Turncoats ....

So, the Confederate battle flag is coming down in South Carolina. It can no longer even fly over the cemeteries where Confederate dead are buried or over the battlefields where they fought and died. Even the United States Congress has gotten involved, cravenly kowtowing to the politically correct mob mentality that is forcing white guilt upon our society with threats of mob violence. We are told that we must be ashamed of our ancestors.

I do have a civil war veteran ancestor that I am ashamed of. He was a Yankee. I wouldn't be ashamed of him if he, a southerner by birth, had fought for the north for reasons of conscience. But he didn't. I have verified this family story from more than one source now and every time I hear it I am sickened.

It would seem that this shameful ancestor of mine realized that he was going to have to declare a side in the war. He sat down and talked it over with his wife. They concluded that the north was going to win, that things would go bad for southerners when they lost and that financial gain would be realized by those who had chosen the winning side.

So, my detested ancestor left his home and traveled to northern occupied territory where he enlisted in the Union army.  He was not a front line soldier like my Confederate ancestors. He was assigned to a military government unit that policed captured southern cities. He literally forced Yankee rule upon his own people at the point of a gun. 

I could never understand why this branch of my family was proud of this man or why they would repeat the story of his self serving decision. He was always presented by that branch of the family as a smart businessman who knew how to pick a winner.

There is no shame attached to fighting for a losing cause if you fought with honor.  Most Confederate soldiers owned no slaves nor wanted any.  They fought because their homeland had been invaded.  They fought to protect their homes and families.  They fought out of a sense of community and brotherhood. They fought valiantly and died bravely.  There is no reason to be ashamed of these men.

But, there is a reason to be ashamed of people like my detested ancestor and those like him today who are ready to throw heritage and honor under the bus to momentarily appease a screaming mob intent upon destroying the entire American culture.  I have nothing but disgust for these people.  

Heroin In Our Neighborhood

We've endured a lot in this neighborhood.  Prostitution, theft, vandalism, murders, child sex offenders, the mentally ill and of course, meth.  But, last week brought us a new danger .... heroin.

Around lunch time a few days ago, Sheila noticed a fire engine parked in front of a neighbor's house.  Within moments, EMSA followed.  The lady of the house came out in tears and stood in our front lawn as events proceeded.

They had found their young adult daughter slumped over a pile of laundry.  Her face was blue, she wasn't breathing and there was a syringe nearby.  After they got the girl breathing again, a quick search revealed a small quantity of black tar heroin, syringes, a spoon and a lighter. Pure heroin is usually adulterate or "cut" in drug terms to reduce its deadly strength and increase profits.  In this case, the drug appeared to be almost completely pure and showed no sign of the grainy or playdoh texture consistent with being cut with lactose or baby formula.  It is a good bet that this girl was dealing close to the source and either didn't know what she had or somebody wanted her dead because the heroin she shot into her vein was obviously extremely powerful.

The police took forever to respond and didn't make a report or an arrest when they finally did arrive since they didn't see the drugs in the young woman's possession.  The timing of their arrival also conveniently assured there would be no bothersome paperwork or court appearances over one nearly OD'd hype.  In law enforcement eyes, it was just another throw away case involving a throw away person not worth the time and attention of the system.

Black tar heroin is produced in Mexico and Latin America and is distributed by the drug cartels. These are the same people who line overpasses with severed heads and kill cops that cannot be bribed on both sides of the border. Black tar heroin is a terrible drug that is almost instantly addictive and usually ends in the death of the user either by overdose, complications such as necrotizing conditions of the skin and underlying tissue, organ failure or needle transmissible diseases such as HIV and hepatitis.  Heroin is the death knell for a drug user, the end of the pharmaceutical line that often begins with marijuana and moves on through pills and meth.  Heroin is the last stop and heroin addicts are truly the living dead.

But, heroin is also the death knell for a neighborhood.  Where you find heroin you find heroin

dealers.  Somewhere in our neighborhood, some of the most dangerous people on earth are making very good money selling slow death in little plastic bags.  And, they are the type of people who will kill anyone that gets in their way.

We have a lot of new people in the neighborhood.  Some of them are Mexicans.  Many if not most are here illegally.  Most are nice people.  But, without an immigration policy to find out who is actually entering the country, the very social problems the nice folks  fled in Mexico will follow them here and it won't be long before our cities are as dangerous and corrupt as theirs.

The Hooker

On my way to lunch, I noticed a hooker working the corner of Admiral and Sheridan.  She wasn't the typical Admiral hooker.  She was well dressed and well groomed.  The hookers that work Admiral Boulevard and Eleventh Street can usually be read like an open book. Addiction, mental illness or just a really tough, often abusive, home life are usually evident at a glance.  This gal had none of that.  She appeared far too normal to be hooking.

She attracted attention from a distance because she appeared to be nude.  But then on closer examination, she still attracted attention because she was actually a pretty good looking middle aged woman.  She wore a light tan, snug fitting, lightly patterned, silk sheath dress that started about halfway down her cleavage leaving her arms and shoulders bare and ended about halfway between her knees and her derriere showing off some pretty fair legs.  A pair of 50's style, open toed, mid heel slide sandals completed her outfit. That's all she wore apparently because the dress was tight enough and sheer enough that anything underneath would have shown.  She wore her dark frosted blonde hair in a stylish short cut and her makeup was good. Her figure was far from girlish but her curves were in all of the right places.

As I drove through the stoplight, I wondered what in the world drove that woman to that street corner on a weekday afternoon.  It's dangerous.  That corner is frequented by Mexicans looking for company.  The girls are frequently beaten and abused.  This woman, even if she decided to sell herself, could have easily worked a high class bar or one of the hotels in a better neighborhood. Older Johns sometimes look for or even prefer someone closer to their own age.

Maybe she was literally a desperate housewife, turning tricks to bring extra money into the house. Maybe she was stranded in one the local hotels and needed to make traveling money.  Maybe she had experienced a bad run of luck at one of the casinos.  Maybe she was into kinky sex.  Who knows?

There are as many stories on a city street as there are people but I'll bet her story would have been an interesting one.

Into the PC Mist With the Confederate Dead

On a quiet hillside in Eastern Oklahoma, in an ancient graveyard that is no longer open to the public, a strikingly white, marble, military tombstone stands out. It reads “Edward Kumpe, born June 1843 Co. A, 6 Ark. Infantry, CSA.” His name also appears on another more public memorial in Little Rock, Arkansas which reads:

To the Memory of the Capital Guards
Company A
Sixth Arkansas Infantry Cleburne's Division 1861 - 1865"
When his Division defended, no odds could break its lines, when it attacked, no numbers resisted it's onslaught."
General William J. Hardee

Edward Kumpe was my great grandfather. He was a Confederate soldier. I refuse to be ashamed of that fact. My great grandfather served his state and his neighbors honorably during a difficult time in American history. It would be serious mistake to assume that he was a racist because he served under the Stars and Bars. After he was captured and released, he voluntarily moved to the Indian Territory and became a full citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He married a Cherokee woman.

The modern assumption that all Confederates were racist is not historically accurate. While there is no doubt that some perhaps many Confederates were racist, the best and brightest minds of the CSA saw slavery in a different light. For example, in 1856, Robert E. Lee wrote to a friend: “There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race.” The deeply devout Stonewall Jackson committed civil disobedience before the South seceded by teaching blacks to read and write and by establishing regular Sunday Schools for blacks in Virginia near VMI where he was a professor. The “Stonewall of the West,” Arkansas General Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, shortly before his tragic death proposed “that in order to reinforce the Confederate armies slavery would have to be abolished in a “reasonable time” and blacks be recruited for military service on the promise of their freedom.”

Many Confederates were Christian gentlemen in a culture that suffered from a terrible social problem with no good solutions. It takes incredible historical naivete’ to believe that the Civil War was fought over slavery. It was fought over markets and raw materials. Then, as now, blacks were simply pawns in a much larger game motivated by the political self interest of others.

I fear that in the next few months and years the last vestiges of Southern culture will be consigned to the dark, bottomless pool of political correctness and the noble flag that so many of my wife and I’s ancestors served under will be remembered solely for its association with the modern criminal scum who have defiled it. Our nation will be far worse for it.

The McKinney Police Officer and Life In The Hood

Thursday, as I was finishing up at the range, I noticed three folks who did not possess the normal physical characteristics of the usual patrons. (You can't say fit the profile anymore, that's politically incorrect.)  The usual patrons there are normally law enforcement types of various stripes, military and former military and serious sport shooters.  People from the streets of that neighborhood don't usually come in more than once, not because they are treated badly, but rather because they are not comfortable with the obvious law enforcement presence.  This day, there was only one clerk and he was engaged at the counter, trying to help a mid twenties man with his pants half way down his ass showing way too much dirty boxer short to all onlookers. Two other "youths" were wandering around the gun cases. It looked like a set up for a smash and grab robbery.

I turned around for a second and when I turned back a youth in his early twenties, wearing banger clothes and a red baseball cap, had an AR-15 pointed in my direction with the laser sight activated. My first thought was that there was a robbery in progress. No adult in their right mind waves a gun around like that.  In the split second before I went for my weapon, I saw the display base attached to the AR-15 in his hands. The idiot had picked up a non functioning display unit from the counter and was waving it around like a "gangsta."

When I approached home after a lunch meeting the day before, a tall black teenager was walking right up the double yellow line of the street in front of my house. As my car approached, he did not move and gave me a stare that dared me do anything about it.  In my neighborhood, if you see somebody walking toward you in the middle of the street if you're not thinking "carjacking" you are terminally naive.

As I backed into my driveway, watching the young man amble away down the middle of street, my mind went back to a spring afternoon a few years ago.  I heard a commotion in my driveway and looked out to see a Tulsa Police Officer trying to subdue a black teenager.  The young man being arrested was suddenly being "assisted" by two of his associates.  The situation turned nasty quick. Within moments, a crowd of about thirty black teenagers formed a ring around the officer and the subjects, a typical ghetto "violent crowd escalation" in criminal justice jargon.  Just as I was stepping out the door with my sawed off twelve gauge to aid the officer, a pair of campus police officers from the high school across the street waded into the fray and helped the officer take the subject and get away safely.

A few weeks before that, there had been another series of incidents.  A gang of about thirty or more black girls had taken to crossing the street from the nearby high school and passing their lunch hour in my neighbor's front yard. Some of them even lounged on the front porch.  They were loud, aggressive and left a mess every day.  They threatened the homeowners young wife who tried to make them leave.  Eventually, that situation was handled by campus police but we lost a good neighbor.  His young stay at home wife had apparently had enough and they soon moved out.

Two of our dearest friends are getting ready to sell their lovely home of many years.  It is a beautiful home that they have worked hard on over the years.  And, it is in what was until recently thought to be a very good neighborhood.  They shouldn't have to move again at their age.  Unfortunately, a nearby apartment complex apparently went to Section 8 public housing and others nearby apparently followed suit.  Now, our friends frequently have to run a gauntlet of defiant, rude apartment denizens who just stand in the middle of the street not allowing others to pass without risking a confrontation. And, they are wandering away from their own common areas and even the parks to meander through the nearby single family residential neighborhoods, often congregating in the streets and always spreading concern wherever they go.  Our friends have simply had enough and are leaving the city altogether.

If the people complaining about the McKinney police officer were forced to live in my neighborhood for a few weeks they would have applauded the officer who tried to control the situation. If they ever had to work a shift as a cop trying to control a mob, they would have bought the officer a beer.

Life in the hood is different and different rules apply.  Unfortunately, the hood is now going mobile and invading "nice" places like private pools in McKinney, Texas and naive people from "good neighborhoods" who are not accustomed to seeing force applied to protect them may just have to get used to it if they are going to have any kind of quality of life in their neighborhood.

What Does A Veteran Look Like?

I recently watched a good hearted little movie called "Last Ounce of Courage."  It had a strong and relevant message.  But, it was also over done in places and frankly a little annoying to veterans in some ways.

Most veterans do not wear biker style vests festooned with patches and pins. They would be embarrassed to.  They did their job and now it's over.  They have moved on and don't need to wear parts of the uniform or symbols of their former service to prove anything to themselves or anyone else.

Nor do they wear tee-shirts with the name of their branch of service printed across their chest. Those are reserved for the kids still serving.  

They do not wave the flag gratuitously but display it proudly at proper times and places.They do not use the American flag as a dust cover for their Harley, a decoration in their den or a beach towel to soak up sun tan lotion. They respect it far too much for that and still follow the training they received in how to display, store and dispose of the flag with all of the dignity it deserves.

They do not salute out of uniform.  The salute is a military greeting of respect between warriors that is only exercised when in uniform.  Even active duty service members do not salute out of uniform.  They were trained to come to attention and put their hand or their hat over their hearts and they still follow that training out of respect for their brothers still in uniform.

So, what do these silent veterans look like? Father Dennis E. O'Brian, Chaplain U.S.M.C. said it better that I ever could:

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye.

Others may carry the evidence inside them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg - or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul's ally forged in the refinery of adversity.

Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem.

You can't tell a vet just by looking.

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel.

He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.

She - or he - is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang.

He is the POW who went away one person and came back another - or didn't come back AT ALL.

He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat - but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each other's backs.

He is the parade - riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand.

He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.

He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean's sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket - palsied now and aggravatingly slow - who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.

He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being - a person who offered some of his life's most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.

He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known.

 

Finally, A Unifying Theory of the Mysterious WalMart Closures .....

I just got back from the Walmart Neighborhood Market near our home. The long time employee cashier that checked me out was having a rough day.  She told me that since the Walmart at Admiral and Lewis had closed the character of their store had changed.  This got my attention since we were talking about my neighborhood.

She said that the last two weeks since the Admiral store closed had been difficult, observing that today was better than some days in that she had only been yelled at (translate that cussed out) by a customer once.  She continued that it could have been worse, recounting that last week, for the first time in the ten years that store had been open, one of their employees had been assaulted right there in the store.  The only ray of hope she could offer in that area was that next week two armed guards would be posted in the cashier areas near the door.

I asked her why the Admiral store had closed.  She was a fount of information.  First, it would seem that the 20 year lease on that store was up and profits were down, way down, almost non-existent. She alleged that the likely cause of the lack of profits was massive theft by both customers and employees hinting that at an ingrained culture of theft and dishonesty had developed in the store. Interestingly, she also said that there had been a waiting lessee for the store property, none other than the U.S. Department of Defense.

I don't know how much credibility to give all of this but I did find one unifying thread.  The online reviews of some of the stores closed used words like "ghetto" and "loud, obnoxious customers" and "dirty" and of course, "poor customer service and "long lines and no cashiers."  Those terms pretty well describe our experience with the Admiral store here in Tulsa.  There was regularly crime both in the store and in the parking lot.  The other customers were often at best annoying, sometimes scary and at worst threatening.  The store was always dirty and the employees for the most part left a lot to be desired.  My wife and I had taken to driving right past it on the expressway and traveling nearly fifteen miles to a store in the suburbs where the aisles were clean and the customers were better behaved.


But, there is one more theory that makes a whole lot of sense.  Nobody doubts that we are in for a long hot summer in black and mixed race neighborhoods, probably the worst since 1968. It could be worse than 1968 given the current explosive state of race relations in the U.S. under Barack Hussein Obama.

The pictures of rioters assaulting and looting the QuikTrip in Ferguson, Missouri are most likely burned into the consciousness of every senior executive in the U.S.  And, it that weren't enough, last nights video of a Baltimore CVS burning, surrounded by riot police could be the last nail in the coffin of many, many marginally profitable retail outlets in dangerous neighborhoods.

If I had a money losing store where there was the distinct possibility that it would be looted and burned this summer, I would close it too, not only to prevent the financial loss but also to protect my employees.  It would be a tough decision but it is better for all concerned that the store be closed and the employees lose their jobs rather than to risk being caught in a vicious race riot, particularly for those employees whose race is "wrong" for that neighborhood.

And that is probably the real reason that Walmart closed five stores.  It is entirely possible that other national chains may follow as well. And unfortunately, when that happens, the character of the nearby neighborhoods and retail community will changed for the worse, just like our nearby Walmart Neighborhood Market.