The toughs gets all racist and sh*t.

Let’s leave aside for the moment the fact that Sherrif McGinness apparently made some kind of rounding error that led to this little brouhaha about whether we’re going to have to fire 200, or 130, patrol officers.

No, let’s focus on two hi-larious little tidbits:

#1: “Ken Berling, a Carmichael resident, warned that people and businesses would flee if the board didn’t find more money for the Sheriff’s Department. ”

Really? 

Where, precisely, would you flee to?   Texas, Nevada, or Florida?

Oh, but wait, those places have worse crime rates than we do, in addition to doing a substantially more (ahem) effective job of locking people up. 

Which, as everyone with two brain cells to rub together knows, really means locking up Blacks and Hispanics.

So, by all means move to Okla-fuckin-homa if you want to, buddy.  It’s just like Texas, after all.  Just dirtier, and with less.   Which brings us to our second quote of the day:

#2: “Deputy Chris Huffman elicited loud applause when he called for cutting social programs to save public safety jobs.  ‘If, as the county executive would have us believe, we are truly out of money, then I would say that the time for massive social programs and taxpayer-supported giveaways has to come to an end,’ he said.”

I do not now, nor have I ever, understood the trope of “massive social programs.”  Now, maybe it’s because I went to a fancy-pants college and all.  Or maybe it’s because I have a parent who worked in social welfare (no, not him.  The other one).  But it has always seemed perfectly obvious to me that “welfare” is a straightforward wage subsidy that ensures a supply of cheap, expendable labor that in turn (a) ensures a steady supply of inexpensive consumer goods and services for the rest of us, and (b) staves of the kind of desparation that leads to civil unrest. 

Evidently the direct connection between (i) seasonal agriculture, and (ii) homelessness; or alternatively, between (iii) “temporary assistance for needy families” and (iv) the labor supply for fast food restaurants; or yet again between (v) summertime employment and recreation activities and (vi) not having another Rodney King on our hands, is all too abstract for some folks.

Let’s break it down a little more simply then:  it’s cheaper to keep McKinley Pool open — one of those “massive social programs” the Jaspers keep yapping about, with all of its subsidized day care and recreational swim activities, not to mention cushy employment for otherwise criminally bored youths — than it would be to pay for the officers it would take to lock up all those erstwhile juvenile delinquents. 

Or yet again: it is, quite literally, cheaper to pay a social worker to keep track of a caseload of alkies and semi-loons than it would be to pay for a thug to round them all up for gray-market petty entrepreneurship (I’m sorry I slipped into jargon there.  I meant to say aggresive panhandling, dumpster-diving, and vagrancy).   

And while I am sorry that Officer Huffman’s job is on the line, that is no excuse to fall into latter-day welfare-queen race-baiting. 

If the county is out of money, then it is time to talk about priorities.  And either we are willing to pay to live in paradise, or we are not.   And if we are not, then for pity’s sake move before you turn my home into the kind of vicious, mean, and hateful penitentiary I so recently escaped.

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Of a Sunday morning, Newnan has few charms.  There are no museums, no river, no park other than the Waterworks[34], no real public recreational facilities at all.  No Sunday Times. 

There is, therefore, little to do except clean gravestones at Founder’s cemetery.  Which we did.  Not all of my ancestors are buried there, just a few.  E.N. is not – he’s buried at the “new” cemetery, down the road, the land for which he donated to the town – though his parents and parents-in-law are.  His father-in-law was, by report, the first white child born in the county.  A claim that can be neither confirmed nor denied, as neither can the claim that his wife was the great-niece of Sam Houston. 

It is surprising how quickly gravestones deteriorate.  Some of that, perhaps, is the result of vandalism.  It is certainly not for lack of maintenance; many of the stones have been periodically replaced by newer blocks.  Most commonly, the new stone is simply stacked on top of the old one; the contrast between contemporary utilitarianism (name, birth and death date) and 19th century sentimentality (“beloved wife,” “dear father” “gone to heaven”) is often striking.  Even some of these more recent markers – such as that of the dead Confederate bastard, planted not much more than a decade ago – have been covered up by Bermuda grass and fire-ant mounds.  The latter looking raw and vomitous in the merciless afternoon sun. 

I am sure some author more talented than has remarked before upon the fact that Georgia clay resembles nothing on earth more than the dried and flaky detritus of an attack of the bloody flux.  It’s a wonder anything still grows in such exhausted soil. 

Having no trowel for this work, I mostly used my boots to scrape the wet clay, thrown up by the fire ants, from off the stones.  I wondered about the symbolism of this, after I had taken such pains to shake the dust of Texas from off these same boots, striking them against the tires of my U-Haul as soon as I crossed the line into Tucumcari, New Mexico. 

Our work done, my father and I headed into Atlanta with a couple of hours to spare before my flight.  We parked ourselves at the corner of Piedmont and 10th so that I could distribute some PostcardsFromThe8 at OutWrite.

My father was shocked at what he saw.  While he did not precisely say, to paraphrase an ex of Da Spouse, “oh my gosh.  They just let the homosexshuls and the colored people right out on the street!” he was amazed that any place in the South would be as racially and sexually integrated as Midtown Atlanta.  This led to the following conversation (I paraphrase with modest, but only modest, theoretical license):

Pater: “I had no idea Atlanta was like this.  Why haven’t we come here before?”

Moi: “Well, aside from the fact that we tend to take lightning trips, it may be just as simple as we’re not Atlanta people.”

Pater: “Gosh, I guess you’re right.  When you put it in that kind of class terms, I suppose I just  hadn’t ever thought about it like that.”

Moi: “Well, status terms, not class.  Because it’s not that we couldn’t live in Atlanta if we wanted to, it’s that we think of ourselves as country folk, and so choose not to.”

My father and I really do have this kind of conversation.  It’s something I don’t appreciate enough about our relationship.

That said, like most flippant pieces of armchair sociology, my statement was true but at the same time misses some important nuances.  Some members of the family have in the past lived in Atlanta.  Some do currently.  They include my great-grandmother, the first woman in my family to go to college.  She and my great-grandfather met in the city, at the boarding house that her family ran and in which he stayed during his graduate studies at Tech.  She was apparently regarded by the rest of my family as rather high-falutin’ – she did go to finishing school, after all.  And, of course, her people were from Atlanta.   All three of their children were born and raised in Atlanta.  One of them (my grandfather) was courted by his future wife as the result of exactly the kind of “met cute” incident that occurs only in 20th Century Fox black-and-whites; having known each other briefly in college, and then again when my father was teaching biology at Little Emory, my future grandmother spied my grandfather walking down Peachtree Street while she was on the streetcar with her sister.  She promptly called for a brakeman to stop, alighted from the car, and nonchalantly as you please said “Why, Ned Camp, as I live and breath.  Fancy meeting you here.”  Thus do Atlanta people conduct their romances.  And, let us not forget, there is Little Art’s ex-wife, who once described herself as being a “Baptist preacher’s kid, who grew up three holler’s over from Knoxville.”  She is most certainly an Atlanta kind of person, having left Tennessee far enough behind that she would decline to accompany her husband when he decided to move to North Carolina to become an inn-keeper/manager of a summer-stock playhouse and supper club.  More to the point, she is raising her own children in Decatur, by all accounts Atlanta’s most integrated middle-class suburb. 

The end result of all these musings is that this year, for the first time in anyone’s memory of the reunion, some of us will spend the night before in Atlanta and have a evening out on the town.  At http://www.dogwoodrestaurant.com/, which if the website is any indicator, is most certainly the kind of place that Atlanta people patronize. 

[34] This is one of two locations for the annual family reunion.  I remember it from my childhood as having an overgrown glen, complete with waterfall, into which we spat watermelon seeds and rolled an old tire.  I try not to think too carefully about these memories, about the source of that waterfall, the quality of the water in which I may or may not have waded, nor what other sorts of trash must have been laying around if there were spare tires available for rolling.

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It was but a short distance from the church to the reception, held in the old train depot, now converted to a town museum and cultural center.

To get there we had to walk along the frontage for Caldwell Industries, the main industrial facility in town, specializing in the fabrication of tanks.  It may once specialized in the production of agricultural reapers and seed-distributors, but that is not really a piece of information that is not available from their corporate website.  I may simply have made it up.  Either way, I have not endeavored to find out who sits on the board, and most especially have not enquired as to whether any members of the board have my last name.

Lest you get any fancy ideas, this “depot” was really a warehouse.  It bears more relationship to the small-town sidings in the Salinas Valley you whizz past on the Coast Starlight than it does to Sacramento’s own rather dear, and honestly semi-grand, station.  Because it was on the industrial side of town there was ample parking in a number of nearby empty, weed-choked lots.  The building itself was a simple affair: two rooms, each perhaps 30’ X 40’, with the kind of low, timbered ceiling that you might find in one of the old light industrial spaces along R St.  One room (which was originally for ticketing and such) was now the entry hall for the museum.  It had been cut up into offices and bathrooms.  The other room (originally for storing baggage) held the main exhibits (more on which below), doing double-duty tonight for dancing and dining.

I knew the evening was off to an eye-arching start when I discovered to my consternation that the meal would consist of the kind of buffet that whets, but never manages entirely to satisfy, the appetite.  To wit: chicken salad, chopped fruit with cinnamon-marshmallow sauce, crackers with crab dip, and chopped vegetables with ranch dressing. 

I cannot at this moment recall a time when I have seen so much fucking white food in my life. 

I learned later that the groom cannot abide spice.[26]  Thus explaining all the mayonnaise and marshmallows.

What really annoyed me, however, is that I had to stand in line for this fare without being properly lubricated.[27]  Not having learned my Uncle Tom’s lesson, I came to this event empty-handed, only to discover to my horror that the beverage selection consisted of four different flavors of Bartles & Jaymes, plus Bud Light Lime.[28] 

Which reminds me of a joke: what’s Spanish for Bartles and Jaymes? 

Dos Okies.

This joke, it turns out, is only funny in California. 

Lacking liquid fortification, and with only the scattered remnants of the white buffet to stave off mounting dispepsia, I turned to the displays on the wall to see what I could learn of Newnan’s history.

An aside: the careful reader may note that I have not yet described the music.  This may surprise some, as I am a man that normally enjoys dancing.  However, when the bride and groom made their formal entry to “Welcome to the Jungle” I simply turned off that part of my brain.  There is only so much ironylessness that a man can take, after all.[29]

The exhibits were, simply put, bizarre.  They consisted of, on one wall, a series of illustrated synopses of different periods in the town’s history.  On the other three walls there were large oil portraits of such incidents as the town fathers judged of significant enough interest to have recorded for the edification of future generations.  Such as yours truly. 

The synopses were broken up into four periods: pre-history (i.e., the material culture of the native Cowetas, a sub-tribe of the Creeks); white settlement, which is to say the Trail of Tears and the land lottery that followed in 1827; the economic boomlet of the 1880s that came with the railroad; and then the secondary boomlet of the 1920s that accompanied the establishment of several textile mills. 

There was one small thing in these synopses that jarred by its presence, and one rather large matter that jarred by its absence. 

The small thing consisted of a picture I had never seen before: it depicted my great-great-grandfather (he of the fantabulous name) standing in front of his farm implements factory.  That such an item, such a – how shall I say? – key piece of documentary evidence of my ancestor’s brief ascent into the bourgeoisie should be utterly absent from my side of the family’s array of totemic ancestor-worship relics is…puzzling.  The display did not include any notation as to who donated this picture. 

The rather large matter conspicuous by its absence is, of course – of course! – any discussion of the region’s economy between 1832 and 1865.  Where one might expect a synopsis discussing this period there is, instead, the archway that connects the two rooms of the event hall.[30]  There are, it is true, two portrait photographs of the first two Black doctors in town; these are included in the synopsis of the boom-time of the 20s.  However, these are the only two Black faces in the entire museum.  And this for a county that was 50% Black right up until the Second World War.  There is only one way a county in the South gets to be 50% Black in 1860.  And to be in a history museum that ignores that completely is baffling.  Hell, to be in a museum in the South that purports to record history, and to see absolutely no mention of slavery at all is damn near insane.

As I was cruising the perimeter and picking up these lacunae, I found a docent to haze.  Lucky me.  She explained the significance of the oil portraits hanging from the other three walls.  It turns out that, even more than simply portraying significant moments in Newnan’s history (the rescue of the rail lines from Sherman’s ravages, the skirmish with the Yankees at some piss-ant locale the name of which I’ve already forgotten, the hospitals set up to minister to the Confederate wounded), they also portray the visages of the patrons of the museum.  For the paltry amount that it takes to commission such a painting ($6000, she made sure to let me know) one could have one’s face prominently displayed as, say, one of the two scouts who spied the Yankees coming down the Atlanta road, raised the alarm to the town militia, and so saved the rail lines.  Or even better as the leader the Coweta regulars, the “steely-eyed” lieutenant who shot the Yankee officer square in the chest at the battle of whatever-the-piss-ant-locale-is-the-name-of-which-I’ve-already-forgotten.  In case I was curious (I wasn’t, but oh well), the scouts were officers of the bank which paid for that commission, and the steely-eyed lieutenant was the CEO of the mill across the street, which had been so generous with its support.

I don’t know if it was at that precise moment, or some other, that the heavens decided to open up and let loose with the kind of torrential afternoon thunderstorm that happens really and truly only in the South.  In any case, I thanked the docent and made my way to the door, the better to witness the deluge. 

There I was accosted (there is no better word for it) by a fellow shirt-tail relative.  He was also on the bride’s side, but a cousin of her dad – so absolutely no relation to me, not even in the obscurantism of Southern genealogy.  After our establishing our respective credentials, he proceeded to tell me what a sweet little town Newnan used to be.  Before it got swallowed up as a bedroom community of Atlanta, it had been the kind of town where everybody knew the sheriff.  Before it got ruirnt,[31] that is, and he had to move 30 miles down the road to find himself another sweet little county town. 

Silly me, I made light of the fact that that sounds the kind of town that one might flee the minute one turned 18, precisely because everyone knew the sheriff, and therefore one could never do anything that might get one in trouble.

My not-cousin did not understand what I was getting at. [32]  Instead, he waxed nostalgic about Newnan, “City of Homes.”  Of the grand and not-so-grand folk-Victorian clapboard houses in downtown that dated to the days when the town served as a hospital for the Confederate troops fighting the battle of Atlanta.  How he and his buddies used to hang out in those houses, every one of which was haunted.  How boards would creak, and doors would open and shut of their own accord, and how sounds would drift up from the crawl spaces when no-one else was around.  All those wrecked and gangrenous limbs cut off by the surgeons, still wandering about looking for their owners. 

I was saved from more of this nostalgic horseshit by the DJ announcing the garter toss.  Would the gentle reader care to guess what tune was played while the groom relieved his bride of her garter?

“Hot Blooded.”

It gets worse.  They played the Bond theme while he tossed it to the crowd of men present.[33] 

You know who caught it? 

The matron of honor’s stepson.  Because there’s nothing like a 4-year old to go tearing after flying shiny objects. 

The bouquet, by the way, was caught by the youngest of the New York cousins.  She is 7. 

The rest of the evening is a blur, sadly one that was not alcohol induced.  I can reconstruct it primarily from text-messages I sent to Da Partner, regarding various musical choices: Stanky Leg and Flo-Rider (definite crowd favorites), also the Electric Slide, Chain of Fools, and the Twist.

There were no fewer than three line dances, not including the electric slide.  I suspect that my resultant craving for gin may have been visibly palpable.  On the other hand, I am glad I stayed until the end; the DJ played “Sing, Sing, Sing” as the grand finale.  This resulted in the unexpected pleasure of watching the New York cousins lindy-hop. 

Once again, the Yankee Catholics out-shone the crackers for cultural capital. 

After the party, we repaired to the bride’s parents’ house for more setback and pulled-pork sandwiches.  The bride and groom, by report, took their honeymoon at a hotel in Peachtree City, complete with a full pasta dinner at the fanciest Italian restaurant in town. 

 

[26] After the reception, the happy couple dined at an Italian restaurant.  According to rumor, pasta is about as adventurous as the bodybuilder is willing to get, cuisine-wise.

[27] Note to all: one of the secrets to a good reception is passed appetizers.  Do not make people stand in line for canapés, it makes them cranky.

[28] I would have been happy with Bud, and settled for Bud Light.  But speaking as someone who served as a pre-market taste-tester for Diet Coke with Lime, I can tell you from personal experience that artificial lime flavor is narsty no matter what you put it in. 

[29] I did come to appreciate much more profoundly just how fundamentally decent and professional the DJ at my own wedding was.  He had made a joke at our pre-event consultation as to whether or not we wanted this particular selection played; we laughed heartily at the idea that anyone would even consider such a ghastly mis-step in musical taste.  Little did I know.  After the events in question, I made darn sure to write him a very good letter of recommendation.

[30] There are times in one’s life when architectural metaphors reach out and slap one in the face.  It is generally never a pleasant experience.

[31] To quote Colonel Sartoris, to Snopes, “You’ve ruirnt my rug, damn you!”

[32] As a zen master might say: what is the sound of two hands at a Klan rally not clapping?  It is one part of a chord, the second sound of which is the silence of Jasper not comprehending a lame attempt at urbane humor.

[33] I may have played the Austin Powers theme at my wedding, but it was, like, totally ironic.

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