Knucklehead Ranch

Does owning a hunting camp called "Niggerhead Ranch" make you a redneck? Absolutely. A racist? Not necessarily. No more, probably, than climbing Squaw's Tit (Alberta, CA) might qualify you as a groper, or running a jet ski across South Dakota's Squaw Humper Dam or casting a worm into Little Squaw Humper Creek would make you a wenching, antifeminist misogynist (although casting one's worm anywhere these days could . . . never mind).

Owning a scrubgrass rattlesnake ranch called "Niggerhead," however, does make you a . . .

 Knucklehead

. . . unless, of course, you've only ever invited select fellow "lawmakers" to join you there. (Lawmakers are like neighbors who all own barking dogs - none will ever complain about the excesses of the others' dogs.)

A recent article in Slate points out that, "The U.S. Board on Geographic Names . . . issued two blanket rules decades ago to erase racial slurs from federal maps. In 1962, they replaced “Nigger” with “Negro” in the names of at least 174 places. You can still find such locales as Free Negro Point in Louisiana and Little Negro Creek." Of course, one is free to translate into the regional dialect - as you might expect, federal cartographic standards do not always apply locally. And then you can always find those little cartographic obscurae on private property, Rancho Cabo de Negro a case in point.

Some "liberal pundit from Guvuner Perry's home state" (not an oxymoron, apparently) on one of the left-leaning talk shows pointed out, quite reasonably, that there is a good deal of "residual racism" in this country and that a place name for example, particularly of a place that's been in a family for decades, can escape notice as much from familiarity as from insensitivity or racism. I'm guessing that's the case with Guvuner Perry, although the subsequent song-and-dance about the offending piece of rock having been painted over sometime just after the last Ice Age is predictable, lame, and strains credulity. One does not strain to imagine the sort of guest generally in attendance chez Domaine de la Tete Noir . . . 

"Oh, dwat! Pwugged one before Wamadan."

. . . as opposed to others generally pas invitee . . . 

College educated hunting party, Cornell University, 1969

So think of it this way: does owning a hunting camp called "Niggerhead" make you a knucklehead? Well, does naming your first-born "Dalejunior" make you a redneck?  

"Dalejunior"

Does Elmer Fudd have trouble with the letter 'R'?

"Happy Wamadan, Wick!"

Did John Wayne make movies?

Does Herman Cain know who's his Daddy?

Can you see Wasilla all the way from Russia?

So far, not so good. It may take the Supreme Court to bag this election. Guaranteed 5-4, just say the word.

Bowling for Kansas

I'm just back from Kansas, where the heat has broken, at least temporarily, and everyone is as happy as they could be for having just lost the better part of both their wheat and corn crops.  (And as the secessionist and Texas Guvuner Rick Perry might have said, if he hasn't already, thank the Umighty Lord for federal farm subsidies and crop insurance.) Yep, if it weren't for God and Gummint (in any order you choose), them farmers would have been living in some hellish Cairo slum since a long while back.

"It's not much, but at least we don't have to take farm subsidies."

And while I'm at it, here's a handy site where you can look up your neighbors to see who's cheating on their libertarian Tea Party credentials - search "Bachmann" (deceased) in Buffalo County, Wisconsin (as in "Michelle Bachmann") just to see how slick it works.

But among the many things I really do enjoy when I'm in Kansas (besides everyone I know there) is the self-imposed news blackout. In the darkened caverns of my motel rooms I can watch Turner Classic Movies (when's the last time you had to watch a Lew Ayres' "vehicle," willingly or un-?) instead of CNN or the charade of Faux News. Selective hearing, in a way, but relief nonetheless. When I speak with people, it's about genuine concerns like whether it will rain or exactly when their wells might dry up or whether there's enough water deeper down to sustain their farms. They're as chary talking about politics as I am, and being farmers, just as socialist as I am whether they know it or not. Probably they don't talk about it for the same reasons that I try not to write (much) about it (unless by innuendo), like we don't go into details about train wrecks.

So the climate in western Kansas is congenial to me in a way I never imagined it could ever be - in the summer it's bloody awful hot, it's dry and it's almost always windy (which of course is why I'm there anyway). Nonetheless (and given a modicum of air conditioning), I like it. But more than that, the people, as conservative and evangelical as their reputation and as much so as I am the contrary in every respect, seem to be possessed of a common sense that transcends the idiocy of their elected representatives and hired clergy. They are capable of conversation that does not degenerate in anger. On most topics, they are clear-minded. They can bowl together without rancour.

When among them I always feel welcome. I am admitted to the Mennonite ladies' Tuesday Sewing Circle, where in the church basement they prepare a lavish weekly Kansas farm lunch for their working husbands and sons in the off-seasons of fall and winter; have a standing fishing invitation at a marina in Oklahoma owned by a friend in the neighborhood; have standing invitations across two counties to stop by for dinner or supper (those being successive, seperate meals in Kansas); standing invitations to go pheasant hunting - a sport I've never tried nor been drawn to.

"Oh, dwat - sowwy."

I like it out there in the flat spaces with the curlews and the hawks and the coyotes and the Mexican restaurants and the oversized hamburgers and every grocery store bragging "the coldest beer in town." It's a forgotten place where the only tourists come for the tornado season. Bummer.

"Oh shit, Dorothy, we're in Kansas!"

God and Texas Hold'Em

Said the rainmaker to the people, 'Tell me what you are prepared to pay. . . '

Said the rainmaker to the people, '. . .and I'll conjure up a rainy day.'

                                                                           - Harry Nilsson, "The Rainmaker"

I just spent two solid weeks in Kansas, and the bank thermometers were hitting thermal jackpots like a drunk in a casino. It's been a hot summer so far.

(Thought he might need that overcoat.)

The air conditioner in my 16-year old pickup barely makes a dent in the sweltering prairie heat - I don't see there's much to be done except get an air-conditioned motel room and cool down between hurried sorties into the blistering countryside. But I'm only one man, a private citizen at that. I don't have much to say about the weather and so I try not to talk about it (present instance excepted, naturally, and I hope forgiven as well).

No, I'm no Guvuner Rick Perry. Perry is the current guvuner of Texas who on Saturday last, with true Texan brio, overlooked the Constitution's separation clause just long enough to convene some 30,000 fellow evangelicals from around the nation in Houston for a good old "inclusive" state-sponsored prayer rally. "The Response," as he dubbed it, was intended as a sort of rain dance in which participants get to ask God for stuff they need or think other people need (like rain, or that "wisdom" be granted to President Obama, who definitely stands in need of some but couldn't make it to Houston). Houston, for the day, was hallowed ground.

Rick among the New Apostles

It was the ultimate Glenn Beck Moment - in fact, Perry may have out-Glenned the Beck. The Houston Chronicle reported "a day of singing, praying, praising and — for some — fasting." Fasting is, like deer hunting, something evangelicals consider a divinely sanctioned blood sport, though the Chronicle reporter conceded that "Long lines besieged concession stands throughout the day." (Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, you can count on long, well-upholstered lines at the concession stands - the link between hot soup and evangelical fervor is an historic one.)

  "SevenEleven corn dogs - only way we can get 'em in here."

According to one news source, "The event was Perry's idea but was financed by the American Family Association, a Tupelo, Miss.-based group that opposes abortion and gay rights and believes that the First Amendment freedom of religion applies only to Christians." (Surprising they'd fork over their good money after Perry as much as said that the State of New York is within the law to grant resident gays the right to marry.)

In his harangue, Perry conceded to the Almighty that, "as a nation, we have forgotten who made us, who protects us, who blesses us. And for that we cry out for your forgiveness." It was so Glenn, a jeremiad against our national waywardness. So Old Testament for all of that . . . I had an image of Peter Lorre in "Casablanca," chased by Nazi goons into Humphrey Bogart's bar, pleading piteously, "Rick, Rick - save me, Rick!"

The Golden Calf (another bad idea)

Oh, well. When you can't figure out what to do about the weather and the drought and the national economy, and you can't plausibly blame the President's political party for all of it, and you don't believe that expertise may be the first step in looking for a solution, then it can appear that the only recourse is either a willful ignorance, prayer, lethal injection or any combination. 

Personally I'm not aware of any transgressions that I need to answer for, but Perry may be a wiser man than I - after all, anyone who thinks that God is the sort of thing to which personal petitions and grocery lists can be addressed probably is also the sort of brash fellow who approaches God like he would approach some poor sod he's caught cheating at Texas hold'em - someone, in other words, who is likely to do whatever he's asked.

"Paint my house."

The Chronicle reporter further remarked that "the seven-hour event resembled nothing more than a boisterous Sunday-morning worship service at evangelical churches across the nation. The prayers were long and heartfelt, the remarks earnest, and the music - gospel and Christian rock - inspired rapturous frenzies of arm-waving, swaying and singing along."

For my part, 30,000 people swaying and arm-waving to Christian rock should be penance enough to satisfy a lust for adulation in even the most monstrous of deities. Taken altogether, the day sounds so . . .  tribal.