These words are typed by me, not in a hospital but, in the comfort of my own back porch. I am alive and well...full of vim and vigor...rejuvenated by yet another failed attempt on my life by Satan's hand puppet.
Screwtape there is a young'n...he'll be black as lump charcoal in a few years...won't be any more full of venom though. He's already wired for sound. I stepped right over him looking for a golf ball. I heard the unmistakable sound of a snake moving over dried leaves right behind me...right behind me. Like at my heel.
F*&%$ER!!!
Long time readers, of this and the various blogs, will know this is not the first time the Devil has sent his dirty workers after me; however, this is the first time I've been tracked out of state. This attempt came in Georgia...Lake Park, Georgia.
Do not be alarmed...I survived the attempted attack...and sent him slithering back to his boss with a message...
Just to reiterate the ultimate point of my last post...
"Y'all sent me on this terrible bachelorette party and all I got was a snakebite."
I rest my case...you want surnames?
We know one of these fellas...in fact, the Boy has spent the night at the family's house.
DISCLAIMER: as I know it will be of great interest to many of our readers, not only were no snakes harmed during the filming but they're probably saving many non-poisonous snakes from being killed in the drive way. They deal directly, and question, the normal reaction that any sane person would have to seeing a snake...which is to kill it without a second thought...and suggest that it's an irrational response.
Sorry I'm just gonna confess here...I will kill them if I see them. I guess I'm a horrible person but I have been chased, have looked into the beady abyss and seen what a snake bite does to a human leg. The only way I'll grab a snake is with a shotgun.
I love the rowdiness and the decay that can be found from one end of Dixie to the other. It's not only beautiful but it makes an important statement about the impermanence of material and the foolishness of putting any faith in it. There is another side though.
There is a grandeur to The South that I am often guilty of ignoring here. There is the beauty of the dogwoods and azaleas, the magnolias and loblollies...and the live oaks. The unassailable taste and quaint manners...the old money beauty of it.
Nowhere is this side more gorgeously realized than during the Master's Tournament at Augusta National in Georgia.
Martha is, at this very moment, balling as Justin Spieth, this year's winner, hugs his Momma.
It is a cathedral...glorifying the natural beauty of The South and it is a celebration of it's gentile mores. Five dollars will still get you a pimento cheese sandwich...yelling "YOU DA MAN" or "IN DA HOLE" will still you get you an escort off the grounds. Mind you're manners...this is Georgia not the U.S. Open. This morning, Nick Faldo...that's Sir Nick Faldo to you, said that, off the course, it's the greatest sporting event in the world. "On the course," it's the greatest "by a mile."
There's a Thursday afternoon every year in the Spring when I have to fight back the tears. It's not just the overwhelming Southern Beauty of the place, though that does crush, but the memories I have with my Daddy and now with my son...being crouched around the TV (this hasn't changed despite the size of the TV and crispness of the picture) anxiously watching a putt hug the meticulous contours of a green, past the pink azaleas...through the shadow of a dogwood in bloom...watching, covering our faces, peaking....
EDIT...The Boy climbed up in my lap this morning while waiting for his momma to finish getting dressed. He wanted to see the Snakegrabber videos...he's pretty pumped about Mr. Brent...then he wanted see the video of Augusta. He said something about playin there....I would walk buck naked from here to Augusta if it meant getting to play just one hole. I asked him so..."you gonna play there one day."
He turned his head and looked at me, with the most serious expression he could muster..."I am going to win a green jacket." At this point I have no reason to doubt him.
Grand Gulf isn't just a military park. They have lots of interesting local artifacts there.
Do we need any further proof that there was serious money in bootleggin'?
Prohibition didn't end in Mississippi until the 60's. That don't mean there weren't a thriving, and well regulated, brown liquor market in the state. Far from it... Black Market Tax . In fact, it was a raid on a Junior League Ball, attended by the Governor, that finally forced the state's hand. There was no rush to legalize akahol. The bootleggers were getting rich, the state and state officials were getting their cut, and the Baptists were happy (the last thing they wanted was to have to buy theirs in a public establishment...hahaha. Do you know why you always take more than one Baptist fishing at a time...because if you take just one he'll drink all your booze. :oohyeahthat'sagoodone:).
A family friend, who died recently, used to get paid 50 bucks to run a trunkload of whiskey from Vicksburg to Jackson when he was a teenager in the 50's. You can still get moonshine here without much trouble.
I think it's also important to mention that we have a short but significant history with submarines. The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley was the first submarine to ever sink a ship. It took down the USS Housatonic....known up until that point for seizing a British blockade runner that was trying to deliver two ship engines for Confederate Inronclads. It was a serious blow. Take note Scots...it was one of your ships the bastards stole. Sadly, neither the crew or the submarine survived the exchange but they sank that b**CH!
While we're briefly on the subject, today in 1865, William Catledge of the 5th Florida Infantry, CSA, was paroled at Appomattox (one of 53 men that were left of the 5th). He was my Grandmother's maternal Grandfather. He wasn't the only Catledge that fought and her paternal side was also well represented but, it's William's name that appears, after about 6 pages of Campbells, among the list of those that were present at what amounted to the bitter, bitter end.
You would be forgiven for thinking that this was a portable torture device carried by the U.S. army used to extract intelligence from the locals but...NO! This torture device was willingly worn by our Belles. That's what was under the hood of those old gorgeous hooped dresses.
Residents of the area remain on guard from attacks to this day. There's a nuclear power plant just a few miles from the park. She is ready for shenanigans...in fact, she kinda looks like she wakes up every morning hoping somebody will try her.
There's Yankees to worry about, terror attacks...it's like the Devil's petting zoo around there...
...it is going to Flood!
Then there's us....a danger that, while it may be unintentional, can never be dismissed.
We are them. Those of us who weren't kidnapped from West Africa are anglo-celts who were too poor and rowdy to live in Scotland, Ireland and t'North of England...who have spent the last 200 years procreating in swamps. We have moonshine, guns, submarines and a nuclear power plant! What could possibly go wrong. HA!
On Good Friday, me and The Boy took a trip to Grand Gulf State Park. Grad Gulf is right on the river...maybe 20 miles south of Vicksburg. When I say on the river...I mean nervously close to the River. The water on Friday was up to the little two lane road opposite the park.
It won't surprise you to hear that my arch enemy took his most gruesome form on this lane a few years ago. I was in the car when Satan's House Pet crossed my path...the blackest, fattest, most ghoulish, ugggh...and it still gives me shivers.
There's not really a town here anymore. The first one was burned down by David Farrugut...Furragut, whatever, David Yankee, as part of the U.S. invasion of Mississippi during Lincoln's war.
It was burned in 1862...cause that's what they did. Then in May of 1863, they came back to seize the charred remains in order to use the gulf as a supply point for the invading army. Unfortunately for him and his...Georgia born, Gen John S. Bowen
had prepared the hills around what was left of the town. There Hoskins' Light Artillery, from Brookhaven, MS were splint between two small "forts." Hoskins' gunners with 13 light pieces fought off seven US gunships, firing some 2,500 rounds into the Confederate positions...they even disabled one of the ships.
Sadly, it was barely a setback for grant. They just moved down river and landed unopposed and marched on Port Gibson ("Too Beautiful To Burn" - U.S. Grant. How cute.) where Bowen, severely outnumbered, was forced to retreat after a day's fighting. Grand Gulf was evacuated.
I have to tell you...reading Bowen's CV is an exercise in excruciation for an unreconstructed Southron. He had predicted where the Yankees would attack and had repeatedly requested reinforcements from Pemberton in Vicksburg...DENIED. They weren't run out of Port Gibson...they were in an untenable position because of sheer numbers and had to withdraw. At the Battle of Corinth, MS...he had overrun a significant US position. Instead of exploiting the advantage...his commander Van &*&^&ing Dorn called a halt. At Champions Hill...Bowen led an attack that was on the verge of breaking the Yankee center but, AGAIN, he was not supported!
Taken prisoner after the fall of Vicksburg, Bowen died of dysentery after being paroled...32 years old. Did I mention that this Jedi was a Georgian? Damn right I did...you want me to tell you again? :)
While we're here...let's hear from Robbie Robertson. A Canadian who has gifted The South with genuine treasure. About the song...he said he wanted to express the dignified sadness he often encountered in Southerners. He had Levon there for guidance I'm sure but, it's Robertson's song and it is cherished.*
Up on the hill behind the "forts" is an old cemetery.
It's my favorite place on the park.
As an aside for C...we saw the most outrageously yellow little bird I've ever seen in my life there.
Not far from Grand Gulf...just off the Natchez Trace is the site of Rocky Springs. At one time there were 1,500 souls there...between the war and disease the town was abandoned by 1930. There is a church there...built in the 1830's. That's a rare specimen in these parts. It has a fabulous old cemetery. There are a couple of Confederate Veterans buried there but they very recent additions compared to the others. It's in the same style but possessed of a more grand decay. I was gonna take the Boy by there on the way home but he was passed out by then.
There's an old Dog Trot or Cracker House on the property. We have fantasies of building one of these on a sandy piece of property, shaded by Live Oaks, somewhere along the gulf coast one day.
This picture has global significance. Those are azaleas....they are swarming with Bumble Bees. I've read that bumble bees are disappearing around the world. Well, it turns out, they are disappearing to Grand Gulf, MS. There must have been 100 of these fat stingers buzzing around the various buildings. The Boy finally couldn't take it anymore despite my insistence that they weren't going to sting him. I think he was just sleepy.
Halfway there he had generously offered to let me listen to my "disc." Big Star Third.
"Does he sing like this for every song?"
"Yep."
"This the worst singing ever."
By the time we got to Jesus Christ he had settled in to it. Ha.
See Charity Chic for an interesting post on that other Canadian. :)
Two Days!...after 8 dreary sepia months, we crack the screen door open on Oz...if Oz had bourbon and smoked pigs....a four month Technicolor Southern block party. Actually, considering the emotional scars, the intractable grudges, the fact that we will get drunk and yell at one another ...maybe it's more appropriate to call it a family reunion.
I love the song on this one...but, the true beauty comes at the 1:09 mark.
I can't wait. There's a delicious irony to this time of year. Universities all over the US are gathered into athletic conferences...the Southeastern Conference (SEC) is really the only one that's still regionally and culturally cohesive.* So, when SEC teams play outside of conference we are more Southern than ever...we are one fanbase. It drives a lot of people crazy but, SEC football is a Southern institution and we are loyal people and we are not them. It's also one of the only times a goodun can celebrate being Southern without somebody screaming racism in your face...just before they go into the RocknRoll hall of fame in Cleveland, Ohio...to eat bbq and drink Cokecola in the café while finishing off the last chapter of Absalom Absalom. Uh-Hmmm Anyway.....
On the other hand, during Conference play, we can forget about all that and get down to what we truly and dearly love...beating hell out of the only worthy foe...one another.
That's Thursday...this is still Tuesday and we need to go ahead and get some things out of the way...maybe deal with a few recurring topics before things go pear shaped.
PAVEMENT
Other than the sweet sweet degeneration**....the best thing about this about this clip is the flippant political statement. Earlier during the set he said "We're here for turrets...I mean Tibet." Ha. I know a lot of y'all are true believers in the political power of music...y'all and hippies :)...but, many of us were horrified and scared, as young'uns, watching you punk rockers become hippies with mohawks...pestering us about workers and the sandinistas or whatever. We were dismissed for being willfully uninvolved with reality...as Slackers. Yeah. I guess.
Speaking of politics spoiling everything....this bastard.
MIRO
Today, during my trials and tribulations on the road (I left home without a wallet...and had to wait for an hour at a gas station to be rescued by Martha with credit cards), I tried to listen to a series of podcast on Miro. These were put on by the Tate...good...they turned out to be on MIro and politics...bad, very bad. The stream of profanity that I unleashed on the windshield was so intense that it blocked sunlight for a nanosecond. Look up there...look at it. Who looks at that and thinks about politics? It turns out, people whose definition of politics includes every possible human activity...that's who. Then they set about explaining his paintings through politics...even when political statements, in the paintings, were vague at best.
It's one thing to say a storefront mannequin unavoidably evokes Plato...it's quite another to say the worker who put the mannequin together had Plato in mind. I'd rather be bit on the forehead by a mosquito than listen to this nonsense.
Rude Talk
Did y'all hear Richard Dawkins the other day? He said it was "immoral" not to abort a fetus with downs syndrome. That's nasty man. Then, under the guise of an apology, he doubled down. At least he didn't actually apologize. I'm sick of people saying something...something they've obviously meant to say...something they'd given some thought to...then coming out the next day and apologizing like they'd merely burped at the table. You said it...stand by it. Shit.
What I want to know is this...what did he mean by immoral? He didn't say it was undesirable. He didn't say it shouldn't be allowed. He said it was immoral...as if he had some absolute authority in mind. I'd like to know exactly why he thinks it's immoral to have a baby with Downs. Why it's wrong...and what authority he's drawing on? I could infer...but, that would just be rude. Where does a machine go for moral authority?
Adamparsons Hates on the Fall
An oldie but a goodie (as a topic on the blogs...the song is timeless)
Me
Who am I kidding...we gon' keep talking about me....but, this gives me an excuse to point you all in the direction of Hugh Marwood's blog. He is an artist...a good one. He has been kind enough to recount some of our recent conversations on his blog. He's also put some of my really fantastic photos on there. So go look at it. He talks about Tom Wolfe too...so it's actually worth a click. :). Hugh's work is really good.
I'm sure I'm forgetting some things but, that should hold us over for now.
*If the money grubbers keep expanding the Conference we'll have Yankees in it...at that point we will seriously be looking to immigrate...it'll all be over at that point.
**If only Pavement had given this much "effort" in covering The Classical.
It's finally warming up in this bi---!
Our flowers should have come in a glorious burst and been gone by now. Instead there being petered out in splotches. We actually had a frost week before last.
I HATE THE COLD!...with a bleeding purple passion I HATE IT!
Yesterday...as I stood over the grill* babying a rack of ribs, I felt a trickle of sweat start between my shoulder blades and run a course down along my spine. AHHHH....Heat.
Heat...and Gators.
As Martha mentioned in the last post, me, my Daddy and the Boy, spent Friday on the golf course. There were gators everywhere.**
He tried to get closer but the gator swung his tail and disappeared in a splash.
You'll see he's still suffering greatly with the arm. They just put a cast on it today but, we wont' be able to see it...it's camouflage. It's probably not gonna be as angular as the splint anyway...so.
What? Yes I've been eyeing his broken arm for inspiration...I can't help it. It's an organic limb stuffed into a rectangle with a lopsided square at the end...there are fingers.
Obviously, I need some inspiration to flesh this one out...it's sputtering. Maybe I could talk him into breaking his foot.
_________
*It's actually a ceramic BBQ but since I'm trying to break some of you from referring to any metal bowl with a grill as a BBQ....
** We love the gators (I saw three of them this morning crossing the spillway) but they are a sign that our arch enemy is back on the crawl.
Late last year I finally got a look at f-words art. F-word is the father of Godzilla and partner of our own Spliff (which is why I want y'all to tell him how great his work is but to also say a prayer for him tonight*).
He is an actual artist...in gallery's like...who sells paintings in these galleries.**
And...
These are from a series of Cardinals and, as you can see, they are fantastic but there was one in particular that i really loved...
...he is now in my office...waiting on a frame or something. He's just a little fella...some metric nonsense. Don't ask me I only speak human...he's about the size of an old polaroid picture.
Check out his work here.
http://www.darrinmadafferi.info/gallery.html
The work is very much to my liking...it suits my tastes but, that aside, it's just fine work.
*We're starting a new feature here on Low Cotton...a prayer list. First on that list is me of course. Y'all know the kind of people I have to deal with in my life..coughadamparsonscough...and then there's that taxing thing with Miro...never mind the tremendous blow it would be to the internet if something happened to me, the fallout for art history could be catastrophic...Cosmic in its proportions.
Darrin's gotta be second on that list though...considering what he's dealing with there.
:ducking: :0
**Y'all should know that I have been comissioned, by Martha...for the handsome sum of 40 dollars, to paint two images. I think she's playing me for a ho here...who am i kidding i would've done it for five bucks.
The prison grounds at Angola are very much like a ranch. Once through the gate you travel a straight road, lined with oaks across flat grass...broken in a couple of places by creeks and ditches. There are horses.
When you leave you head for the hills. Unlike coming out of the Delta at Greenwood, where the initial rise is as steep and abrupt as a roller coaster's, this road skirts the hills, turns back toward the river before making a gradual ascent. On one side you have these sheer red faces of eroding clay...on the other an incomprehensible tangle of vines, branches and brambles...briars in black wet dirt...and old houses and out buildings.
You'd never see this place in the summer. In fact I've driven by it several times and never noticed it there. It's just as well. I would never have stopped here when the ground was warm. And if there had been any flooding? I wouldn't even look in that direction.
The place is existentially creepy enough...
without our arch enemy curled up in the corner you're about to turn. I don't want to give the impression that we're always running from snakes like some kinda action movie...but, this...this, in the spring and summer, would be begging for it.
The floor boards were spongy enough downstairs...that's why I didn't go up...not because I was afraid a forgotten family member might be up there sitting next to a hole in the wall where the fire place used to be.
Our mold and moss are technicolor (almost a chrome yellow in person).
This must have been a very nice spread at one time (though it had to have been prone to flooding). There were several outbuilding....one of which, I'm sure, was a kitchen.
The roadside is littered with places like this. They'll all disappear here in a month or so...make a wobbly reappearance next winter...and next year and the next...until the vines finally pull them down and the ground swallows them up.
Y'all know about my issues with that bastard Miro. I told you I'd fix him.
Step One - Go to Louisiana...where they have Mojo Hands.
Step Two - get Mojo Hand. *
This will destroy the power he has over my woman..Martha. Ostensibly I'm goin' down to Baton Rouge to sell Fried Green Beans and Chicken Wings. I will go Cotton Wood Books, eat at Zippy's Tacos and make myself sick on Beinget Fingers. I will not play the penny slots. I will not play the penny slots. I will get the Mojo Hand. I will not play the penny slots.
Then Thursday I'll be in St. Francisville and Angola Farm...Louisiana State Penitentiary. It's not as wretched as it once was...which says more about how bad it used to be than how lovely it is now. There's no more red hats. ...but your prospects aren't good if you find yourself there. It's an odd place with a culture all it's own...there's a feeling of immersion when you go through the gate. Rightly so...most of them aren't leaving.
They got their woodworking shops, their radio station, their football teams (last time I was down, one of the inmates was sporting a golfball sized Angola football championship ring. I imagine they could put together a team to challenge LSU..if not the Saints) but, it's the Rodeo they're famous for. Being in the infirmary means no work and pain pills...they ride hard as hell. I intend to get my hot dogs into the concession stands. Ha.
Step 3 - Learn to paint sneaky landscapes.
A little busy maybe...that's the thing about swamps but, dig it in detail...
Ha. I'm comin' for your stank ass Miro.
*Step 2 1/2 Send mojo hand to gentleman in England who's having a bit of a Ricky Gervais problem.
