St. Francis River, steady as she flows.....
739 days ago by Darryl Crum
Along the northeastern edge of Arkansas, the St. Francis River takes her twists and turns, cutting though land and time, giving only subtle evidence of the events she’s witnessed, of the role she’s played in the history of this land.
Bordering the woods, fields, and pastures, across the countryside and through the small towns, past well-manicured mansions and dilapidated shotgun shacks, she continues her journey with no fanfare, no mention of her in great literary pieces, and little, if any, recognition. But I recognize her! To me, as a child, she was the soul of the land, the mother of nature. She was the caretaker, the provider, a shelter to man and beast, and to fish and foul.
For anyone who has become accustomed to the hurried flight of everyday do-nothing business, it would be easy to skip over this river, to jump over her from bank to bank on one of the few concrete bridges built in the last half of the 20th Century. If anyone is in that much of a hurry, it is their loss because a hurried glance is simply not enough. To understand the St. Francis, to see her subtle beauty, to see the depth of character that flows constant between her wooded banks, it is necessary to surrender and let her become a part of you.
My history with her began as a very young child and while the years have taken me away from her, she remains central in my childhood memories. And this post, all that is in it, is here because of her involvement in my life and the life of those who came before me.
Pearl buttons for the ladies...
My father had just come home from the TB Sanatorium in Booneville, Arkansas on one of his few ‘leaves’ that freckle my childhood memory of him. He, still almost a stranger to me, my mother, and my three older brothers were in our back yard, circled around an old cast iron pot filled with boiling water and muscles. My mother and older brothers had dug the muscles from the mud along the deep bank of the St. Francis where the water runs slower.
The smell of the boiling muscles was almost enough to get the better of my curiosity. It filled the air, permeated everything, weaving its way into even the clothes we were wearing. The smell was strong, more than anything I had known, a mixture of muscles and boiling muddy water; but it was not strong enough to run me away from watching my father, the obvious boss of the brothers who had been my boss in his absence, and not strong enough to overcome my nosiness at to just what the ‘grownups’ were doing. When it comes to curiosity, sometimes kids are worse than kittens.
They sat there on blocks of wood and rickety old chairs surrounded by burlaps bags filled with muscles still to be boiled, buckets of boiled muscle meat to be fed to the pigs, and burlap bags filled with the emptied muscle shells. It was a hard way to make a living – sitting around a pot of boiling water under the heat a scorching delta sun, prying open the muscles, scooping out the meat just to get an empty shell.
When they had finished shelling the muscles, they took the bags of shells to the button factory in Parkin where the shells were drilled to make mother of pearl buttons. A lot of work, for a little pay – but maybe enough to buy a bag of flour (PurAsSnow), some sugar, or a piece of salt meat. There are times when it pays to be the baby of the family.
Several years ago, my mother and I were driving back from Bay Village to West Memphis, a route took us through Parkin. We decided to stop by the old button factory even though it is out of business and had been for quite a while. I found where they had discarded the drilled shells and worked my way down the bank until I found a small cache. I got a couple dozen and brought them back up the bank where my mother was waiting. It seemed like a long arc to travel for such a short distance – 50 years from that back yard as a child back to the button factory on the bank of the St. Francis.
Back when 42 pounds was a pretty big catfish…
Migrants, Immigration, ImMOREgraton, IMMORALgration?
742 days ago by Darryl Crum
Has immigration across our southern border became an issue of greed for many people in the US today? I think it has. In fact, I think the only reason many people today are willing to invite these dark skinned people from the south to enter our country for even a minute is cheap labor…. cheap labor for them, for their homes and their small businesses. It is the one time when their greed for profit exceeds their inherited racism.
Migrants
Over the years, for as long as I can remember, our neighbors to the South have immigrated to this country in search of work. As a child growing up in Arkansas, I can remember truck and buses loaded with Mexican men coming to our house, asking if we would hire them to pick our cotton. My dad would give them a price per 100 pounds of cotton picked; and if they agreed, the bus would drive down to the field, the men would unload with their sacks and begin picking.
We only had 16 acres of cotton, and with the Mexican men on one side of the field and my family on the other side, the number of unpicked rows between us shrank rather quickly. After a few days, the field would be picked clean and the Mexican men would take their pay, say ‘adios’, and be back on the road.
It was my first experience with migrant workers; and to this day, I still give a quiet thanks for those men. You see, any cotton they picked was cotton I did not have to pick, and picking cotton was about as close as you could get to slave labor, or at least it was in the mind of a 10 year old boy.
“Where there is no hope, there can be no endeavor.”
Samuel Johnson
I think it is fair to say that many otherwise decent men choose a life of crime and eventually prison rather than spend their lives in the cotton fields. For a sharecropper, there is no “getting ahead” in the cotton fields; and with the exception of suffering severe or crippling health, there really in no lower level one can sink to. It is survival and little more. So, it’s fair to ask why it was such a desperate state of being for us while the Mexican men seemed to pick with near joy. It was that way because everything is relative – sort of like Maslowe’s Heirarchy – in that what is bad is dependent upon your current conditions. A day of work for us was little more than subsitance for the day in our economy; a day of work for any of those men was a considerable increase in wealth in their economy. Said another way, for us it was survival, and for them, it was growth. That alone will change your pespective.
Immigration
I graduated from high school in 1965. We were a monster class, compared to those who came before us, a whopping 42 students…. 21 boys and 21 girls. There were no African Americans in my class because it was the year before forced integration and racism was still a way of life – a part of the culture – hell, it was the culture and had been since the founding of the country.
What I cannot remember in my childhood were very many people of Hispanic or Latino origin. I can vaguely remember a couple in my school when I was a kid, but I think they were mixed blood. Other than the migrant workers who came in the fall, I cannot remember seeing hardly anyone of Hispanic or Latino descent. At least until I joined the Navy and ended up in California. Holy shit! What a culture shock for me.
My point is that this migration of seasonal workers slowly led to immigration (legal or illegal) by those same workers. I don’t know if the numbers will back me up, but it seems that in the past 40 years, the migrant or guest worker movement of the 60s was replaced with immigration.
ImMOREgration
An estimate 11 million Latino immigrants (undocumented workers or felons, depending on how you view this issue) now live in the US. And if the people on both sides of this issue can agree on any one thing, it is probably that 11 million is a low estimate. The number 20 million is often dropped by people who think immigration across our southern border has become a major social problem. – however you see the issue,
IMMORALgration
As a liberal, I find myself torn on this issue. I would gladly invite anyone to immigrate to our country if it is what they want – if they feel in their hearts that this is the place they need to be. But as a person who believes in the value of the family – any family of any race in any nation - I believe we must try to stop the current flow of immigration because we are destroying a generation of Indian families from a whole range of Latino nations. People who beieve in the value of the family, any true Christian or any person of any good faith would not engage in nor would they willing be quiet and allow such a thing to happen.
Ask yourself one question, have you ever seen a light skinned Hispanic working over the grill or frier at McDonalds? Have you ever seen a light skinned Hispanic working as part of a landscape crew or working in the cotton fields, or the vineyards, or the orchards in this country? It’s a rhetorical question.
There is a reason for this. Since the its history the Indians have been treated or mixed breads who look like Indians, have been treated with such racial disdain in Mexico that it is a wonder
In process – still more to come.
Comment [567]
Immigration - - - in da' House!
749 days ago by Darryl Crum
All of this talk between President Bush and certain members of Congress about an immigration bill has slowly but surely gotten under my skin. At first ot seemed like a well intended thing – giving an estimated 11 million undocumented workers in this country legal rights and the opportunity to become citizens. But as the points of the proposed bill have been debated in public (both the House and Senate versions), I am starting to realize a truth about us. We are an abusive nation and many of our leaders are the worst among us.
In the heat of the debate over the past two months, have you heard any discussions about improving the lives of the estimated 11 million as a justification for this bill? As a Liberal, I am proud that some members of Congress, such as Senator Kennedy, have raised this point, but it seems as though they’ve stopped mentioning it as of late in fear of making the bill seem ‘too Liberal’ or too ‘Christian-like’ to ever have a chance of passing through the Conservative faction of Congress.
Less face it, the very Christian idea of amnesty has suddenly become a bad word among Conservatives and their primary support, the Christian right. They don’t just use the term to protest the immigration bill. They spit the word out of their mouths as if it were somehow poison to them. It may be. It is Christian like and probably doesn’t fit their taste. Our Pledge of Allegance includes the phrase “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” Based on their objections to the proposed immigration bill, I suspect we should put certain parts of this phrase to test, such as the “one nation” part (red state / blue state, pro-choice / anti-abortion, gay marriage / definition of marriage ammendment, pro war in Iraq / pro peace) or the “under God” part, or the “liberty and justice for all” part. The “under God” part was added by Congress in 1954. I wonder what they were thinking at the time.
As I hear more about the bill, hear more single-thought condemnations from toothless, gun-totin’, Bible-thumping European immigrants who seem hell-bent to speak out on this subject, I am starting to change my mind completely. Suddenly to my surprise, I find myself opposed to the proposed immigration bill.
My quandary
I believe in open migration, but more and more I am opposed to the immigration that is occuring on our southern border. I am not bothered so much by that fact that it is happening in such large numbers but more as to why it is occurring. In short, it is a symptom of an illness that is being ignored; and as a result, is being exported to the United States.
This migration, as I understand it, stems more from problems in Mexico than from a desire by these immigrants to live in and be a part of our culture. For example, racism, more like the racism seen in the South Africa, is a major problem for Mexico.* The conflict is between the lighter skin Mexicans (criollo who are direct Spanish descendants or the mestizo who are a mixed race of Indian and European) and the Indian natives. The Indians are kept in a state of second class citizenry, and are denied equal jobs, equal pay, equal education, and equal housing. They can, however, find their way to the Northern border and once across, can find themselves being denied equal jobs, equal pay, equal educaton and equal housing. The difference, and the draw to this country, is that they can get a job and send money back to their families in Mexico.
*For more information on this issue, please read the article “Racism in Mexico” by Erika Robles
Immigration Nation......
750 days ago by Darryl Crum
In the conversations I’ve had with Native Americans, I’ve been astounded to find that virtually all of them preferred not to be called Native Americans. They preferred to be identified by their individual nations, e.g., Sioux, Cherokee, Choctaw, etc. It is their testimony to the fact that they choose not to be classified as immigrants to this continent.
This brings up an interesting point. Unless you are one of them, unless your lineage somehow predates history in this country, and you live in the United States, you are recognized as being either an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant. My family has lived on this continent since the 1600’s and in researching my lineage, the one point that keeps me anchored is the fact that I am the descendant of immigrants, people who came from a variety of nations.
Immigration is migration, and it has been happening every since our early ancestors picked up their bones and stones in Africa and began to spread across the surface of the earth. As a species, we are migratory and we will continue to be so. Perhaps if the time span for the human model is short, migration can be seen as immigration and can be classified as being either legal or illegal. But as the time span of the model expands, it simply becomes a matter of global migration. As the Earth’s climate changes, we will be forced to migrate even more; and as long distance travel becomes more available and more affordable, global migration will increase voluntarily. That being said, who cares?
In this country, it seems a lot of people care. They care enough to go stand on our southern border in brain melting heat with near-vigilante intent of keeping illegal immigrants out of this country. (I would like to make the point that it is a lot cooler on the Canadian border, and the beer is better, but I don’t think that’s the goal.) I believe they are wrong, as wrong as they can be, and I would love to take the high road and say I admire their willingness to sacrifice for a cause they believe in. The trouble is, I can’t. I cannot find it in my soul to admire anyone who is willing to sacrifice so much for a senseless ideology.
10 million monkeys
752 days ago by Darryl Crum
I read once a bit of pointless information that said something to the effect that if you give each of 10 million monkeys a typewriter, eventually one of them will bang out “War and Peace.” (On a sidebar, that would be socialism wouldn’t it: 10 million monkeys each with his or her own typewriter. We are a capitalist society so we would prefer to give 10 million monkeys one typewriter and see which of those 10 million monkeys will end up with sole possession of that typewriter. ) I probably got the number of monkeys wrong and I am sure it was not War and Peace, but the point remains the same.
Speaking of points, now is a good time to get back to my original one, which is that blogging is like giving typewriters to 10 million monkeys in the hope that one of them will eventually type out a yet-to-be published masterpiece. I think there is a better chance of me eating a pack of crayons and creating a Mona Lisa on Charmin.
As if to prove there is a major flaw in cosmic logic, I now have my own blog, and for now, blogging is my obsession – another something that will never get finished – never come to fruition. And when I die, I am sure my tombstone will rightfully read, “Life to Death, the only project this man ever finished.”
What a journey – all the way from mules and logs to computers and blogs. (There is some odd Zen to that idea, a similarity that perhaps only I can see.) And Zen or not, I think it is fair to say that giving me a blog is an insult to the whole concept of freedom of the press. Now instead of my wife’s family having to hear me belt out endless oracles on everything from “Onions make me fart.” to “George Bush gives me gas!”, I get to post my opinions here.
Will I be that one-in-ten million monkey that bangs out a masterpiece? I doubt it. The odds are probably better that I will win the mega lottery and have enough money to pay someone to have opinions for me. George Bush does that. He pays someone to have opinions for him. He calls the guy his speech writer. And yes, it might be fair to conclude that it is Dubya’s speech writer who gives me gas and not the chimpansy himself.
Anyway, when I decided to publish a blog as part of my website, I did a Google search for that ever famous quote by A.J. Liebling, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” I got so many hits, and not to my surprise, a lot of them were for bloggers who seem to think this specific quote justifies the results of their key banging.
Here is a qoute by Ed Howe who said, “No man would listen to you talk if he didn’t know it was his turn next.” Look around on this page and you will see a “Comments” link. Consider that your turn. Or, you could start your own blog. Let me help you get started…. “Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don’t tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist – I really believe he is Antichrist (see they had their own Dick Cheney and Karl Rove)-I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my ‘faithful slave,’ as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you – sit down and tell me all the news.”*
*Opening paragraph of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
Comment [1]
