Foster Dickson's Blog, page 42
June 4, 2019
Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige
I just finished reading Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard, winner of the 1978 National Book Award, about the author’s 1973 trip into the Himalayas with a mountain-climbing field biologist who was studying an ancient breed of goat. Matthiessen, who was a Buddhist, went along on the journey partly because his friend’s destination was also the site of the isolated Crystal Mountain monastery and partly because he wanted to see, with his own eyes, the elusive snow leopard. One of the most descriptive books I’ve ever read, The Snow Leopard melds together the author’s experiences in those frigid mountains with considerate discussions of life, religion, and anthropology, as well as some interspersed backstory about his wife’s recent death and his eight-year-old son, who is waiting on him to return.
Among these side discussions, about a hundred pages in, Matthiessen is waxing philosophic about life and freedom, and writes this: “The absurdity of a life that may well end before one understands it does not relieve one of the duty (to that self which is inseparable from others) to live it through as bravely and as generously possible.” He ties this idea both to Buddhist “crazy wisdom” and to the French existential philosopher Albert Camus— some things just don’t make sense but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to abide them. Matthiessen was writing about hiking through Nepal, in a place that bore no resemblance to the late twentieth-century world around it, but this sentiment from his book could just as easily be applied to living in the Deep South.
[image error]For a cognizant person living in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the culture and accompanying politics of the Deep South are perhaps most remarkable for their absurdity. Tax rates are regressive, public administration is spotty, and social ills abound. State and local leaders augment our outdoorsy tourist economy with testaments to our difficult past, while making simultaneous efforts to suppress, ignore, or deny that past’s current manifestations. Meanwhile, the people of the Deep South express near-constant chagrin at the everyday facts that rank us near the bottom in most measures of quality-of-life, as the majority of us continue either not to vote or to vote for the same kinds of leaders who landed us in this predicament. We lament the consequences but refuse to alter the method . . . which is absurd.
Near the end of the book, Matthiessen is returning to civilization to make his way home and is pondering what this perilous experience will mean to him. He never did see the snow leopard, though it came near enough to leave tracks around their camp. By this point, he is glad to be out of sub-zero temperatures and away from the discomfort of tent living, though he is also sad to see that simple, unencumbered life be put behind him. He asks himself, ambivalently: “have I learned nothing?”
Sometimes I ask myself the same thing, here in the Deep South. After reading so much Southern history, after examining the problems and listening to various perspectives, after traveling around and interviewing people, after keeping up with who-is-who and who-did-what, have I learned nothing? No, not nothing, but just this: that I no more see what is over the horizon than that man who never even looks up from his dalliances. However, despite any bitterness that fact may periodically bring me, I agree with Matthiessen that we must still behave bravely and with generosity toward the facts of our situation.
Near the end of the book, Matthiessen is reminded of the advice he was given on the day they embarked: “Expect nothing.” That’s good advice, but hard to follow. A few sentences later, he writes about “that aching gap between what I know and what I am,” acknowledging his failure (to see the snow leopard) and the resources expended in that failure. Any progressive person in the Deep South knows how Matthiessen felt. We make preparations followed by great efforts to climb and traverse our cultural and political mountains, then at the end of each journey, we find ourselves exhausted and humbled by the fact that the mountains haven’t moved or changed one bit.
“Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige” posts are published on Tuesday afternoons.
To read recent posts, click the date below:
Or to find and read earlier posts, click here for a full list.
June 3, 2019
Newtown Oral Histories: Finding Aid is Online
[image error]The Finding Aid for the Newtown Oral History Collection is posted on the website of the Montgomery County Archives. The collection itself is still being processed, but this document, which provides keys to researchers about its contents, is now online.
To learn more about this project that I coordinated for my students, you can read the posts below:
Oral Histories in Newtown (February 24, 2019)
Collecting Stories in Newtown, February 23 (February 15, 2019)
The Newtown Reunion, 2018 (September 4, 2018)
Alabama Bicentennial Projects for 2018 – 2019 (August 13, 2018)
May 30, 2019
#throwbackthursday: Rod Bramblett calling the ‘Kick Six,’ 2013
In honor of the voice of Auburn sports Rod Bramblett, who was killed in a car wreck last weekend, here is one of his finer moments in the booth. When Carlton Davis ran back that missed field goal to give Auburn a victory in the 2013 Iron Bowl, Bramblett went absolutely crazy.
May 29, 2019
#SummerReading: “Closed Ranks”
[image error]Closed Ranks: The Whitehurst Case in Post-Civil Rights Montgomery is available in both paperback and Kindle edition.
From the publisher’s website:
On a chilly December afternoon in 1975, Bernard Whitehurst Jr., a 33-year-old father of four, was mistaken for a robbery suspect by Montgomery, Alabama, police officers. A brief foot chase ensued, and it ended with one of the pursuing officers shooting and killing Whitehurst in the backyard of an abandoned house. The officer claimed the fleeing man had fired at him; police produced a gun they said had been found near the body. In the months that followed, new information showed that Whitehurst, who was black, was not only the wrong man but had been unarmed, a direct contradiction to the white officer’s statement. What became known as the Whitehurst Case erupted when the local district attorney and the family’s attorney each began to uncover facts that pointed to wrongdoing by the police, igniting a year-long controversy that resulted in the resignation or firing of police officers, the police chief, and the city’s popular New South mayor. However, no one was ever convicted in Whitehurst’s death, and his family’s civil lawsuit against the City of Montgomery failed. Now, more than four decades later, Whitehurst’s widow and children are waging a 21st-century effort to gain justice for the husband and father they lost. The question that remains is: who decides what justice looks like?
You can buy Closed Ranks online through any of the following retailers: Amazon, Target, Walmart, Books A Million, and Barnes & Noble.
May 28, 2019
Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige
It has been confirmed that they’ve found the Clotilda. This last known slave ship to enter the United States came into Mobile Bay in the early 1860s, just prior to the Civil War, with a load of enslaved people purchased on the western coast of Africa, and was sunk shortly after unloading its human cargo in order to hide the evidence of what was by then illegal. According to Smithsonian.com:
The authentication and confirmation of the Clotilda was led by the Alabama Historical Commission and SEARCH Inc., a group of maritime archaeologists and divers who specialize in historic shipwrecks. Last year, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Slave Wrecks Project (SWP) joined the effort to help involve the community of Africatown in the preservation of the history, explains Smithsonian curator and SWP co-director Paul Gardullo.
This discovery puts a Southern historical puzzle piece into place that had been missing for more than a century-and-a-half.
[image error]While this discovery may seem of little interest outside of a community of historians, it goes an issue larger than that one ship. One of the modern tragedies of American slavery, something that is less often discussed in mainstream conversations about race, involves the inability of many Africans American to pursue and trace their family histories. In most cases, usable records cease in the mid-1800s, because slaves were inventoried as chattel, not recorded as human beings. There are also extremely scant records about slaves’ given African names or their places of origin prior to their forced entry into the peculiar institution. Even in this age of Ancestry.com and 23andMe, millions of African Americans can only trace their direct family lineage back to the late 1800s at best and, using DNA testing, can only find approximations of their place of origin.
While identifying the wreckage of slave ships doesn’t resolve this problem, since manifests and other records wouldn’t have been left on the vessels, this discovery does something important: it proves and formalizes the existence of a ship and a voyage that cannot be documented through official records from the time. In addition to the family-history road blocks in census records, the absence of records about illegal slaving voyages can mean that one’s ancestors never officially arrived— which is absurd. Identifying the waterlogged remains of an illegal slave ship is not, as some might claim, dredging up unwanted history; it is further acknowledgment of slavers’ inhumane and dehumanizing methods by turning myth into truth. Yes, this ship did exist, and it was hidden because it was evidence of a crime.
Carving kernels of truth out of the shells of myth means doing a good deal of thankless, often ignored work. It can mean spending hundreds of hours sifting through records to find that one tiny mention that points to the correct path. It can mean traveling, searching, and interviewing in inhospitable conditions, where locals can’t or won’t help and where landscapes have changed. It can mean devoting years of one’s life to a quest for an under appreciated treasure. Most Americans will pass by the news this discovery without so much as glancing up, but that doesn’t diminish its significance.
“Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige” posts are published on Tuesday afternoons.
To read recent posts, click the date below:
Or to find and read earlier posts, click here for a full list.
May 25, 2019
Feeding the Family, Part Two
[If you haven’t read “Feeding the Family, Part One,” you should start there.]
[image error]Not being a dietitian or nutritionist or farmer by profession, I knew I was going to need help if I was going to answer this question: how can an ordinary guy like me reform my eating habits and improve my overall health? In my writing work, I would normally go to a library or the Archives to begin any kind of research, but this time I started by checking Netflix and Amazon Prime first. (I know better than to browse the internet for anything related to health or wellness, since those rabbit holes can lead first to a self-diagnosis then to a panic attack.) I’m not looking for anything radical, so much as something transformative, and I still don’t know enough about food and eating to put my faith in any diet plan. Nor do I ever intend to ruin my enjoyment of food by counting calories, carbs, fats, or anything else. Starting slowly, with a nice documentary, seemed adequate.
On either of the two streaming services, there were a couple of films I’d seen and some I hadn’t, and since I like writer Michael Pollan particularly, I settled on one of his. In the PBS documentary In Defense of Food, released in 2015, Pollan brings his foodie wisdom from the pages of his book onto the screen – which I appreciate since I read a lot for work – and shares this simple modicum: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” I’ve been a fan of Pollan’s approach for years and already try to stick to another bit of advice that I once heard him give: eat things that look like what they are. He is saying basically the same thing in both cases, that we should eat naturally occurring foods rather than processed foods. Eating a chicken breast or leg is better choice than eating a chicken nugget.
Pollan also suggests in the film that we avoid the middle aisles of the grocery store. As I watched, it had never occurred to me before how the traditional and naturally occurring foods – fruits and vegetables, milk and bread, meat and fish – are typically arranged like a U on the outskirts of the store, while the processed foods tend to be in the middle. This sense of how to shop for groceries isn’t a total solution to the eating conundrum, and it doesn’t carve a direct route to a guarantee of perfect health, but it does seem to be a good guiding principle.
One other takeaway from In Defense of Food improved my understanding of the term whole grain. In the film, Pollan explains how and why white flour came to dominate the market, yet with consequences. Though white flour is more easily preserved, reducing spoilage and increasing shelf-life, it achieves that by removing the most nutrient rich parts of the grain. So, whole grain bread is made from flour that keeps and includes those nutritious parts that white flour lacks. Moreover, with white bread, manufacturers then “enrich” the bread with artificially produced vitamin supplements to put back what was taken out, and they also typically add sugar. Once again, the simplicity of Michael Pollan’s approach is appealing— bread should be made from four ingredients: flour, water, yeast, and salt. I’m a guy who loves bread, and there’s an easy move in the right direction.
[image error]After I watched In Defense of Food, one of the recommendations that followed was another documentary titled simply Sustainable. This relatively short film from 2016 offers a seasonal look at one family-owned farm that shifted its production away from a corporate, high-yield model and into being a local supplier of local goods. The owner Marty Travis thus became an important figure in the food movement in Chicago, and he also organized a cooperative of local farmers who now help each other by planning ahead to meet demand and consolidating orders.
Though Sustainable was more about farming than eating, it was good to see that there’s a proven way for an ordinary family farm, or a group of them, to become a source for people in cities to access healthier foods. I tend to think about small-scale urban agriculture and local farmers markets as the sole sources for suburbanites like me, but the Travis family showed a way to have that happen on a larger scale. It was also good to see not only his son taking an interest in the work, and also seeing the cooperative’s meetings where people were being asked, what do you want to grow?
What I’m learning about food as I look into ways to eat better and to support sustainable practices while I’m doing it is: somehow, we ditched the simple way in favor of the convenient way, which is unfortunately more complicated and more wasteful. Processed foods that have longer shelf-lives tend to achieve that by removing what is most healthy (nutrients, vitamins), adding what is most unhealthy (chemicals, preservatives), and utilizing the most nonrenewable energy (gasoline in trucks, electricity in freezer cases). These foods also appeal to our taste-buds with two things we shouldn’t eat much of: salt and sugar.
So far, two of the most difficult aspects of this effort to change my eating habits have been: giving up some of the ease and convenience, and avoiding processed foods that I’ve eaten for a long time. However, a bright side is there, too: my tastes are changing. These days, I like to eat a honey crisp apple, a banana, or both nearly every day, and the last time I fixed myself a can of Chef Boyardee, it didn’t even taste good. However, I’ve not achieved foodie sainthood just yet— I’d still take a Reese’s cup over a block of tofu any day. But at least I’ve recognized that I can’t have one every day.
Interestingly, while I was working on this post, NPR’s The Salt published an opinion piece that caught my eye: “Why Ditching Processed Foods Won’t Be Easy— The Barriers to Cooking From Scratch.” Even more interestingly, the piece, which was written by three sociologists, was about Michael Pollan’s seven-word advice, and how a “recent study now offers hard scientific evidence in support of Pollan’s message.” A few paragraphs in, there was this:
The study confirms what we’ve been hearing for years: Cooking from scratch and eating “real food” is better and healthier. The problem is that knowing this doesn’t make it any more doable for the average family.
Below that, the three authors explain that we typically get about 60% of our calories from processed foods, and for low-income families, that percentage is even higher. And that has a lot to do with two things: time and money. I know that, for my family, which has two children playing two sports, when we get home in the afternoon, there’s not a two-hour window to cook and eat a good meal before practice or a game. This often means that my children scarf down a Hot Pocket at 4:15 rather than sitting down and calmly eating a freshly cooked meal at 6:00. As for the money, post-recession wage stagnation accompanied by higher food prices hasn’t made it impossible for my family to have healthier foods, but that scenario has meant that it is a decision to make.
Near the end of the NPR piece, the authors shared this:
The idea that we have a responsibility to prepare wholesome, nourishing meals is appealing, and now there is more evidence to support that. For some food gurus, the decision to simmer homemade spaghetti and meatballs on the stove rather than heat up a can of ravioli in the microwave is evidence of a person’s moral fortitude.
In a way, that’s true. When, as they put it, “inequality is baked into our food system,” choosing to spend a greater portion of a limited household resources on better food can become a moral issue: if I do this, what will I have to do without? That decision becomes even more difficult when we’re thinking about our children, who may like processed junk food, but the facts tells us that minimizing its presence in their lives is imperative.
Part three is coming soon . . .
May 23, 2019
Southern Movie 36: “Hot Summer in Barefoot County”
Alongside the 1970s fascination with Southern culture that manifested itself in action films like Walking Tall and comedies like Smokey and the Bandit was also the inclination of some filmmakers to make campy, dumb-bunny comedies like Hot Summer in Barefoot County. Released in 1974, the movie was directed by Will Zens, who also made 1967’s The Road to Nashville, 1975’s Trucker’s Woman, and 1985’s The Fix, and it was released by the Preacherman Corporation— as in the same folks who made the 1971 movie Preacherman. The story line centers on the efforts of a big-city special agent to find the source of bootleg liquor in a rural North Carolina county. Yet, this movie isn’t something to be taken seriously, and it’s got everything that’s needed to make sure that we don’t: stereotypes, bad acting, cheap stunts, the works.
Hot Summer in Barefoot County begins on a rural two-lane road with a speeding red hot-rod Ford, piloted by a young woman in a man’s straw hat and aviator sunglasses. Of course, we have banjo-picking to accompany the scene. As the car, which we understand to be a moonshine runner, flies by, we see the roadside sign declaring this to be Barefoot County. Soon, the red Ford is chased by a fat, heavy-bearded sheriff and his buffoonish deputy, but the bootlegger outmaneuvers the sheriff, who can’t do much more with his defeat than grimace and throw down his hat.
After the credits roll, the next bit of the story that we get brings in Special Agent Jeff Wilson, who we meet in a big-city law office. Wilson, who is youngish and perhaps supposed to be handsome, is receiving his orders to go to Barefoot County to put a stop to this bootlegging mess. He will have to go there by himself, undercover, and infiltrate the local scene.
Next, the disguised driver delivers a small load of white jugs to the back of store, and after she drives off, we cut to the backwoods, where a mother and two of her three grown daughters are filling those same plastics jugs at a moonshine still. Mama does a little quality assurance, then wonders out loud whether Mary Ann, the third daughter, the one in the Ford, will be back soon. She tells her daughters, who are decked out like Daisy Duke in short shorts and tied-up shirts, to hurry. Back home – in broad daylight, mind you – the mother and two daughters load more white lightning into the trunk of the Ford. The mama asks Mary Anne if she had any trouble, and with a laugh, she replies that there was none . . . except ol’ Sheriff Bull Tatum. Then they all laugh.
After we see Special Agent Wilson arriving in the area, Bull Tatum and his deputy Clyde are back at their office, when Clyde tells Bull that he got some mail. The letter tells the sheriff that the folks in the capitol are aware of the bootlegging in the area, and Bull worries out loud that another one of “them pesky agents” might come down there to look into it. “We got some sheriffin’ do,” he tells Clyde, and they leave.
But they don’t exactly get to work. Instead they go to the local gas station/diner, where Bull spills the beans to owner Otis Perkins that he will be setting up a road block to check cars, then he orders a couple of plates of bacon and eggs. Two young men Clarence and Junior play pinball in the corner, a few scattered locals sit at other tables, and then the scene cuts to local tomcat Culley Joe forcibly making out with a girl in the front seat of a truck. We find out momentarily, when the two pinball boys are sent outside to find Culley Joe, that the two lovers are out back of the cafe, that she is the waitress at the cafe, and that she is the sheriff’s daughter Nadine!
Inside the cafe, Culley Joe is instructed to go see Stella Holcomb – the mother who is leading the moonshine operation – and tell her that he has some “new developments” to share. (Of course, he knows that the road blocks are for her daughter Mary Ann.) Culley Joe does as he’s told, loads up his two pals into his topless Jeep, and rides out to the Holcomb place. Of course, Culley Joe and his friends see this as an opportunity not only to deliver the message but to molest the Holcomb girls. Finding that their mother is not at home, Culley Joe moves stealthily into the barn and halfheartedly tries to sexually assault the dark-haired sister, who fights him off pretty handily. Stella soon arrives though, and Culley Joe is told at gunpoint to take his philandering elsewhere, but he does manage to deliver his father’s message.
Out on the road, Jeff Wilson is just getting near to the town, and he is spotted by the Jeepful of wild boys. Hooting and hollering, they run Jeff off the road, then proceed without remorse to the sheriff’s road block. Of course, the sheriff finds nothing in the boys’ Jeep, but as the Holcombs are heading to the local cafe to find out what the news is, they find Jeff in his wrecked car. They pull him from the wreck and take him home, but also step out back to get the red Ford ready for another run (again, in broad daylight). This time, Mary Ann comes upon the road block and blasts right through it at full speed! Bull and Clyde try to jump in their car and make chase, but once again Mary Ann’s driving leaves them in a field, scratching their heads.
Pulling up to the cafe, with the second load of moonshine in two days, Mary Ann asks Otis what the news is, after explaining that her mother couldn’t come because they found a man in a car wreck. A road block, she finds out. She has a good laugh, then suggests that they unload the liquor before Bull Tatum shows up. And show up he does, with Clyde, disheveled, and empty-handed.
[image error]Out at the Holcombs’, Jeff Wilson wakes up, with a bandage on his head, and finds the mother and her three daughters at the dinner table. He sits right down, and Stella explains how he got there, then introduces her daughters. Mary Ann is giving him the sweet eyes across the table, while the salacious dark-haired sister Vicky looks him over, biting her bottom lip. (The third sister doesn’t seem too interested, or interesting.) Jeff lies, telling them that he was passing through, looking for work, and Stella suggest that he might find work with Otis at cafe.
After an evening on the porch, where Jeff tells the women about his upbringing on a farm, they take him to Sunday services, where he is introduced around and gets to speak to Otis about job. Otis offers him all he can, pumping gas mostly, and now the big-city law man all set to scope out the scene. He even has a pay phone at the cafe, which he can use to call his chief.
Among his first customers are the three Holcomb sister in their blue truck. However, as Jeff tries to pump their gas and check under the hood, Culley Joe butts in and wants to dominate the girls’ attention. Manly man that he is, Jeff deals with Culley Joe pretty easily, making his first enemy in the small community. Later on, inside the cafe, Otis suggests to Jeff that he move out of the Holcombs’ house and into the apartment at the cafe, which Jeff agrees to.
The next few minutes of the movie contain an awkward love scene between Jeff and Mary Ann, who are walking through a field as Jeff explains that he will leave their house. What makes the scene awkward are two things: mainly, the two are shown from about a fifty yards away, but also, in this hokey and oversexed comedy, a moment of sentimental sincerity is way out of place.
When we’re through with that, we’re back at sheriff’s office, where Bull tells Clyde that they need to go out to the Holcomb place and find out more about Jeff Wilson. Clyde objects on the grounds that they live not in Barefoot County but in adjacent Bedrock County, but Bull overrules him, saying that they aren’t going to arrest anybody. Out on the place, they’re met by Stella and Mary Ann on the porch, who explains that Jeff has left, yet when Clyde attempts to snoop in the barn, the two other sisters playfully detain the middle-aged deputy by undressing him. Of course, when he leaves barn with clothes unbuttoned, neither Bull nor Stella believe that it was they who were trying to “rape” him . . .
From here, the twisted plot begins to pick up the pace. As Culley Joe plays some music on the jukebox, the moronic sheriff and deputy try another roadblock. This time, Bull leaves Clyde there with the instructions not to let anybody through, then goes back to the cafe. Jeff is talking to Nadine there, which Culley Joe doesn’t like, and Otis discreetly sells a jug of moonshine to a man, who walks right out with it past the sheriff. (Of course, Jeff notices the transaction.) The conversation from there centers on Nadine, the sheriff’s daughter who flirts with every male who passes her, until a black man pulls up in a car to tell Bull that there’s a traffic jam up the road— Clyde has followed instructions perfectly and has let no one through.
By now, Jeff is putting it all together. From his apartment window, he sees Otis unloading moonshine from Mary Ann’s car. Inside the cafe, Mary Ann tells her dancing sisters to get moving, since they are heading to the swimming hole. Culley Joe hears this and sees yet another opportunity.
Knowing that he must take action, since his real job there is to stop the moonshiners, Jeff tries to go to the Holcombs’ to warn them but no one is there. (They’re at the swimming hole, of course.) So, Jeff goes walking in the woods and sees Stella making moonshine. He jots some notes on his notepad, and we know that the jig is up.
Out at the swimming hole, the three naked sisters play in the water, and Culley Joe goes to pick up Clarence and Junior. All is well, until Mary Ann gets out of the water and Culley Joe is there to attempt yet another sexual assault. She struggles with him for a moment, but then here comes Jeff, who saves the day in a fight scene that any bad 1970s movie would be proud to have. Mary Ann is then so appreciative, and the two lover kiss happily.
Yet, Jeff still hasn’t fessed up to why he is there and what he is about to do.
The next few scenes are awkward once again. In the first one, Stella and Mary Ann talk in the dark kitchen about the moonshiner’s life, giving what almost appears to be an apologia for this illegal, backwoods tradition. Then, the next two scenes, which bounce back and forth, involve Jeff and Mary Ann falling in love, making out, and discussing trust, while Jeff sits alone his apartment mulling the difficult decision he must make. These out-of-place bits are problematic in a movie where sexual assault is taken lightly and where the law is merely a playground for shiftless buffoons. Periodically attempting to tug at our heart strings just doesn’t work.
With more than an hour gone and less than a half-hour to go, Hot Summer in Barefoot County gets tiresome by this point. The sheriff decides to try one more effort to catch that red Ford, but his plan fails again when Clyde, who has been placed to shoot out the car’s tires, shoots out Bull’s tires instead. Jeff then witnesses Mary Ann once again delivering a load of moonshine to Otis, this time on dirt road rather than at the cafe’s back door. Culley Joe gets his comeuppance when he is caught by the sheriff rolling in the sheets with Nadine, and we have a wedding at gunpoint, which will be followed by a big party. Also, Bull thinks he has discovered that Jeff is his moonshiner he finds him at the Holcomb’s still, which forces Jeff to reveal his identity— an identity that Bull shares with everyone at the party! Including Mary Ann, who feels utterly betrayed. Everything is all tied up in knots.
However, all’s well that ends well, as Shakespeare put it. Before he leaves, Jeff makes sure that the Holcombs will not be caught for making moonshine, the two younger sisters start their own new still in another location, half-wit sexual predator Culley Joe is off the streets now that he is a married man, and for the movie’s end, Jeff comes back for Mary Ann! The two close things out, kissing in the fading sunlight.
Trying to find critical commentaries or reviews of Hot Summer in Barefoot County is somewhere between difficult and impossible. It’s seems generally agreed upon that it is a bad movie— and not good-bad. Just plain bad. That absence may also be because the seminal Southern moonshine movie White Lightning preceded it by a year, and this movie can’t hold a candle to that one.
As a document (albeit fictional) that portrays the American South, Hot Summer in Barefoot County relies almost totally on stereotypes in the same way as its predecessor Preacherman. Its flippant approach to the supposed stupidity of Southerners, especially rural Southerners, includes the ideas that complete idiots are likely to be law enforcement officers, that the poor passively accept poverty and a lack of opportunity, and that everyone is sex-starved, immoral, and devoid of self-restraint. Films like this one use the modern cinema to perpetuate caricatures, created earlier by print media and touring shows, which reinforce the notions that Southerners are good-for-nothing, good-timing, and lazy. While it may have made for good comedy in the decade before political correctness, it was also harmful to a region trying to rebuild itself in the decade after Civil Rights.
To read other Southern Movie posts, click here.
May 22, 2019
If Schools were like Airports . . . (A Rumination)
After recently spending more than two hours on a jetliner wedged between a jock in a Jackalope trucker hat who chomped gum with his mouth open and refused to share the arm-rest, and a millenial yuppie whose overly loud action-film sound effects bled out of his ear buds, I found myself pondering whether there might be a reason why the airline industry does things the way they do. Unable to find any good answers to that cosmic quandary, my mind wandered away from the issue at hand, and my teacher brain began to wonder, what might it be like if we ran our schools the way we run our airlines . . . ?
We would start our day around dawn by requiring students to be at school at least two hours before the school day’s stated start time. This two-hour span of time would be necessary for teams of security guards to search, frisk, and otherwise humiliate students individually and publicly, while other guards with no apparent duties stand by. Students would only be allowed to get in line for this ordeal if they have complete documentation that they attend the school. Lacking even one document would disqualify a student from proceeding, even to the search. Parents and other family members would be held largely off-campus by school security, who would direct them to a nearby limbo populated mostly by students not eligible to enter.
Before entering the building, students would have to take off belts, watches, and shoes, to empty their pockets, then to enter first a wind-blown gunpowder chamber then a metal detector, leaving them eventually to stand half-dressed while they wait for their backpacks and purses to undergo similar treatment. A few will sheepishly sort out their feelings about being felt up and down by a stranger in rubber gloves. Of course, there would be a separate, private room for searching questionable students, or even randomly selected ones. And it wouldn’t matter how long any student had attended the school; this process would be completed every time.
Once students did enter the building — some of them hours before the school day starts — there would not be enough seating for everyone in common areas, such as cafeterias. Some students would be left sitting on the floor against the wall, or loitering around water fountains, a situation that would be necessary for reasons that would never be explained.
Of course, the school day may or may not start at the stated time, and moreover individual classes would be rescheduled with no notice and no explanation. A student might have second-period Chemistry but if first-period English starts late and ends late, then the student would certainly miss part of Chemistry, or all of it, especially considering that classrooms would be arranged so that no students’ next class would be anywhere near the previous class. Late students would have to go to the office and stand in line to arrange to attend a later class meeting, if one is available. This could lead to a domino-effect throughout the day, but teachers and office staff would be trained only to say that we “understand the frustration,” but will nonetheless remain inflexible and claim to be powerless. Students who object to the inconvenience with anything more than mild consternation would be removed from campus. Though the day’s stated end time may be around 3:00 PM, some students would not be finished at school until late in the evening. That would also be necessary for reasons that would never be explained. Those students’ families would have to circle the school parking lot or pay for an hourly rate for parking until their child comes out of the building, since free parking would not be available and waiting in the pick-up lanes would not be allowed.
Moreover, the classroom environment would be designed to ensure maximum occupancy, not comfort. Upon entering the classroom, all students would be required to put their backpacks in storage bins that are at least five feet above the ground. Some students’ bags won’t fit and those would be taken away and stored, probably to be returned but maybe not. Seats would be too small for most students, and aisles between desks would be narrow. (Students’ elbows should be held close to the body.) The back of each seat would be no more than a foot from the face of the student behind, and the desktops would be designed with greater width than depth, even though most paper is longer than it is wide. Textbooks would be left in a pouch on the back of the seat in front of each student, but some would be missing. Teachers would go over procedures for fire, severe weather, and lock-down at the beginning of every class period. Students sitting near the door would be questioned as to whether they’re capable of opening the door if someone knocks. Most importantly, students would be reminded that federal law requires that all students comply with all directives from teachers. Finally, no one would be allowed to leave class to use the bathroom, but a very small stall would be available in the back corner of the room.
Outside the classroom, students would experience similar aggravation and indifference. In the halls, custodians and other staff would drive beeping golf carts through crowds of students without slowing down. Food would be overpriced — most outside food and all drinks would be confiscated on the way in — and in the bathrooms, there would always be at least one person taking a really nasty dump. Of course, changing classes would have the additional challenge of navigating through the frustrated students who didn’t make it to class on time and who would idly occupy much of the available seating.
Finally, at the end of each school day, the same teachers and staff who refused to be flexible would stand in the halls and bid students farewell, saying with a smile, “I hope you had a good day, see you tomorrow.” That is, except for the students who leave late, who would slog through the dark, empty halls to the sidewalk and wait for their ride to pull up.
Since the proprietors of the airline industry seem to believe that this modus operandi works, I’m kind of surprised that some pro-business, security-obsessed reformer hasn’t already suggested that we apply it our nation’s schools . . . to ensure that students are ready, as future corporate employees, to participate in the modern travel system.
May 21, 2019
Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige
[image error]Even if Alabama’s recent anti-abortion law does end the practice within the state’s borders, even if the law itself does stands up to court challenges from the ACLU, and even if it does go all the way to the US Supreme Court and overturn Roe v. Wade, Alabama will still have inordinate levels of poverty, an inadequate education system, an inhumane degree of over-incarceration, crumbling infrastructure, too few good job opportunities, permissive pollution policies, an understaffed court system, an over-dependence on federal funding, prevalent racial tensions, and a declining population. While we garner (negative) national and global attention again, these myriad problems, which need to be addressed with viable legislative and public policy solutions, persist.
“Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige” posts will be published regularly on Tuesday afternoons.
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May 20, 2019
Thank you, NewSouth Books!
[image error]Thank you to NewSouth Books for about my school garden and about the sustainability-focused teacher program that I’m attending this summer in Montana!
