I’m about three-quarters of the way through Joseph J. Ellis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Founding Brothers, and it occurred to me this morning that the political and ideological divide between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is one that, as a country, we’re still struggling to overcome. For those of you that may have forgotten your American history, Adams was a Federalist, and as such, he believed that the country needed a strong, central government because he was convinced that the republican values that precipitated the revolution would likely lead to a dissolution of the newly formed, and highly volatile, United States. Jefferson, on the other hand, was a Democratic-Republican, and he firmly believed in self-government, which, consequently, meant that he viewed a strong, centralized government as tantamount to tyranny.

Ellis describes the two thus:

They were an incongruous pair, but everyone seemed to argue that history had made them into a pair. The incongruities lept out for all to see: Adams, the short, stout, candid-to-a-fault New Englander; Jefferson, the tall, slender, elegantly elusive Virginian; Adams, the highly combustible, ever combative, mile-a-minute talker, whose favorite form of conversation was an argument; Jefferson, the always cool and self-contained enigma, show regarded debate and argument as violations of the natural harmonies he heard inside his own head…[t]hey were the odd couple of the American Revolution. (163)

To some degree, the United States is still haunted by the ghosts of Adams’s and Jefferson’s political disagreements. A direct comparison of the Federalists to the Democrats and the Democratic-Republicans to present day Republicans would, of course, be ludicrous. For one thing, the political ideologies of Adams and Jefferson were inextricably entwined with the Revolution. As often as Americans whinge and bitch about politics, Adams and Jefferson actually lived through political turmoil. For another, Jefferson hated religion, and this is not something that has remained unnoticed among current Republicans. Ellis claims that “like Voltaire, Jefferson longed for the day when the last king would be strangled with the entrails of the last priest” (139). While Adams wasn’t as venomous towards religion, his father was a minister and he considered himself a Unitarian, he most certainly held beliefs that current reading would view as deistic. Their deistic beliefs alone make a direct comparison with modern-day politics futile.

But I think I can easily provide an analogy of the political divide between Adams and Jefferson while simultaneously providing one that will help us understand the schism between political parties today:

“The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse” by Aesop.

Now you must know that a town mouse once upon a time went on a visit to his cousin in the country. He was rough and ready, this cousin, but he loved his town friend and made him heartily welcome. Beans and bacon, cheese and bread, were all he had to offer, but he offered them freely. The town mouse rather turned up his long nose at this country fare, and said, “I cannot understand, cousin, how you can put up with such poor food as this, but of course you cannot expect anything better in the country; come you with me and I will show you how to live. When you have been in town a week you will wonder how you could ever have stood a country life.” No sooner said than done: The two mice set off for the town and arrived at the town mouse’s residence late at night.

“You will want some refreshment after our long journey,” said the polite town mouse, and took his friend into the grand dining room. There they found the remains of a fine feast, and soon the two mice were eating up jellies and cakes and all that was nice. Suddenly they heard growling and barking.

“What is that?” said the country mouse.

“It is only the dogs of the house,” answered the other.

“Only,” said the country mouse, “I do not like that music at my dinner!” Just at that moment the door flew open; in came two huge mastiffs; and the two mice had to scamper down and run off.

“Good-bye, cousin,” said the country mouse.

“What! Going so soon?” said the other.

“Yes,” he replied. “Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear.”

Okay, I’m sure most of you have heard this fable before. And while I don’t necessarily agree with the moral it’s supposed to impart, it does capture the animosity between present day Democrats and Republicans and Adams and Jefferson. Jefferson made no apologies about being a Francophile, and he certainly did his fair share of traveling and living abroad, but he would immediately retire to his farm at Monticello at the drop of a hat, and in his heart he felt as if he was a simple, gentlemanly Virginian farmer. Of course, he wasn’t. He was much more than that, but what’s important here is not reality but self-identification. Jefferson viewed himself as a simple country mouse. Adams, on the other hand, was born and lived near Boston and educated at Harvard. He spent a good part of his life living in the hustle-bustle of cities like Boston, Philadelphia, London, and New York. Unlike Jefferson, Adams didn’t long a particular place or location to engage in silent contemplation. Adams did long for the company of his wife Abigail, but he seemed happiest in crowded cities where he could argue and discuss whatever was on his mind. He was the quintessential town mouse.

Many republicans still view the world through country mouse eyes. To a country mouse, self-government makes sense. You know all your mousey neighbors and they all know you. There’s no need for a strong government to help enforce laws because all the mice know each other. Taxes don’t make sense because the little country mouse village has no need for a government, much less an adequately-funded government. Unions don’t make sense to a country mouse because you know your boss. If there’s a problem, just go talk to the head mouse in charge. You know him, he knows you, and you probably know each other’s families. Obviously you can come to some agreement if you talk it out.

But to a town mouse, the country mouse’s view of the world is untenable. There’s so much going on in the town that self-government would never work. There are out-of-control mastiffs–someone has to do something about that. There’s great food and drink, but the company that makes jelly is based in another country, and the mice that work in the local factory aren’t getting a fair shake. Long hours, no benefits, and abusive bosses. The mousey employees had complained to their bosses, but they didn’t have any real power (rumors were the plant was owned by a group of felines from overseas). The mice thought about looking for other work, but the cake factory was the same. So they had to form a union so that their grievances were heard.

It’s no secret that urban voters traditionally vote democrat and rural voters vote republican. And if you’ve lived in both places it’s not hard to see why. When you live in the country you tend to feel, similarly to Jefferson and the country mouse, that you can take care of yourself. Since you aren’t forced to contend with many different kinds of people that hold many differing views on society, you feel disconnected from the rest of the world, and the need of a strong government seems tyrannical. But when you live in the town, like Adams and the town mouse, you realize that self-government simply isn’t enough. There are far too many out of control dogs running around for people to deal with. And beyond that, there are so many conflicting views, such as politics and religion, that without a strong government to continually pursue a common goal, the citizenry would be dissolute and combative.

In my experience, which is obviously anecdotal, people who live in the country oftentimes have a distorted view of city life. They view it as much more violent than it actually is, and they tend to view foreigners much more suspiciously. They also view most poverty as the result of laziness, which of course, it most definitely is not. They also have frighteningly skewed outlooks on unions, and they see any taxes as an imposition bordering on tyranny.

Of course, Aesop’s fable is fairly pro-country mouse, but like Adams, I think that dogmatic adherence to either of the philosophies of Jeffersonian self-government or Hamiltonian Federalism is pure folly, and the only way for the country to flourish is to find a way to continue to combine those two seemingly antagonistic philosophies.

Besides, beans and bacon can get boring as hell. I’d risk a fight with a bull mastiff for a shot at some jellies and cake now and then. I feel like Adams would support me on this.

Post Script: For more of my thoughts on country life, click here.

Post-Post Script: I’ll make a formal announcement at the end of the week, but I want to restart the reading group. Anniina suggested the sequel to Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood. I want to give those people that haven’t read Oryx and Crake the time to read it. Again, I’ll post details later this week.

On more than one occasion I’ve written about my hometown on this blog. Before you begin this post, you might want have a look at the “Texaspecific” section of the blog for a little primer on the interesting location that is my hometown. This post “Small Town Values” might be of particular interest. Doing so might help explain some of my behavior that I’m about to relate.

Several weeks ago, I befriended an old high school teacher on Facebook. I can count on one hand the number of teachers I had in high school I actually liked and respected. Actually, I can count on three fingers, but this guy I was actually pretty indifferent about. He didn’t really teach all that much. At least not my class. Each morning when I would walk into his class, I would literally crawl under a desk and go to sleep. I am not making that up. He would also wake me up when “class” was over. He never hassled me or my friends, so I never really had anything bad to say about him.

So anyway, a few weeks ago I added him as a friend on Facebook. After I added him, I started noticing that a large majority of his status updates were basically FoxNews talking points. And not halfway normal FoxNews. Steve Doocy and Glenn Beck FoxNews. This concerned me–not because I actually gave a shit about what he thought, but because he had added some of his students as Facebook friends.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit that I have quite a few former students as Facebook friends. However, nearly all of them I added after they had finished my classes. Also, I deal with college students that actually need to be bombarded with multiple opposing viewpoints. The students in my former high school are not intellectually mature enough to distinguish between rational arguments and demagoguery. They need to be taught skepticism and rationalism. My former teacher represented an intellectual authority figure, and it irritated me that he would be so cavalier with his radical political and religious positions.

But I kept my mouth shut. I really did.

For a little while.

Then, after the disaster in Haiti, he posted an update that basically stated the disaster was punishment from God, and that we should all prepare for the Heavenly disasters that would surely follow. Then he quoted a couple of lines of nonsense from Revelation.

That shit was the last straw.

I spent several hours writing a response that I hoped would provide everyone that had read his insanity with a rational, fairly neutral view of the Haitian earthquake. I respectfully pointed out the mistake of accepting Revelation as literal truth, and at the end of my post I encouraged everyone to donate $10 via the 90999 cell phone texting option.

Again, I was as conciliatory and respectful as I could be. Leigh couldn’t believe I could even be that nice. My friend Tank concurred, and they both urged me to be much more forceful, yet I resisted the urge.

I would like to provide all my readers with a copy of that post so you can see just how fair I was, but a few hours later, the cowardly motherfucker deleted the whole thing, and I was too stupid not to save a local copy.

At that point, I made it my goal to try and provide his Facebook friends with a counter point to every loony status update he posted. I figured one of three things would happen: 1) He would engage me in debate. This is what I hoped would happen. 2) He would delete every status update I commented on. This is what I figured would happen. 3) He would defriend me. This is what happened.

Yesterday, he posted a snarky status update about Obama’s plan to fund nuclear energy. I really didn’t find his comment that interesting, and I was going to leave it alone because I’d already commented on one of his updates this week (I was planning to go with one a week). But at the aggressive encouraging of a friend who shall remain nameless, I wrote up a comment. What follows is the transcript of that interaction:

Former Teacher: I’m confused … After 30 YEARS of crying horrible against it, why is it all of a sudden OK to build nuke power plants?

One of his Facebook friends: because our pres doesnt care..

Former Teacher: Next they’ll be telling us something like ‘Know what? We need to drill for oil right here in the good ol’ USA. Its good for jobs!

Me: I would have thought that someone who is presumably invested and interested in technology would know a little something about the tech surrounding these subjects.

Guess not.

1. Obama said he would begin funding research into nuclear energy during his campaign, so this isn’t a surprise to anyone that half-way paid attention during the campaign.

2. There are three main reasons why we haven’t explored nuclear energy since the 70s: A. It’s not all that efficient. The power needed to produce a nuclear reaction, which then in turn heats up water, is an enormous amount. The energy derived from the boiling water barely offsets the power needed to create the nuclear reaction. It’s only in the past few years that technology has made nuclear reactors more efficient. B. During the 80s, Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl were still fresh in our minds, scaring us away from Nuclear power. Bush never pursued nuclear because the Bush family has been in bed with the Saudis for at least 30 years, and a nuclear program would cut into the bottom line of Royal Saudi Family.

3. Nuclear power plants take long time to build. It takes at least 10 years to build one, and if current projections hold true, that’s time wasted that we do not have. Also, nuclear power plants are centralized, which anyone who’s ever had a hard drive crash knows, is a bad thing, indeed. It’s safer, in many aspects, to have a decentralized grid. It’s also more energy efficient.

4. I can’t imagine why a well-informed person would advocate more drilling, unless of course that person is simply following a party line. Again, for someone interested in technology, the fact that we’re so reliant on the internal combustion engine and its derivates is embarrassing. The technology for our cars is almost 150 years old. That is utterly pathetic. The only reason for the stagnation of technology is money–vast sums of money acquired by the oil compaines, car manufactuers, and politicians. If a politican is promoting the idea of additional drilling it’s because he or she is benefitting financially from the oil companies.

It boggles the mind why this is even a political issue. We need to be the best there is at what we do, and right now, the way we produce energy is abysmal. But I guess chants of “Drill Baby Drill” are more compelling than facts and data. Better to look cute and make money than to do what’s efficient and logical.

Former Teacher: Hmm…. I guess no one has told the French how dangerous their nuke plants are. As someone who is presumably invested and interested in technology, I note that the French rely almost entirely on their nuclear power plants. Instead of spending zillions on research, maybe we should simply buy the needed technology from the them.

Me: I’d be fine with that. If you notice, I never mentioned anything about their safety. I only mentioned that after the accidents experienced previously, we, as a nation, were a bit gun-shy about nuclear energy.

Former Teacher: Or better yet, maybe ignorant, ill-informed fools like me that only know what they hear from right-wing talk show hosts should just shut up and let people that only know what they hear from left-wing media sources do all the talking.

Me: This shouldn’t be a left-wing or right-wing issue. And I never resorted to ad hominem; although, I do think that talk show hosts, on both sides of the spectrum, are directly and indirectly damaging our country for ratings and money.

One of his Facebook friends: See I didnt vote for Obama any ways so it doesnt help me much…

Another one of his Facebook friends: There ought to be a less dangerous, more effective way to get energy !!

Me: For a engaging argument on the pros and cons of nuclear energy see : http://www.reddit.com/r/environment/comments/b3535/im_pronuclear_because_these_are_the_only/

Former Teacher: Unfortunately, what Prez BO is proposing has very little more behind it than politics.

Me: I totally agree. It’s a ploy to try to get the neo-cons to sign off on an energy bill. The mistake Obama is making is assuming the neo-cons would in any way be willing to work with him. They won’t, and they never will because party is more important to the neo-cons than the state of our country.

Unfortunately, Obama’s past as a community organizer and an academic are actually hurting him. He’s engaging the neo-cons as if logical discourse means anything to them. It doesn’t. He should ram this stuff through while he has the political power, but instead, he’s treating them like rational adults, which means nothing is getting done.

Former Teacher: I have to admit at this point that I’ve been deliberately baiting you, Mark, to get an idea of just how far left your social and political persuasions lie. It’s only fair then that I reciprocate. My political and social beliefs in most areas are very conservative, especially on economic issues. I want the government to do what the Constitution specifically allows/instructs it to do and, after that, stay the heck out of everything else.

I believe firmly that our country is in the hands of a rogue government that is dangerous and is interested only in advancing its leftist-socialist agenda and in solidifying its power base. I am also firmly convinced that the main-stream media is its willing partner, patsy, and accomplice.
It appears, Mark, that I have little to share with you in the arena of ideas that we could any semblance of agreement on. Apparently, the reverse is true as well.

Me: I think you’re making too bold of an assumption about how “left” I actually am. I’m actually greatly upset the GOP has been hijacked by the looniest bunch of people in our country. We need rational discourse on policy and not catchphrases meant to get airtime on MSNBC and FOXnews.

And I’m talking less to you than to the students you’ve added as friends. To be quite honest, I couldn’t care less about what you believe, but in the small town of Aquilla, you’re an authority figure. Those students need to know that your point of view is a radical, and exclusionary one. They need to hear the opposing viewpoint.

Former Teacher: Let us agree to have no further discussions between us two about social or political issues. If I understand you correctly, that means we will have very little at all to say to each other henceforth. Goodbye. Good luck.

So finally, after all that, he simply deleted the post and defriended me. Luckily, I had a feeling he would do that, so I made sure to save transcripts.

I want to reemphasize that I don’t give a shit what that guy thinks. At the end, he ended up admitting to buying into conspiracy theories, and I know that there’s no reason to even engage a fanatic in rational discourse. It just grinds my gears that he was so cowardly and insecure about his own rhetorical position that he immediately deleted the post.

What an absolute fucking coward.

So I was trying to think of something to write about the economy when I came across this article . I immediately archived my economy draft because this story is much, much more interesting.

A Florida teenager was recently suspended from riding the school bus because he farted to make his bus-mates laugh, and his fart, according to the bus driver, “creat[ed] a stench so bad that it was difficult to breathe.”

The article goes on to say that farting is not explicitly listed as inappropriate behavior, but that “disturbances” on the bus are suspension-worthy offenses. I can’t even imagine what that kid had to eat to achieve that level of fart-win.

This story made me think of an incident I witnessed in my High School. Big surprise, I know.

We used to relentlessly terrorize our chemistry teacher, Mr. Oliver. Terrorizing Mr. Oliver wasn’t a past-time–it was a competitive sport. Mr. Oliver was an older gentleman, and he was a bit of an odd duck. He would get insanely upset if a student called him “dude,” which, of course, prompted us to call him “dude” whenever the opportunity arose. On one occasion, one of my friends wrote “dude” in huge, capital letters on the chalk board, and then pulled down a map so the word was obscured. Mr. Oliver came in, asked why the map was pulled down, and then rolled it up revealing the gigantic “dude” on the board. It was like a curtain at a theater rising to reveal a magnificent set design. He just stared at it, unbelieving, for what seemed like forever.

One day another friend of mine, Paul, asked us if we dared him to go up and fart directly on Mr. Oliver. Of course we said yes, and Paul walked up to Mr. Oliver’s desk with a worksheet to “ask” him a question. Paul kept sneaking glances up at us as he presumably cropdusted the clueless Mr. Oliver’s workspace.

When Paul got back to our desk, it was high-fives and congratulations all around. Another guy in the class, Roy–who was in fact not my friend but a clingy dickhead who merely sat next to us to absorb and bask in our awesomeness–said he wanted to give it a go. Even though we thought he was a clingy dickhead, we encouraged Roy to spray Mr. Oliver as best he could.

Roy walked up to Mr. Oliver, who was still sitting at his desk, and without pretense, without even pretending to be up there for any legitimate reason, Roy positioned his ass mere inches from Mr. Oliver’s shoulder, looked over at us, clinched his face up in a grunt, balled his hands into fists as he squeezed, and proceeded to rip the loudest, nastiest fart I had ever heard. You could almost see Mr. Oliver’s hair waving in the breeze.

It was truly a beautiful thing to behold.

Mr. Oliver exploded in fury and drug Roy out of the room. And despite the fact that we thought Roy was a complete dimwit, that day, as he blew Mr. Oliver the most bodacious butt-kiss I had ever heard, Roy became our hero.

As a Texas citizen, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the citizens of Alaska.

In Texas, we’ve got Matthew McConaughey and the McConaughey Clan, which includes such esteemed citizens as Rooster and Miller Lyte McConaughey. Texas is also the birthplace of Jessica Simpson, and unfortunately, I have to assume that it was here, in the Lone Star State, where she learned that chickens are underwater-dwelling creatures.

Mount Carmel, Texas, was home to David Koresh and his merry band of party-goers. What wonderful Texas representatives those folks were.

The Texas Congress showed the world how to vote with integrity.

It was the Houston Police dept. that invaded a home because of an erroneous “weapons disturbance.” In reality, the apartment belonged to a gay man who just happened to be having sex with his partner when the police unlawfully entered his home. Thankfully, the police apologized profusely to the law-abiding couple for barging in on their love-making. Just kidding. They arrested the filthy, filthy sodomites and took them to jail, just like any good Texan would do.

Despite the fact that Barack Obama has been a member of a Chicago Presbyterian Church for nearly twenty years, 1 in 4 Texas citizens still believes he is in fact a Muslim. We can sniff out those damned dirty Muslims here in Texas.

Baylor University, one of the most prestigious private colleges in Texas, offers a post-graduate degree in Creationism.

Yes, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Alaska because despite Texas’s reputation as the land of idiocracy and general douchiness, the spotlight has been moved to shine on that wonderful state north of Canada.

Thank you, my friends, for making us Texans look a little better in comparison.

P.S. I have some friends in Florida that would like to send their thanks as well.

Preface: This post works best if you play Lynyrd Skynrd’s “Simple Kind of Man” while you’re reading it.

There’s been a lot of talk during the silly-season of this election about “small town values,” but no one really ever stops to define what the hell those values are (probably because the folks who are extolling those values only ever stop in “small towns” to take a piss or give a stump speech). They simply use the term in nebulous, general terms in such a way that confuses me. Fortunately for you, my good reader, I think I might be able to help out.

First, let me list my credentials for discussing “small town values.” I was born and raised in Gholson, Texas, population 922 (as of the 2000 census). Gholson encompasses an area 11.7 square miles northwest of Waco, and ten percent of that area is occupied by my family’s farm. 11% percent of the population is well below the poverty line, but in reality, I’m guessing that figure is probably much higher because a lot of the really poor people don’t file tax returns and would most likely shoot the census man. I lived there until I was 26, so I think I’m pretty qualified to discuss “small town values.”

So what’s it like in a town like Gholson?

Well, I learned to drive while I was still in grammar school. I could double-clutch and speed-shift a standard transmission before city kids even dreamed of enrolling in driver’s ed. Every once in a while you’ll see someone riding a horse on the road…more often you’ll see some jackass kid on a four-wheeler running sixty miles an hour on a one lane road. It’s also a pretty common sight to see a tractor creeping along a road with a convoy of cars waiting to pass.

There is no police department. If you have a problem, you basically have two options: a) Call the Sheriff and wait an hour for a deputy to show up; b) Take care of the problem your damn self. The same pretty much goes for ambulances, although EMS will usually show up in under an hour. We do have an extremely competent volunteer fire department, but a word of warning: Don’t let your house catch on fire after eight PM on Friday or Saturday night. Oh, the guys will show up and put out the fire, but I won’t guarantee that all of them will be sober. In fact, you’ll probably have a few guys who sit around after the fire is out to finish their party that you so rudely interrupted with your emergency.

The scarcity of the police is one of the reasons that people in Gholson will always be pro-gun, and truthfully, I can’t say I blame them. Another reason for the pro-gun stance are the animals–skunks, armadillos, bobcats, feral dogs, snakes, grackles–there is no animal control to take care of these things. If any of these animals becomes a pest your best recourse is a 12-gauge shotgun (Before anyone sends me hatemail about shooting any of these animals, try imagining a skunk that has burrowed under the porch of your house. A day or two of that, and I double-guarantee you’ll be standing outside in your underwear at midnight, blindly blasting under the porch just praying for a direct hit).

The other reason guns are popular? A skewed view of violence in our society. Most of these folks get their news from the local affiliate newscast at ten, and as study after study has shown, those type of people are far more likely to overestimate the level of violence in our society. And despite the size of the place, there is actually less of a feeling of community in Gholson than there is in the city. Sounds counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? Here’s why: Neighbors in Gholson are usually separated by a good deal of land, and as such, people in small towns are not used to dealing with other people in close proximity. Consequently, they don’t have the same skill-set of negotiation and compromise that city-folk must have as a survival technique. “What do you mean the Carpenter’s boy drove his pickup on our land? I see him do it again and I’m shooting the tires right off his truck!”

Currently, Gholson has a very good school. The superintendent, Pat McFerrin, deserves major credit for turning Gholson ISD around. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the school during my tenure. Also, Ghoslon only goes up to grade eight. After that, a student either goes to West ISD or Aquilla ISD. While Gholson ISD is an exemplary elementary school, Aquilla ISD is almost like its evil doppelganger. The quality of education at Aquilla is awful.

According to the 2000 census, only 74% of the population of Gholson has a high school diploma, and sadly, only 8.8 percent of the population has a bachelor’s or higher. 74% sounds, well horrible, but at least most people have a high school diploma, right? Well, maybe. Of course, some of them could have gotten that diploma from Aquilla, which might actually be slightly worse than not having one at all.

Now, as any decently intelligent person will concede, formal education does not directly correlate into intelligence, and here’s why I think “small town value” voters are antagonistic towards education. The people there aren’t dumb, and the one thing they certainly don’t like is pity. The second thing they most certainly do not like is condescension. If you sat a “small town values” voter down and showed them why they are voting against their economic interests, I think most of them would get it. But they don’t like politicians or pundits acting like they’re dumb or pretending to take care of them, and I have a feeling that many of them vote against their interests out of pure spite.

Second, and this one is purely speculative on my part, I think they also resent people who genuinely are more intelligent than they are. Since they’ve never really been intellectually challenged and pushed by an obvious intellectual superior, an experience which normally only occurs in an academic setting at the collegiate level, they mistakenly think that all intellectual superiors are making fun of them.

Racism. I can’t even describe how bad it is. This one depresses me so much that I’m not even going to expound upon it; suffice to say that in Aquilla, there is still a proud chapter of the KKK.

This one may surprise a lot of people, but one of the “small town values” that few people rarely ever mention is the value placed on drugs. Jesus, there are a lot of drugs in Gholson. And I’m not really even counting pot. Meth. Coke. Crack. Lots of huffers. I can’t stress this one enough: There are a shit-ton of drugs in small towns.

And people in small towns drink a helluva lot. In fact, for high school kids, drinking and driving isn’t that big of a deal (sorry mom). It’s not that big of a deal for the older folks either. Pretty much everyone I know will drive around the “backroads” and drink. And why not? On many of the roads you’ll never pass a car, and if you get into a wreck the only potential casualty will be a barbed wire fence or an oak tree. Both of which will do more damage to the drunk driver than the other way around. Matter of fact, I’d say that most “small town values” voters drink and drive far more often than any other demographic. During the weekend in Gholson, Texas, drinking and driving is considered a viable form of entertainment.

Small town religion–I’m going to tread lightly here because I have such a raw, unadulterated hatred for bible-thumping hypocrites that every other word in this section will simply be “rotten motherfuckers” if I’m not careful. Religion in small towns equals the King James version of the bible. I’d also say they practice “Christianity” less than they practice “Paulianity.” They also have no sense of historicity of the Bible, and they simply don’t understand how Christianity has been influenced by other religions and vice versa. Also, the folks the drunkest on Saturday night will most likely be the ones screaming about the sins of drinking and fornicating on Sunday morning. That’s all I’ll say about that.

But speaking of fornicating, there’s a lot of incestuous screwing going on in small towns, and the “small town values” folks start screwing at a young age. Look, aside from drinking and screwing there just isn’t a lot to do. Well, okay, fist fighting. So there’s three things to do.

The one thing I learned about living in Ghoslon is that “small town values” people are just like people anywhere: a few winners, a whole lot of losers. So when you hear a politician say something about “small town values,” I hope that instead of a fucking Norman Rockwell painting you think of a meth-head high school dropout, who has on more than one occasion punched someone in the face while in a gas station simply because he was bored. Because statistically, you’re more likely to encounter the latter instead of the former when searching for “small town values.”

I have something I’d like to admit: I was a very poor student.

Not in college, mind you, but as a high school student, I was atrocious. I was disruptive in classes, I rarely turned in homework on time, and even worse, I encouraged my classmates to act up as well. My role as the ring-leader of disruptions was probably more insidious than my actual behavior because I tended to encourage otherwise attentive students into becoming raving anarchists.

In fact, I’ve pretty much stopped telling stories about my high school experience because when I try to relate one of my tales I get the distinct impression that people think I’m lying. My friend Tank, whom also attended the same high school, says he’s also stopped telling stories for the same reason.

I swear that everything that follows is completely true.

One time I got a math teacher fired because I convinced him it would be a good idea to let us watch “Basic Instinct” during class time. We actually spanned the viewing into two days because we couldn’t see the whole movie during one fifty minute class, but unfortunately for us, by the second day the word had spread so insidiously that we had students from other classes trying to sneak into our room to watch the movie. The principal walked into the room to investigate all the commotion just as Sharon Stone was dry-humping the leg of her lesbian friend on the dance floor. Rumor had it that I was the student who brought the tape to school, but since no one could prove it, I avoided any kind of punishment.

During my senior year the school had trouble deciding what to do with the male high school students that didn’t want to play football. There was around ten of us, and no one wanted the job of supervising us for last period, which was when the other guys held practice. The year before, the AG teacher had been in charge of keeping an eye on us “roaches,” as we were so lovingly dubbed by the faculty, but he refused to have anything to do with us the next year. So instead of actually hiring a teacher, the principal simply allowed us to hang out in the woods at the far end of the football field. He never came right out and said it, but we pretty much understood that as long as we didn’t cause any trouble so severe that he had to deal with us we could do pretty much whatever the hell we wanted.

So we would relax in the shade, drink sodas, smoke cigarettes, and yell insults at the football players. We thought they were pretty dumb for willingly running around in the 110 degree Texas sun in football gear. Occasionally the football players would run laps around the field, and when they got too close to our woods we would try to see if we could hit them in the helmet with rocks.

During pep rallies, the students would sit in groups according to their grade-level. Well, all of the students except for us Roaches. We sat in a section by ourselves. At the end of each pep rally, the cheerleaders would go to each section in turn and ask them if they had “spirit,” whatever the hell that meant. Accordingly, each section would reply in unison “We’ve got spirit, yes we do! We’ve got spirit, how ’bout you?”. Then the cheerleaders would go to a different section and repeat the whole thing. The whole point was to see which section had the most “spirit,” and which ever section yelled the loudest would win the “Spirit Stick” for that week. The Spirit Stick was supposed to be an honor to win, but I had a hard time conjuring up any reverence for a plastic cougar hot-glued to the top of a piece of PVC pipe. I did, however, find it pretty funny that everyone else went ape-shit for the stupid thing.

Instead of the typical “We’ve got spirit” nonsense, us Roaches would yell, “R-O-C-H-E-S, We’re the Roaches and we’re the BEST!” And yes, I know we misspelled “Roaches.” And week after week we never won the damn Spirit Stick, despite the fact that we were consistently the loudest, and thus, according to the cheerleaders’ own metric, proving we had the most spirit.

And then one day the cheerleaders let us win. I grabbed the Spirit Stick triumphantly. I waved it around like a mad-man.

And then I promptly ran out the door, got in my truck, drove home, stealing the Spirit Stick.

I didn’t think anyone had seen me hijack the Spirit Stick, and even if they did, I planned on simply denying I stole it. The cheerleaders asked me to bring it back. I told them I didn’t have it. They said they only had the one stick, they had spent hours making it, and they had to have it back. I told them I didn’t have it. At the next pep rally, we did not find out who had the most “spirit” because we had no Spirit Stick. Two pep rallies passed, and I thought they had forgotten about the whole thing and I would get to keep the Spirit Stick.

Then one day, the cheerleader sponsor asked to see me. She told me they wanted their stick back. I told her I didn’t have it. Then she showed me these pictures:

In my post-Spirit Stick exuberance I had apparently failed to recall that I had posed for photographs with the Spirit Stick. I brought the Spirit Stick back the next day. The Roaches never won another Spirit competition.

During my Sophomore year, several of us Roaches opted to act as cheerleaders during the Powder Puff football game. By the end of the game we had broken one guy’s arm by throwing him up in the air for a somersault that we had not, in fact, practiced, and we acted so vulgar in our cheerleading uniforms that we were told we could never, EVER participate in Powder Puff football again. Here I am in my outfit:

Aren’t I ravishing?

See. I bet you think I’m making all this up, don’t you? Well, I’m not. That’s partially why I included the yearbook photos for this post, despite the inherent embarrassment I feel towards them. Where did all this debauchery take place, you ask? In the little farming community of Aquilla, Texas, pop. 138. We had 168 students, k-12 while I was attending. In my graduating class there were eleven people. I was…well, something of an anomaly in the school and the community as a whole.

And no matter how many years pass, I sometimes still wish I had that Spirit Stick.

I fucking hate Wal-Mart.

But not for the reasons you might think. I could care less that they run independent businesses out of town. It doesn’t bother me that they are probably single-handedly responsible for the demise of many American-based manufacturers. Their anti-Union policies bore me, and their support of China puts me to sleep.

Why do I hate them? Well, their total and complete lack of customer service pisses me off to no end. Tell me, what good are thirty lanes of cash registers if there are never more than five of the damn things open at a time? Also, do you think that Wal-Mart employees know that they might, at some point, have to interact with a customer?

Leigh also hates Wal-Mart, but not for the same reason. She hates it because of the rotten mood going to Wal-Mart engenders in me. On one occasion, we went to Wal-Mart for a handful of items. We went in, got our stuff, and were ready to go in under five minutes. When we got the the front of the store there were four, FOUR, cash registers open and each one had a line with no less than ten people. And each person looked like they were stocking up for a hurricane. Without saying a word I threw our items in the floor, including milk and bread, and walked out the door. We stayed away from Wal-Mart for several months after that little incident.

On Sunday we made another sojourn into the heart of darkness. I wanted to share the experience with my readers, but I think that instead of ranting like a madman I’ll relate the incident–and yes, it was an incident–in the form of a play.


INT. WAL-MART GARDEN CENTER. SUNDAY AFTERNOON.

MARK and LEIGH stand impatiently in line. There are eight to ten people in line and only one cashier working. The FEMALE CASHIER is joking with a MALE EMPLOYEE who is standing by the bagging area of the cashwrap. The MALE EMPLOYEE appears to be on the clock but is not engaged in any other activity other than joking with the FEMALE CASHIER. MARK and LEIGH movie up to the register, and without a greeting the FEMALE CASHIER begins to scan their items.

I know, right? But I so damn tired from last night. Last place I wanna be is here.

Yeah girl, I know whatcha mean.

Why don’t you take over for me then? You can scan these people awhile.

Hell no, girl. All the customers today are in a bad mood. Ain’t no way I wanna mess with them.

Yeah. And you know what? Standing up here at the cashwrap, screwing around and talking about the customers’ bad moods, is sure to put them in a much better mood. Don’tcha think?

FEMALE CASHIER stops scanning. MALE EMPLOYEE stares angrily at MARK. LEIGH did not hear the exchange but looks curiously at MARK. The MALE EMPLOYEE storms off and the FEMALE CASHIER hands MARK the receipt.

Don’t pay him no attention. Thank you.

MARK and LEIGH begin to leave via the GARDEN CENTER exit.

Why was that guy so mad at you? What the fuck did you say to him?

END SCENE.

I’m so disgusted by what I’ve just read that a post will actually have to wait until this evening. If I were to write the post now, it would be nothing but pure, unadulterated, vitriolic hate.

Texas House Bill 3678 .

In 1969, a twenty-eight year old Bobby Sessions met a young woman named Linda Brotherton. They had both just come out of rocky marriages, and Linda quickly fell in love with Bobby, who was flirtatious and brass–everything that her former husband hadn’t been. Linda’s previous marriage had been violent, and she was happy to be around Bobby, who apparently doted on her and her three year old daughter, Shelley.

Linda and Bobby married in Houston, Texas, and Bobby began working in the oil industry. He was ambitious and motivated, and within several years Bobby found himself in Manhattan working as the vice president of Amerada Hess. The Sessions family lived in New Jersey and Bobby commuted into Manhattan every day. After several years he took a job in Houston as an oil-trader, a job that would earn Bobby Sessions millions of dollars. At thirty-eight Bobby Sessions had made enough money to move back to his hometown of Corsicana, Texas and retire.

Unbeknownst to Linda, Bobby began molesting his thirteen year old step-daughter when they were still living in Houston. At first Bobby claimed to Shelley that it was a way for them to become closer, and because Shelley was physically afraid of her step-father, she didn’t tell anyone. The attacks from her step-father only increased after the family moved to Corsicana, and Bobby became more and more possessive of his step-daughter. As Bobby became more overtly manipulative of Shelley, Linda withdrew from the family totally, presumably as a way to hide herself from Bobby’s disgustingly brazen behavior.

I won’t summarize the whole book, but the life of Shelley Sessions is disturbing and disgusting. As Shelley gets older and begins to realize the hellishness of her life, she attempts to get help, but Bobby’s position in the rural community made it difficult for her to find someone willing to take on the local millionaire. Thankfully, there was one exception. The pastor of a local church, Henry Edgington, risked his life to help the young Shelley Sessions. Edgington was the first person Shelley told about her father, the pederast. In the book Dark Obsession, Shelley reminisces about Edgington, “Everybody loved Henry. He was, like, best friend to everybody. And, you know, he was always there. We all used to hang out with him. So he seemed like the person to tell.”

The excerpt that follows occurs immediately after Shelley finally opens up to Henry Edgington about the tragedy that was her life:

“Don’t worry Shelley,” [Edgington] said. “Nobody’s going to touch you again.”

Henry ushered Shelley and Jackie into his living room. Shelley felt safe, if not completely comfortable. Part of her was even wondering why she hadn’t done this sooner.

Edgington didn’t condemn her or call her a slut. Though she trusted him, Shelley fully expected a man of the cloth to be disgusted by her “confession.” When he wasn’t, she felt washed by a soothing wave.

“All of a sudden I could see all this relief on her,” recalled Edgington. “It was finally out in the open and she knew something was going to be done about it and she was going to get out of this stupid mess…Now that he knew the truth, Edgington wasn’t going to take any chances in getting Shelley to Corsicana. It was a straight ten-mile drive, and it went by [Bobby Sessions'] ranch. And he was worried that Bobby might now be desperate enough to do something rash.

He called his friends on the Kerens and Powell police departments and told them not to worry if they saw him speeding by–he was taking Shelley Sessions to Corsicana [to the police dept.].

Edgington now motored a little four-wheel gem out of his garage: a 1923 T-Bucket Roadster with an incongruous throaty idle that seemed to rattle the entire machine, and as Edgington described it, “this big beautiful chrome Chevrolet engine, the best thing that could have happened to a Ford.” The pastor was a car buff–especially hot rods. “We were afraid that Bob was going to be waiting for us,” he recalled, “so I wanted to use the Roadster. It had a 327 built-up engine with almost 400 horse-power, and I could blow anything off the road. These Roadsters will do 160.”

Edgington ended up getting Shelley to Corsicana safely, and he eventually helped her extricate herself from the claws of Bobby Sessions.

The first time I heard about this story wasn’t in a bookstore or via a book review. No, the first time I heard this story was from Henry’s own mouth. He had been the pastor of the Church of Christ in West, Texas, for several years, and I was good friend with his oldest son, Chris. I was spending the night with Chris one weekend, and while we where playing the Nintendo in his room he began to tell me this tale. We were in eighth grade, and I thought he was having me on. Since I kept telling him he was full of shit, Chris finally called his dad into the room and asked him to tell me the story of Shelley Sessions. Henry really didn’t want to, but he reluctantly told me an abbreviated version of the story.

After I got home that weekend I immediately called Waldenbooks and ordered the book. After I read it I couldn’t believe that the same guy I saw at least twice a week was an honest-to-goodness hero. I already thought the world of Henry, but after I read the book I was totally amazed by the guy.

I went through some pretty tough times after high school, and on several occasions I sought out Henry to help get me through those times. He was always there for me when I needed him, despite going through some rough patches with his own family.

So it pained me more than I can possibly explain when I found out that on September 8th, Waco police arrested Henry Edgington for possession of child pornography. Henry was an assistant pastor at the Elm Mott Church of Christ, a position which he resigned from immediately before his arrest. Henry told the police that he was researching pornographic sites in an attempt to shut them down.

The parishioners at the Elm Mott Church of Christ are standing behind Henry. They claim he told them of his investigation and they supported him in it.

I hope with all my heart Henry actually thought he was doing a good thing. A little part of me will simply shrivel up and die if Henry isn’t as heroic as I’ve always thought him to be.

During my high school years I worked several seasons at a local haunted house. Through the month of October I worked every weekend and then the last week of the month we were open every night. I enjoyed the job, but more than scaring people I really enjoyed all the fucking crazies interesting people that I had the opportunity to meet.

We had one guy who had lost his leg in an accident and used a prosthetic to get around. When he had his jeans on you couldn’t even tell, so good was he at walking on that prosthetic. He would even take part in a little touch football before work time. It’s embarrassing to get schooled in football by a one-legged man. When it came time to work he unstrapped his good prosthetic and exchanged it for an old, shabby one. In the haunted house he sat on a stretcher and used an axe to hack away at his “leg,” all the while screaming like a lunatic. He was a hoot.

One guy liked to hide a little tape recorder in his room and record people’s screams. He would play his favorites back for you at the end of the night and give you play-by-play commentary on the screamers.

I remember a night when I began to notice a smoky smell accompanying the “smoke” in the haunted house. Machine-made smoke should not smell like actual smoke, you understand. Machine-made smoke is noxious and chemical smelling and sticks to your contacts; actual smoke smells like, well, it smells like smoke. So I got nervous and sent word that I thought we had a problem. Turns out the guy manning the smoke machine fell asleep with his foot on the mechanism and the smoke machine caught on fire. Ironic, no?

Here’s a news piece on the Museum of Horrors that I found on YouTube. This was produced long after I had worked there. Near the 1:40 mark you’ll see a room with glowing dots. That was my room. I wore a black jumpsuit and mask outfitted with the same dots on the wall, thereby making me nearly invisible unless I moved. I was a good Dotman. The guy in the video sucks.

Anyway…the fellow that owned the Museum of Horrors, John Anderson, was a pretty weird guy. Not weird as in satanic or occultish, but weird as in he liked to bang crack-head hookers on Faulkner lane and then joke about it. With his wife in the next room. And he expected you to laugh right along with him. And he smelled a bit like rancid hamburgers.

But anyway, I got to scare the shit out of people, so I put up with him.

Turns out in addition to banging crackheads John also likes to talk shit online. Unfortunately, John Anderson insulted the wrong guy. According to this Waco Tribune-Herald article, John called some dude a “nerd” on a message board. Apparently the fellow didn’t take kindly to being called a nerd, so he drove from Virginia to Waco, Texas, and burned John Anderson’s house down.

Real life scary is always scarier than make-believe scary. I talk shit online constantly. Not a day goes by that I don’t intentionally antagonize someone online. Guess I need to put up smoke detectors.