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.

What Is Thanksgiving?

Tomorrow, most Americans will eat too much, numb their minds watching football games, gain a couple of pounds and then call it a day.  That is the current American tradition.  The fact that this modern American tradition is antithetical to the spiritual and cultural roots of the holiday is probably unknown to most and would probably make no difference even if the religious significance of the holiday was known.

The first Thanksgiving was celebrated by religious fundamentalists who came to America to escape state persecution and Native Americans who took pity on a group of starving strangers and taught them how to survive in a strange land.  The original harvest time celebration was a sign of gratitude to God for their survival and to the Native Americans that God used to make it happen. There was joy but also piety, humility and gratitude, attributes sorely lacking in modern American society.

Thanksgiving became a national observance during the civil war when Abraham Lincoln proclaimed: "No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union."

The typical Thanksgiving feast was something I never experienced in my youth.  We were poor and my Mom didn't really believe in making much of a fuss over holidays.  We might have had a piece of ham, some pork chops or maybe a chicken.  But, there were no huge family celebrations and lavish meals.  Usually it was just the three of us over a modest meal in our humble little kitchen.  But, there was thankfulness at the table.  We had a modest but adequate little house with a roof that kept us dry and a gas stove that kept us warm.  The gas stove was a luxury that some of our neighbors did not share.  We all had clothes that fit us, kept us warm and were decent enough to go out in.  There was plenty of food, even if it wasn't fancy.  We missed no meals.  We had a reliable car.  Those were all things my former sharecropper mother and "living on the road" Okie father often didn't have in their youth and they felt blessed to have them.

In the latter years of Mom's life we reverted to that pattern.  For the last fifteen or so years of her life, Mom refused to leave her home for holiday celebrations.  So, most years, Sheila and I would cook a turkey dinner at our home in Tulsa, put it in a ice chest to keep it warm and drive to Gans to eat it with Mom. Again, just three of us in Mom's humble little kitchen.  Sometimes she was grateful, sometimes she may not have been.  Mom was ill and her moods were a part of that illness. But, we did it anyway because the Thanksgiving meal is about more than having a good time and eating a good meal.  It is about faith, family, duty and honor.  I couldn't have enjoyed myself anywhere knowing that Mom was sitting alone while we celebrated.

In these past few years since Mom's death, I have had a lot of time to think about what I want from the Thanksgiving celebration.  I have no stomach for sanitized, secular, multi-cultural interpretations of a tradition with such profound Christian roots and I have no patience with people who try to force their secular corruption of one of America's most sacred religious traditions upon me.  And, for that matter, I can do without the football games and massive parades of inflated symbols of spiritual and moral emptiness. I want to freely and openly thank God for the multiple blessings he has bestowed upon us in the past year and humbly beseech his continued blessings in the year to come.  That's it. Without that, the whole tradition is nothing more than an empty exercise in gluttony and excess that I can do without.

On Sheepdogs and Liberal, Anti-Gun *ssholes

This morning, I was following and commenting on a post made by a Facebook friend lamenting the horrific killing and mutilation of 43 people by Mexican drug cartels. My FB friend is a professor and has a few liberals who follow her FB page as well.  True to the liberal playbook rules of: (1) never let a tragedy go to waste when you can spin it toward your own agenda; (2) always show America in a bad light and; (3) always blame it on your political opposition, this excuse for a person proceeded to compare the NRA to the Mexican drug cartels, implying that they were as responsible for the last American school shooting as the cartels were for the massacre being discussed.  I have to be careful when I reply to people like this because I know that answering a fool in his folly can be in itself a fool's mission.

I grew up on a rural Oklahoma ranch.  Guns were a part of our life.  The typical law enforcement response to a trouble call was sometimes measured in hours not minutes. My father's pistol was never far from reach wherever we went and there was always a wicked old double barrel shotgun on hand in the house.   The only reason any of us in that neighborhood and time were able to own cattle or anything else of value was because folks who would be tempted to steal knew that if they were caught in the act they were liable to be shot on the spot. For that matter, the only reason we were able to live on isolated acreages without fear of personal violence was because of our guns.  Samuel Colt was dead right when he called the pistol the "great equalizer."

By the time I was five, my combat veteran father had given me a pop gun replica of a 1903 Springfield and taught me how to knock down tobacco cans with it on the living room floor. He taught me the shooting positions of a combat rifleman.  He also stood me tall and made me do the complete manual of arms with it.  In the process he taught me rudimentary gun safety. By the time I was eight or so, I had a Daisy lever action BB gun. With that weapon came new responsibilities like never do damage to property and never torment or kill small animals.  At twelve or so I had a bolt action .22 rifle.  With it came more rules like watch behind your target and don't shoot a living creature unless it's a varmint or you are going to eat it.

There was never a question whether or not I would serve in the military, only when and what branch. In the world my father raised me in, men of honor served when called.  All of my father's close friends were veterans.  All of my uncles on his side were veterans.  Men of my father's generation who didn't have a darned good reason for not serving were not respected. In short, in my father's generation men were expected to be "sheepdogs."  They were expected to serve the nation and their community if necessary and also be individually capable of protecting their families, themselves and their property.  They were expected to be men of honor, courage and discipline who could be trusted with a firearm.  That was the right given to them by Second Amendment and the duty imposed upon them by that right.


The men of my father's generation were a force to be reckoned with.  You were polite to these men and they were polite to you because both sides knew that, despite their usually genial manner and easy going attitude, they had long ago proven that they were also capable of incredible courage and, if necessary, lethal violence when the situation called for it. Many of them, like my father, had little pieces of metal and ribbon to prove it.

I have nothing but pity and disgust for this new class of American man that does not share the traditional American male "sheepdog" values.  I pity them because they did not have a sheepdog father to teach them these values.  I pity them because they probably did not have the honor of serving their country in uniform.  And, I pity them because, at whatever age they have now attained, they have yet to take responsibility for their own and their family's safety.

I have nothing but loathing for people who would disarm civilian sheepdogs because they are afraid of their fangs.  I suspect that these political and cultural castrati fear armed citizens because of the deep fears, hatreds and anxieties in their own hearts. Having never been taught the honor, self control and discipline of the sheepdog culture, they project their own fear, hatred and inadequacy upon everyone else.

I have a message for the cultural castrati of our generation.  The only reason they are able to mouth their whining, bitter little diatribes and psuedo intellectual fallacies is because good men are protecting them.  They sleep better at night in their homes because the predators in their community don't know whether the house is occupied by a member of the ideological victim class like themselves or a sheepdog that will shoot them the minute they break through the door.  They are free to walk the streets in comparative safety and mouth their destructive drivel on street corners and in classrooms only because a better man is somewhere nearby to take on the duty of protecting them. The bottom line here is that the new cultural castrati can just kiss my *ss.  If they really want our guns ....