live?
This song was originally posted on protestsonglyrics.net
Well, the doctor comes around with a face all bright,
And he says in a little while you'll be all right.
All he gives is a humbug pill,
A dose of dope and a great big bill.
Tell me how can a poor man stand such times and live?

A commentary on our present social and political climate?

Keep people poor, keep em hungry, keep 'em uneducated, keep in a chaotic state, and you have them where you want 'em... not subjects, but subjected.

HMMM!

 

Some Words of Wisdom

A mouth can break it's nose - Irish Proverb

To celebrate with confetti is not a celebration to those who have to clean it up. tractor thinkin

If it takes a worried man to sing a worried song, many should be singing the blues.  tractor thinkin

Remember your humanity; forget the rest.  Bertrand Russell

Santa Claus has the right idea; visit people once a year. Victor Borge

it's funny that all you have to do is say something people don't understand and they'll follow you anywhere. JD Salinger.

I fell so damn unnecessary! Anonymous

I was never lost, but I was mighty confused for a week one time. Daniel Boone

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose; freedom ain't worth nothing, but it's free. Bobbie McGee and Chris Kristofferson

History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Kurt Vonnegut

She's a nice person. Well, she fibs a bit. How you know that? Ain't that much truth. Wendell Berry

Six month before I married Sally, I could 'a eat her up, now I wish I had. (paraphrased) Wendell Berry

There are worse crime than burning books; One is not reading them. Joseph Brodsky 

He who will not apply new remedies must expect new evils. Francis Bacon

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. Aldous Huxley

It is better to waste one's youth than do nothing with it at all. Georges Courteline

Finally, my all time favorite

Likker talk mighty loud when it get loose from the jug!  Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus

Weather Alert

Expecting snow in Danielsville, Ga  and most of the SE on Fri. Let the games begin. Car insurance futures are up.

Tractor Thinking as 2024 Slides Away

 My young brain and old brain are coming to an understanding.  I had to become old to realize my young brain was telling my old body to do some things it did years ago. After a few attempts, the old body told what was left of the young brain to go to hell. Old bodies don't bounce, climb, run, carry, and have the stamina the young brain remembers.

Case in point:

 One day in my mid 60's, my aging body was on a hike around the lake. In a cove, a group of  young Tarzans and Tarzanettes were having a great time on a rope swing hanging way up over the lake in a huge Sycamore tree.  I stood, watching the younguns flying, flipping laughing and launching themselves from earth into the sky back to water and to land. I stood smiling as I remembered many such experiences. My young brain said, " Hey, go for it, you used to be a pro at showing off. The old body  agreed and got in line. 

The results were less than magnificent, and nearly catastrophic. I nearly pulled my once big strong  arms out of the socket at the bottom of the arc as my excessive bulk overcame my arms ability to pull it off. I hit the water a 45 degree angle bouncing off  the bottom very close to shore. Not good. One of the Tarzans took pity sakes on me and helped me up the bank, smiled and said, "nice try," adding insult to injury.

The experience was new and totally unexpected. I hobbled the half mile back to the cabin, a bad foot  sprained knee and severely damaged psyche. My "10 foot tall and bullet proof" body of my youth had failed me! You can smile, but don't laugh. You've have all been there if you're over 60. If you ain't, hopefully you will be.

The old body and brain have become more familiar with one another. They have worked together to work out  most of the every day things I do. We have a Council of War to create a battle plan for new attempted, once no brainers, to negotiate the activity in question. So far, so good. I do fall occasionally, and thanks to football and tumbling skills I have so far escaped the Emergency Room; knock on wood! 

My "devices" to help in my survival include a cell phone,  a cane, a walker, and two rollators. One rollator I keep the house and the other at the tractor shed for rolling heavy, awkward stuff around. 

Falls, sprains, replacement parts are a part of becoming older]I At least they make replacement parts. I have two reverse shoulder replacement and a right hip replacement in my 84 years. Without them my my physical self would not be able to function as well as it does. I am still fairly active for my age, I think. 

I do have one more issue with my present brain. I'm guessing most "elders" have the same complaint. There is stuff in my brain that I do not need, and have not used in many, many years. There are things that are more current to my lifestyle now I would like to store. The brain does not have a delete option. Storage is becoming an issue. Long term memory is dominate to short term memory. This became apparent when I try to learn new song lyrics. I can remember words to older songs of 60 yrs ago but new lyrics are here today and gone tomorrow.

My wife commented on a tune I was playing on a 100 year old Gibson mandolin that had been lost at a repair shop when they moved to a new location. It was found a year later, repaired, and returned. Reunited, I was playing some tunes and my wife,remarked she had had never heard me play that tune. I suppose the association with the instrument I learned it on brought it back to my pudgy little fingers. I had learned it in another life in the hills of West Virginia.

 The brain is indeed a wonderful thing. Learning to use it is another! The older body and the brain are now syinced. It is a work in progress.