Good ole' Calhoun

You always hear about small town life and the way small town people take care of one another.

You hear about the friendliness and hospitality of Southern People.

You hear a lot about a thing called Christian Charity and Values.

This part of West Virginia considers itself the South.

It is NOT!

Grantsville considers itself a “friendly little town” and a “Christian Community with Christian Values”.

It is NOT!The past two months have driven home the fact that I am, in the words of a great writer, an “alien in an alien land.”

It has also taught me the true meaning of hypocrisy.

With the exception of a brief period of about 10 days, I have been living in my VW Beetle with my two dogs, Bitty, an 8 year old Jack Russell Terrier and Reedus, a four month old Chihuahua.  I am considered "disabled” (cancer) and on a limited (very) income.  I make $23 too much to get any assistance, with the exception of a whooping ten dollars in food stamps (which, btw,  you have to disclose your entire life, up to and including the last time you took a piss (they want it!!) in order to receive them) and not enough to actually live on.  Like a fool, I thought the ten day stint was going to be a several month respite, but I was lied to from the beginning and then asked to “reciprocate” for being there AFTER my fur babies lives were threatened.  NOT!!  Anyway, I had bought food for that place, thinking I was going to be there, as well as toilet paper and such.

So money is non existent, but the pups have food and water and I am losing the weight that I have been bitching about! (Yeah, there IS an up side to almost everything life throws at you!)

I did recently spend the night in a tent!!  It was good to stretch out for a change, as the doodle bug doesn’t have much “stretch” room even if you are only five foot two inches tall. (doesn’t have much other room either, but we are making do)  Anyway, I got a few hours stretched out on the ground with blankets for padding.

Then it began to rain, which is not unusual this year (Since the beginning of June we have yet to have a four day stretch WITHOUT rain, it’s like living in Southeast Asia, rain, heat, humidity……fun, fun).  It wouldn’t have been bad then either, except……..the tent began to leak…..and leak…..and, well no need to go on I suppose.  Anyway, we got wet and so did our belongings.

Good times!!

NOT!

So, back to the doodle bug it was, and still is.

Now, in case any of you are wondering what any of this has to do with my introduction, please give me a moment to explain.

As I said, Grantsville is a little town.  It is the county seat of a sparsely populated county in the North Central part of the state.  There are some nice folks here.  Unfortunately there are more assholes, idiots, backstabbers, trouble makers and self centered hypocrites than any where I have EVER been.  I have lived in small towns and big cities as well as out in the country in several states besides this one and NO WHERE have I had the misfortune of encountering such a LARGE number of the above mentioned scum in any one area!

Many people around here bitch and complain about the “druggies” that make poison in campers, houses, trailers and apartments across the county, then these self same people help the “druggies” get food stamps, medical coverage, stipends and on the rare occasions that they need money for their supplies, jobs. (Yes, I guess if you’re making meth you sometimes need reliable income other than your personal sales)  Those complainers will buy stolen property from the druggies, they will let them live in decent properties at an unbelievably cheap price (properties which ultimately get condemned by the Drug Task force), they will watch their “poor little babies” while the druggies PARTY and will, on numerous occasions, post bond when the idiots get busted for manufacturing!!

Hypocrisy in action!!!

But if you are a fifty-five year old single woman who raised FOUR very good, very successful kids, they will talk about you, make up stories about you and flat out do whatever is necessary to make your life harder than it should be.

Oh, they will offer to rent you a run down trailer in need of floors and windows throughout for $325 a month plus an equal deposit, then turn around and rent it to a meth-head for HALF that!!

WTF??

The majority of the supposed GOOD, UPSTANDING, CHRISTIAN (and I use that word in the loosest of forms) people of this community care about one thing and one thing only – THEMSELVES.  What they have, what they can get, what people sees, that is ALL that is important!

The “GOOD WORKS” they do are always things other people can see and comment “OH, HOW CHARITABLE of you” or “WHAT AN GOOD THING YOU’RE DOING”.  In other words, if it is NOT a public display of some form it is NOT DONE!  Making a public donation to this or that (usually some charity that has never benefitted people around here) so people can see how generous they are instead of renting out a house to someone who desperately needs it.  They would rather the house fall down than for someone to get use from it.

And their “VALUES’ – the things that are valued are MONEY and what it an buy THEM so other people will look at them and think about how “well” they are doing (even if they are in debt up to their eyeballs), the RESPECT they think they get for being so “charitable” or community minded, never mind the fact that the little things, the day to day kindness that is so important is TOTALLY ABSCENT from their lives!!

IT IS ALL FOR SHOW!!  To make people ‘look up’ to them.

Southern Hospitality?  Which, btw, is a real thing in SOUTHERN areas, but not here.  Anyway, their idea of Southern Hospitality is to smile and wave and then talk about you behind your back like you are the original Harlot of Babylon.  To your face they are all friendly and kind and as soon as your head is turned they are doing their best to make sure you are just as miserable as they are.

See, that is the heart of the problem here.  MISERY, pure and simple.  So many “haves” hate the “have not's (only they would deny it to their last breath) because the HAVE NOTS have found something that has eluded the HAVES for generations,   They have found a peace and calm that can only be discovered when a person looks deep within themselves.

The ONLY people who have truly attempted to help me (here) have been THOSE WHO HAVE NO MEANS TO HELP!!  The ones that are struggling to keep a roof over their own heads and often wonder where their next meal is coming from, those people have repeatedly offered to share what little they have.  The ones driving the new or almost new cars with one, two or three more sitting at home, the ones who have to have all the newest toys with all the bells and whistles, the ones that waste money like it falls from the sky?  Well they are the ones that treat me like shit.  They act as thought I am LESS than them in some basic way.

What the majority of these assholes don’t know is (and yes I am tooting my own horn for a second) that I have ALWAYS been the person that would share my meal with someone who has none.  I WAS RAISED THAT WAY!!  If I have a sandwich and you have none, I will gladly give you half of my sandwich.  If I have $10 dollars and a person is hungry or thirsty, I have no problem buying them a burger or a coke or a coffee or whatever.  I was raised that we do WHATEVER WE CAN to help one another.  That’s why I do the Christmas Card Project and try to help people when they need money for bills or whatever.  THAT IS WHAT WE ARE SUPPOSE TO DO!!

I don’t regret helping anyone I have ever helped, although I do sometimes wish (particularly here lately) that I had half of what I have given.  I usually get over that quickly.

I have a car that keeps the wind and rain off of me, yes it is not a comfortable place to sleep, yes it gets so hot you can’t breathe sometimes, yes I am damned tired of it – BUT IT IS BETTER THAN SOME PEOPLE HAVE IT!  And I am so very thankful for that.

Do I ever say I’m done being good to people?  Yes, at least fifty times a day, but I still do it, even though these days it puts me in a bind.

BECAUSE THAT IS WHO I AM!  Love it or hate it, that is just me.

Do I ever say  “I do this stuff for people and what good does it do?  What is the point?”  YES, on a daily basis lately.

But I know people have helped me, and I am so very thankful for that!

Complete strangers collected over $200 and sent it to me this past month.  It kept me fed, kept food and water for the pups and put gas in the car for a while.  But it is expensive to live in a car – no way to keep things cold unless you buy ice – and on these 96 degree days you have to buy several bags a day.  $1.62 x 2 = $3.24 a day for ice, times that by 30 days and it’s $97.20 for ice!  That is more than a lot of electric bills ( if you don’t have AC).

Water is $1.00 a gallon (and we go through more than a gallon a day), times that by thirty and you have $30 for water. 

Oh yeah, I forgot, I live in a state where EVERYTHING is taxed, so there is 6% tax on everything I buy!

Pup food is .78 a can times 3 cans a day (more if I’m not eating and share my food with them) and you have $2.34 plus tax a day!

It is expensive.  I have no where to put any amount of food/water, I only have a small cooler.  I have no access to free drinking water.  And we haven’t even talked about my one meal a day or the cost of the storage for my belongings.

EXPENSIVE!!  YUP as much as rent almost!

I did find a place that is $450 a month with no utilities (doesn’t include a phone).  I would have to keep a phone (emergencies, my dad, etc.) and it would cost me $45 (plus tax) a month, so let’s say $48 a month.  That would make housing cost $498 a month.  Insurance on my car is $65, so now the total is $563, toilet paper, dog food, soap – at least another $120, so that is now $683, that leaves a grand total of $60 a month for food for me and gas for the car.  I don’t see that happening, do you?

Go somewhere else, right?

Good idea – BUT- my car needs front tires, about $120 USED if I’m lucky, an oxygen sensor, $78, a fuel filter, which is under the back seat so the labor sucks, it will run between $90 and $130 depending on the time needed, a throttle control sensor @ $186 just to be ABLE to leave here.  That’s $496 dollars JUST TO BE ABLE TO DRIVE AWAY, never mind finding a way to haul my meager belongings.

So I guess I’ll make do with what I have and be thankful for it!

I feel better for getting some of this off my chest.  It still doesn’t make the situation better, but I do feel better despite that.

And I will continue to do what I an for those who need it.

I guess I’ll never learn, will I?

AMERICA, a country that has lost its mind.....

You know, there is a lot of shit going on in my life right now, yet here I sit, quietly plugging along and knowing it will get better.  I am not bitching and whining (much) to anyone that will listen, or demanding "reparations" for damages done to me by anyone else (although I do wish some people would suffer from a permanent case of STFU), nor things that were done to my ancestors. 

What happened in Charleston was beyond horrible, nine innocent lives were lost and even more lives were changed in ways from which they will never recover.  It is a tragedy that I will never belittle.  I feel for those who knew and loved these people, they will suffer a pain that few of us know forever.

BUT, people like Al Sharpton (NO I will never refer to him as a reverend or a preacher or even a civil liberties leader, I am old enough to remember WHO and WHAT he was, what he helped to accomplish and how he allowed himself and his morals to be perverted into the hate mongering racist he is today) and a host of other leftist idiots have turned this tragedy into yet another media circus.  They are exploiting the unimaginable pain of these families in order to push yet another point of their ignorant, hate based agenda.

YES, slavery happened.  YES, the South left the Union because, in part, of slavery.  BUT, there was issues besides slavery that led to the division of the Union, as anyone who has EVER studied history realizes.  TOTAL CONTROL of everything was one, and although some people meant the Government abolishing slavery, it was more than that.

Slavery was NOT simply white men owning black men, women and children.  It was so very, very much more.  It was black men selling their enemies and rivals to white men across the sea. It was white men, and women, taking advantage of other human beings in order to make their lives easier.  It was the total lack of regard for human life!

BUT, it wasn’t something new!  Slavery had been around since Biblical times, it was always a presence in those times.

The large majority of people in the South DID NOT OWN SLAVES.  Most of us were poor, we didn’t own thousands upon thousands of acres of land that we farmed, most of us lived on what we could trap, shoot or grow.  We weren’t all hate filled, whip wielding “Masters” of the plantation.

That time in our Nation was a horrible, evil time.  While the slaves were laboring in the fields, there were thousands upon thousands of Native peoples who were having their homes destroyed, being shot, burned or beaten to death and were fighting back the invasion of the White man.

The Natives of this country had assisted the whites in becoming established, and in return entire races were wiped out.  Prior to the Civil War, many of the tribes had been forced to leave the areas that became the South, just as they had in the areas that became the North.

By 1861, more Native peoples had been killed or forced to leave the Eastern part of this country than the combined number of Slaves in the South at ANY time!!

The horror that was slavery was equaled and, some say, surpassed by the disease ridden blankets given to women, children and elderly Natives, by the rape and murder of women and children, by the horror of witnessing some white skinned man grabbing your child by the leg, swinging with all of his might and smashing his brains out against a tree.

Beatings?  Yes, Red peoples were still being beaten to death by whites AND blacks alike.  Rapes?  Yup, that too.  Hangings?  On a regular basis!  Brutality of unimaginable levels?  Yes, each and every day from the early 1500’s.  Brutality on the white part AND the red part.

Slavery?  No, no red slaves, but there were indentured servants, which is almost the same thing.  There were white men, women and children that were owned, hell there were white SLAVES that were owned, the law said ONE DROP of black blood made you a “negro” and you could (and would) be owned.  But the Irish, the German, the Welsh, the Polish, the Italian, etc that indentured themselves (and families) to come to this country were essentially slaves as well.  They had to toil in the fields, the factories and the whorehouses of this countries, as well as in many, many other ways, and they had NO SAY OVER WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM!

Natives peoples had slaves as well, white ones, black ones and red ones.  They saw no color to slavery, only circumstances.  Slavery was here before the whites arrived.  And when the whites arrived with their slaves, it seemed normal to those who were already here.

The “flag of Virginia” aka the Rebel Flag is a simple piece of material that has NO bearing on what was done recently.  Hell, the first Confederate flag was NOT the one everyone is bitching about, it was a flag called the Stars and Bars (look it up) and was very similar to Old Glory.  But none the less, it is a piece of material that holds no special powers.

The hatred that prompted recent events is simply that hatred.  It isn’t some spell cast by a symbol of slavery, or a special power held by a flag.  It is a broken person (of which there are many of ALL colors) perverting something to suit his needs.

And the deal with Thomas Jefferson?  WTF?  Has this country lost its collective mind?  He was, regardless of his slave holdings, an important, powerful man in the history of this country.  Without him and his influence this nation may never have been formed.  Hell, the first five of our Presidents were slave owners when they held office!!  Twelve presidents of this country were slave owners! 

Should we get rid of the statues and portraits of them all?  Should we stop teaching the history of this country because we had 12 slave owning presidents?  Oh wait, we HAVE stopped teaching History, and that is part of the problem.  Thank you Liberals!

Let’s take a step farther onto this road of PC idiocy.     

Andrew Jackson was basically a serial killer by proxy.  He ordered the troops to systematically kill all Native women and children after massacres in order to complete the extermination of the Red man.  He was a genocidal maniac who not only was responsible for uncountable deaths but also participated in an estimated 100 duels.  Are the liberals demanding he be removed from history because of his crimes?  NO, but when you throw in the fact that he was a wealthy slave owner he suddenly becomes high on the list to abolish from our history.  He becomes a racist.

Why isn’t anyone in history thought of as racist for their views and treatments of Native Peoples?  Or their treatment of Irish, or German, or Chinese?  When did racist become a simple black/white issue?

And WHY are we turning each and every horrible event into a racist issue?  Why do we not hear stories on the National News channels of blacks killing whites, or Mexicans killing blacks, or Chinese killing whites?  When did race become an issue ONLY if there is death of someone who is considered black?

I don’t identify when being white, I never have. I don’t identify with black, I never have.  I don’t even identify with Native, because I am all of those things.  I am a mixture of colors and cultures, of red, black, and white.  Of Native and slave, of Irish and German.  I don’t see hatred in colors, I don’t see separation, I see people.  I see evil, I see stupidity, I see ignorance in people, not color.

I am a product of the 1960’s, I have seen the treatment of black folks by white folks, of Natives by black and white, of Vietnam vets by everyone.  I have witnessed hatred in many shapes and sizes, but never seen it as a color.

We, this country, have descended into an abyss of stupidity pushed by people of ALL colors.  We have stopped feeling compassion for our own, and by our own I don’t mean our own color, I mean our own citizens.  We take tragedies and make them the new battle cry for this issue or that one, we exploit the pain and suffering of families by flashing it across the television and internet like the latest new music video.  We have become less than human.

The people in South Carolina are suffering a PRIVATE pain.  Now they must sit for hours upon hours while tens of thousands of STRANGERS parade into the funerals of their loved ones, not out of compassion, not out of empathy, but for the MEDIA GLORY of being there.  Those strangers never even knew the victims existed!  They didn’t know them, or their families, or their beliefs, AND THEY DIDN”T CARE UNTIL THOSE POOR PEOPLE WERE SLAUGHTERED!!

What the hell is wrong with this country?  HOW have we become so divided and filled with hatred toward one another?  WHY are we NOT moving toward unity, but are moving farther and farther from it each and every day?  Why has racism become the hot word of the day?

What about the children that suffer from hunger EVERY DAY right here in this country?  Does it matter what color their skin is when their bellies growl and cramp because they have no food?  What about the men that served this country in all of the wars we inserted ourselves into?  Does it matter if their skin is red or white or black or yellow when they lay cold and hungry on the sidewalks of our cities?  Does it matter what color someone’s skin is when they are dying from cancer or HIV or any other of a dozen of death sentences?  Does it matter to YOU?  Would YOU only help a child that is white?  Or black?  Or would you help ANY child?

Racism is NOT the problem!  The problem is the media and the few power hungry idiots that insist on getting their faces on the evening news, not because they owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes, but because they are spouting hatred for others.

Wake up!!  This media circus that happens each and every time something horrible happens is what PROMPTS more sociopaths to do these terrible things.  Kill a bunch of people of a different color and go down in history!  Yay!  WTF?

Okay, I’m done.  I will say no more on the subject, except to say that my heart goes out to the families and friends of those people slaughtered.  RIP.