Post of Ripostes
Droll responses to comments on war, bigotry, astronomy, moonshine, and music
Below are five stories, each culminating in a riposte I admired—two from my wife, one from a high school wrestler (and from a legendary boxer), one from a mountain kid, and one from an historian. The painting that sits atop this piece is my wife’s visual riposte to the hackneyed, oft-heard comment on modern art: “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.” In it, she recalls our visit to Art Basel Miami, creating an imaginary gallery with works by Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, and Oaxacan folk artists.
[1] ABOUT A WEEK, WE WON
My son, born in 1986 and growing up near Richmond, Virginia, received year after year after year of Lost Cause-infused Civil War education in our public schools. During his middle school years, my wife, who grew up on the beach at the edge of New York City, was an administrator in the county library system, where she worked with a load of traditional Southerners. At some point she voiced exasperation to her co-workers about the excessive amount of Civil War history our son had received. “I get it,” she said, “The Civil War is an extremely important part of American history. But enough is enough.” One of her very Southern colleagues asked, “Well, how much Civil War history did you get in New York City?” Alanna answered, as would a New Yorker, “About a week. We won.”
[2] CHEESEBURGERS UNDER JIM CROW
I often write of the scourge of Jim Crow in my hometown during my childhood. How people responded to such indignities and inhumanity could sometimes generate a smile. A while back, I wrote:
“[A]t our public library, African Americans were prohibited by law from the front door, first floor, or stacks. [I]n 1960, in a brilliant act of what we today would call ‘trolling,’ a local [black] minister (Wyatt Tee Walker), led a group of protestors through the whites-only door, strode up to the circulation desk, and asked for a biography of Robert E. Lee.”
The best such story that I heard, however, came from a friend who was a high school wrestler in the early 1960s. He was white, and he had a teammate who was one of the first African American students to attend our school. After school one day, the two of them (uncharacteristically for the time) went together to a local food stand with a walk-up window and some picnic tables in the parking lot.
My friend said the black wrestler was an imposing figure, powerful and serene. He walked up to the window and ordered a cheeseburger. The woman taking orders said, “I’m sorry sir, but we don’t serve Negroes here.” Without missing a beat, the wrestler said, “That’s quite alright ma’am. I don’t eat Negroes. I ordered a cheeseburger.” And then he stood motionless, with a faint, Buddah-like smile on his face. The woman stood motionless and confused. My friend, who wanted to double over laughing, said he couldn’t tell whether she understood the verbal barb or whether the comment simply wasn’t processing.
“What did she do?” I asked my friend. “She made him a cheeseburger,” he said. Later, I learned that Muhammad Ali had used the same piece of blessed sarcasm at a Louisville restaurant shortly after his appearance at the 1960 Olympics.
As a complete aside, I’m also reminded that Rod Serling made good use of the same double-entendre aspect of “to serve” in his 1962 Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man.”
[3] SOCIALIST VERSUS JIHADIST ASTRONOMY
At TheFreePress (“Astronomers May Have Found Life Beyond Earth,” recalls seeing Halley’s Comet in 1986 through his father’s telescope—a pleasure I was denied in a time when idiocy at Columbia University was more benign than it is today. An astronomy buff from early childhood on, I had waited over three decades for my chance to see Halley's which, unfortunately, was invisible to the unaided eye in the glare of Gotham’s light pollution. My then-pregnant wife and I were not going on winter road trips, especially for something as optional as stargazing.
Columbia, however, had a fine telescope at the Rutherfurd Observatory (atop Pupin Hall) and, as Halley's visit neared its end, the Astronomy Department invited the public to see the comet through the telescope. Atop the building, a long line waited to see the comet. The grad student in charge, however, decided that everyone should look first at the Moon and THEN, after everyone had had their fill of craters and mountains and seas, he would swing the telescope around and everyone could go through the line a second time to see the comet. The line moved s-l-o-w-l-y, with one viewer after another ooh-ing and aah-ing over the Sea of Tranquility and Copernicus Crater and whatever else our host was blathering endlessly about.
Meanwhile, I was peering nervously over the edge of the roof at a rapidly approaching bank of clouds on the horizon. I suggested to the astronomer that he move on to the comet, lest the clouds beat us to it. He loudly and oh-so-indignantly responded, "NOOOOO! There are a LOT of people in this line who haven't had a chance to see THE MOON yet, and it wouldn't be FAIR to them to move on to the comet." I noted that everyone in line had, in fact, seen the moon before and that none of us had ever seen Halley's Comet before—or likely would again. He grew huffy and repeated that EVERYONE should have an EQUAL chance to see THE MOOOOON.
My wife was not at all political but was a most assertive New Yorker. She chimed in with, “Oh! SOCIALIST astronomy!” which seemed to confuse Telescope-Boy. After another 10-15 minutes, in rolled the clouds, as prophetic me had forewarned, and our esteemed guide announced, breezily, “I guess we won't be able to see the comet tonight.” Thus, I never saw Halley’s and, doing the math, knew at that moment that I never would.
I suppose (pun intended) I should count my lucky stars, as Columbia’s Socialist Astronomy of 1986 has likely given way in 2024 to Jihadist Astronomy. I can only speculate as to what that might entail, but I personally would hesitate sharing an open rooftop with students who chant “We Are Hamas” by day.
[4] MISTER, YOU AIN’T COMIN’ BACK
In 1978, I received three offers to work as a small-town newspaper reporter. The one I really wanted to take was at a little paper in Rocky Mount, Virginia—a picturesque town in in the Blue Ridge foothills of Franklin County. It happens that I was friends with some prominent folks in Rocky Mount, so I knew I’d have a ready-made circle of acquaintances the moment I arrived.
The editor who extended the job offer seemed delightful, and we seemed to see eye-to-eye on most of what mattered. The only problem was that the job pomised to be more interesting than I wanted. You see, Franklin County has long been known as the Moonshine Capital of the World—a fact proudly trumpeted on the county’s tourism website and celebrated in several local and now-legal distilleries.
The editor took me around the county to see the sights. First stop was the county fair, then in session. Prominently displayed were several mountains of apples. In a reference to the county’s most celebrated industry, he told me, “I can pretty well guarantee you that not many of those apples will end up in pies.” Then he told a few stories about that industry. The one I remembered best was this:
“A pair of federal revenue agents came to Franklin County to search for moonshiners. They saw a small boy on the edge of the woods, perhaps six years old, and thought they’d be clever. One asked the boy, ‘Hey son. My friend and I are looking for something we left out in the woods. Maybe you can help us. It’s like a real big metal pot with some tubes coming out of it and some logs for burning a fire. You seen anything like that? Cause we just can’t remember where we left it.’ The kid said, ‘Yessir, I know where that is.’ The agent said, ‘Well, can you show it to us?’ Kid said, ‘Yessir … for five dollars.’
The agent said, ‘Great! Let’s go now.’ The kid said, ‘First, gimme my five dollars.’ The agent said, ‘Oh, we’ll give it to you after we come back.’ The kid responded, ‘Mister, you ain’t comin’ back.’”
I loved the story, but afterward asked myself, “Do you really want to earn not much more than minimum wage by walking around in the deep woods with a little spiral notebook, asking moonshiners if they’d like to have a chat about their work?” I thought it probably would have been fine, but I didn’t care to test that theory.
So I took another job a bit farther southwest. During my time there, I did have the chance to share some moonshine with someone I was interviewing.
[5] HE ALREADY WROTE IT
Historian John Steele Gordon was a nephew by marriage of lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II (as in Rodgers & Hammerstein). Gordon’s mother served for 10 years as Hammerstein’s personal secretary and assistant. In that role, she guarded his time carefully, and in particular assured that he would be undisturbed from 8:30 am till lunch. In a 2011 essay, “My Uncle, Oscar Hammerstein,” Gordon recalled that one morning, when he was around 12 years old, he interrupted his uncle’s work to get an autograph for a friend. His mother was livid, telling him:
“You are never, ever, to bother him in his study. For all you know, he might have been in the middle of writing ‘Some Enchanted Evening.’”
Gordon then explained that he made the mistake of responding with:
“He’s already written it.”
This resulted, he said, in “one of those sit-down, 20-minute, now-you-see-here-young-man lectures.” And a nice anecdote 50+ years later.
COLTRANE / EAST & WEST
The Hammerstein story above reminded me of one of my favorite jazz works—saxophonist John Coltrane’s celebrated cover of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things.” In looking for a recording to post here, I came across this unusual cover of Coltrane’s own cover. Here it is, performed by a union of two very different jazz ensembles—Wynton Marsalis’s quintet and The Sachal Jazz ensemble from Lahore, Pakistan, with the latter group using traditional Subcontinent instruments.
Serving in the Sixth Fleet aboard the flagship USS Little Rock (CLG-4) and operating with one of the two carrier task forces deployed to the Med back then (1968-70). The TF commander, an admiral, was personally directing formation changes, course changes, in rapid succession – working the Task Force – at night. Picture half a dozen destroyers, the cruiser, and the aircraft carrier hurtling through the night, changing positions, speeding up, slowing down, rushing to take a new station. New course, now location in the formation and avoid all the other ships also changing positions and courses, all at the same times, and then in short order being ordered into a new formation and doing it all again... and again... and again. It was a hectic few hours.
On every bridge there was a bridge team with an Officer of the Deck (OD) and Junior Officer of the Deck (JOOD) plotting the changes, giving orders, piloting the ship amidst the greater confusion – and constantly having to change, to adapt to changes, to keep up with the ordered maneuvers and execute them on time and correctly... and suddenly having it all change yet again. Also on every bridge was a line of sight radio system called TBS (Talk Between Ships) that was the communications net all of this was being done. Of course the only one talking on TBS was the admiral, everybody else was listening and acknowledging when he ordered “Execute”. The TBS had a transmit button but using it required one hand better employed working your maneuvering board and bridge gear necessary to running the ship, so the common practice was to tape the transmit button down so you could clamp the handset between your shoulder and ears, you could listen, speak, and keep both hands free.
Obviously, somewhere in the formation was a harried OD or JOOD working his maneuvering board, trying to keep up with the rapid fire formation, course and speed changes with the TBS phone stuck to his ear and the transmit button taped down and maybe getting behind the curve. Anyway, there was a pause in the admiral’s traffic, and you could hear muttered over the air “Jesus Christ I am all f****d up...”
Silence ensued... then the admiral immediately ordered, “The sender of that last transmission WILL identify himself!” No response, and the admiral repeated it... “The sender of the last transmission WILL identify himself!” and again a third time.
Then, in response, and whispered so as not to be overheard on his bridge: “I may be f****d up, but I’m not THAT f****d up...”
Bob -- there's a lot to unpack in that fantastic post, but I'll limit myself to a few thoughts on the Civil War and Rocky Mount stories (great anecdotes, both--thanks for sharing them).
On the Civil War: I moved from my native Texas to the bustling metropolis of Roanoke, Virginia as a high school freshman in 1985, which meant I got my full year of mandatory Texas History as a 7th grader and a year of 8th grade U.S. History in Texas, followed by a year of "Virginia and U.S. History" in 11th grade. It was very interesting to hear the different spins teachers in different former Confederate states put on the Civil War. In Texas, I mostly remember being taught that the state ALMOST didn't join the Confederacy (a great story that is, unfortunately, completely untrue, no matter how much my teachers wished it wasn't); moreover, I recall teachers conveying a sense of deep embarrassment about Texas's side in the war. One teacher focused primarily on Sam Houston's refusal to pledge allegiance to the Confederacy and his resulting resignation as Texas Governor. There might have been a little about states rights here and there. But all in all, there was very little of the Lost Cause mythology in the curriculum as I recall it, and a lot more "of course it was about slavery."
In Virginia, things were a little different, though I suspect Roanoke was a little less Lost-Cause-focused than Richmond would have been. My teacher was in her final pre-retirement year when I took Virginia and U.S. History, which probably would have put her birth year around 1923. I'd never really thought about the fact that there were still octogenarian Civil War veterans knocking around (and plenty of slightly younger people with real memories of the war years) when she was a child. We did hear a lot about states rights from her, and we also got the occasional "the Civil War wasn't about slavery." Except we didn't. Because she really did tend to call it "The Great Unpleasantness" or something similar.
On Franklin County: I spent a lot of time there in high school, both as a track and soccer athlete and, more interestingly, as a soccer referee. In the late 1980s, soccer was just coming to Rocky Mount, and the best way for me to make around $100 in a day -- no small sum then -- was to take a reffing assignment in the Franklin County rec league on fall Saturdays. I have no idea whether there was any surreptitious moonshine consumption going on (though I have sampled some of Franklin County's best myself over the years), but we did five games in a day, and were specifically instructed to make it more about teaching the game than calling the game. My main memory of those experiences was that neither the parents nor the kids were anywhere near as backward as those of us living 20 miles north in oh-so-sophisticated Roanoke wanted to believe.
Also, the fastest I've ever driven was on Route 220 between Roanoke and Rocky Mount. Franklin County's moonshining history unsurprisingly blessed it with a number of top-notch engine shops. One day, shortly after getting my driver's license, I offered to help a friend by driving his 1970 Mustang with a 351 Cleveland back to Roanoke after a full engine rebuild. Having done almost all of my driving to date in a 64-horsepower 1983 Renault Alliance, I had no frame of reference for what that Mustang could do, or how fast it could go without feeling like it was going fast. At one point I looked down at the speedometer and saw I was somewhere over 110 mph. I slowed down after that. . .
Thanks for an interesting trip down memory lane.
P