They call me the working man

My Grandpa once faced down the Mafia. It was a long time ago in the 50's a time when America was a different place. Cigarette smoke, Elivs, Rock 'n roll, and so forth. Anyhow as I heard the story he was parked somewhere in Brooklyn. And a Woman on the street and a shawl told him 'They don't like it when you park there.' And shortly afterward a man came out walking towards him. I remember hearing that he left after because he had his kids in the car but the story always held an interest to me. An average citizen with nothing to do with Organized Crime suddenly being thrust into its world.

Struggle.

I'm reading a book right now about the Pullman Porters. Pullman Porters were workers on sleeper trains from the late 1860s until 1969. George Pullman the founder of the Pullman company recruited mainly African-Americans for the positions because he believed the mainly white passengers wouldn't notice them and wouldn't see them as someone they would ever see in everyday life. The Porters attended to the passengers every need making beds, running telegrams, helping with luggage etc; Also they relied mainly on tips because of the low wages the Pullman company paid them during the early years of its operation. In the book the author Larry Tye talks about the face the Porters had to put on to deal with the racism and insults and disrespect they put up with on a daily basis. This resonated for me because as a former Deli worker I had to put up the same kind of face. While I was never subjected to the long hours, and blatant racism of the porters dealt with I can attest to the shabby way people can treat you in the service industry. In the deli people think you are a servant an idiot. And you end up having to put up that mask. The mask of servility which the books talks about. The porters dealt with it because they had families to support and they knew it was a lot better then working as sharecroppers or in factories as many in their community did. Also much better then their forefathers who had toiled in the cotton fields as slaves. The Porters would have to 'Tom' it after Uncle Tom the slave in Uncle Tom's cabin. Dealing with people is hard, much less racist assholes. To this Friday I crack open a beer for the Pullman Porter.

That speech won't scour.

Nobody likes a sore loser. The mobs that riot after their team has lost. That sad pathetic man dialing his ex-wife drunk at three in the morning pleading for her to come back. Historically in my opinion John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln was one of the most infamous. The son of Edwin Booth a noted and celebrated Shakespearean actor and a celebrated actor himself, Booth had developed a sympathy towards the south and the Southern Cause. Booth first hatched a scheme to kidnap Lincoln and conspired with several Confederate sympathizers among them John Surratt a Confederate spy who's mother Mary owned a boardinghouse in Washington where whose and his conspirators often met. Booth plan to kidnap Lincoln was later thwarted by bad intelligence. Montreal was a hotbed of Confederate spies at that time including a group that set fire to several hotels in New York City. Confederate guerrillas had also launched a raid on Vermont from there. Booth eventually returned to Washington and fell into a deep despair as Confederate defeat became obvious. Richmond had fallen. Sherman's march to the sea had devastated the Confederacy and Lee had surrendered. On April 11 Lincoln had given a speech at the White House and had mentioned giving the right to vote to black soldiers in the Union army. Booth had been present at the speech and stated 'Thats the last speech he'll never make.' Booth knew the layout of Ford's theater intimately as he had performed there before. John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in the the back of the head with a single shot pistol thus ending what could have been a good life. The war was over, he had just been reelected and seemed to most of those around him to be in good spirits. The entire history of reconstruction and the civil rights movement might have been different had he had lived. Booth thought that assassinating Lincoln would bring him support but this was misguided. Eventually ending up in a barn at the Garret Farm in Virginia he found himself surrounded by Union troops. Booth refused to give up and eventually Boston Corbett a Union soldier shot him in the neck. Booth later died from his wounds asking to see his hands and remarking 'useless, useless.'

The fuckin soffets

In the annals of military history there are many great Generals. U.S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Patton, come to mind. Then there are those who you may not have heard of. Generals like Ambrose Burnside, George McClellan, Joseph Johnston. The reason you may not of heard of these guys is well..they kind of sucked at their jobs. This article is about one in particular George Brinton McClellan. Graduate of West Point with an unmistakable air of professionalism about about him McClellan came to Washington at a time when all seemed lost. The Union Army of the Potomac had been routed at Bull Run and had straggled into Washington afterwards confused and demoralized. The General the pressed dubbed the 'Young Napoleon,' at first seemed to do everything right organizing the units into neat camps around Washington and drilling and training the men all day. McClellan inspired loyalty in pride in his troops. As historian Shelby Foote noted 'His specialty was preparing troops for battle. McClellan trained that army, whatever that army did in its later years was due to the training McClellan gave them in that first year.' Yet as summer turned to fall and later winter Abe Lincoln and his cabinet began to wonder why McClellan, now in command of 100,000 men, did not move this mighty host against the Confederates. When pressed McClellan would come up with a host of excuses, he didn't have enough men, he was ill, they weren't prepared. As Secretary of war Edwin Stanton observed 'If he had a million men he would swear the enemy had two million, and cry in the mud and ask for three.' Finally in the spring of 1862 McClellan launched what became known as the Peninsula campaign, moving his might host up the York/James peninsula in an attempt to move on Richmond. Even though McClellan outnumbered Lee, Lee kept up the offensive. After seven days of fighting in which the Union army won all but one of the engagements McClellan retreated to Harrisons landing. One officer suggested the General was motivated by 'Cowardice or treason.' And as one observer noted he had been 'He was simply out-Generaled.' Lee had read McClellan cautious nature and had taken the offensive from the start. Whilst McClellan preferred a defensive strategy. Many historians have argued where this apparent lack of will to fight came from. I think one of the factors is he simply didn't have the stomach for it. Writing to his wife Mary Ellen he wrote 'I grow tired of the sickening sight of the battlefield with its mangled limbs and poor suffering wounded. Victory had no glory for me when purchased at such cost.' True the battlefield is a sobering place. But your'e a goddamn General for chirst sake! Thats me saying as a line cook that I don't like doing multiple slips at one time, its part of your fucking job. After the peninsula campaign McClellan eventually faced Lee again at Antietam in Maryland where he was able to push Lee back into Virginia after his invasion of Maryland. Finally after Antietam and McClellan lack of follow up Lincoln ended up firing him. It took a long time for hold honest Abe to find a General who had what it takes to take on Bobby Lee but he finally found one in Ulysses S. Grant probably the exact opposite of McClellan, quiet, unpretentious, not found of military displays or parades. If I were old Abe I could have fired him long before.

This station is now the ultimate power in the universe.

Women are fuckin' nuts. Forgive me if I now go on a tirade but I speak the truth. As anyone who has been through an intense breakup or divorce can testify to women can turn on you. In a second, a blink of an eye. It can go from being all roses and good times to 'fuck you I don't want anything to do with you.' It can baffle you sometimes. I am continually baffled by it. I was watching this documentary on the history channel about this outlaw motorcycle gang and their ways and manners. And one member was talking about how basically they treat their women like property but that women still always want to be with them. This is what baffles us normal non-abusing, cheating folk. I was talking to a girl at my work who was wondering why this one guy was with this girl saying 'I've been with guys who have hit me, who have cheated on me why can't I get someone like him.' We too wonder why you keep going with those assholes, it remains a great mystery. One that most likely will not be solved anytime soon. I don't understand I don't get it. My good friend Katrina Bell once said that women are 'cruel, vicious, creatures.' And I think it rings true. Its just never said amidst the whole 'Girls are sugar and spice and everything nice.' Its an intense thing having a girlfriend, doing right. As hard as having a normal friend plus the whole sex thing. Someday i'll figure it out.

After midnight, we gonna let it all hang down.

'That sucked.' Those were my words or something of that nature after my first day of Kindergarten according to my Mom. Not that I don't remember an experience that would merit such a response. And that feeling pretty much sums up my experience in later years in school. I was always singled out for being 'different.' I was put in special ed programs for years taught by people that were well intentioned but it was obvious that funds were lacking. And I never felt like I learned anything. Beyond basic aspects of interacting with people of my own age group. But in terms of learning and gaining new knowledge it was few and far between. And I've always had something of a complex because of it. I see some people my sister for example who seem to be able to do the academic thing so well and excel at it. But I just don't feel it. I feel like school totally takes everything that is fun and good about reading and learning new things and makes it horrible. As I have grown older whenever I meet an older person they always ask me 'are you in school?' and I never know what to say. You say 'no.' I suppose they think you are some kind of a slacker. Sometimes I feel like saying 'You know what? I've had ten plus years of school and I did not enjoy it.' Maybe i'm insane, full of shit, its hard to say. But I never liked it. I remember in third grade I had this one special ed teacher who was well intentioned but had the worst breath. Like liver and onions type of deal. And she would always get really close to you when she talked which just exascerbated the problem. But I just never fit in never felt like part of the crowd.

Pickett's horrible charge

Today is July 3rd. In 1863 at Gettysburg Confederate general Robert E. Lee committed one of the most colossal blunders in military history, Pickett's charge. It was directed at the Union position on cemetery ridge and little round top where Joshua Lawrence Chamberlin's 20th Maine had fought a famous engagement the day before. It was through a half mile of open field with no cover at all. Suicide. The logic had been that an artillery barrage on the Union position an hour before would break down the defenses early. Some historians say Robert E. Lee was perhaps a little cocky. Indeed he may have had good reason to be given the fact that he had defeated or at least fought well against the Army of the Potomac many times before. General James Longstreet, one of his closest officers strongly disagrees. As historian Ed Bearss points out he had seen the carnage at Marye's heights in Fredericksburg, Virginia where a year before Union troops under Ambrose Burnside had made a disastrous and suicidal charge against a stone wall there. In fact as Lee's legions had come on the waiting Union troops had chanted 'Fredericksburg,Fredericksburg.' remembering that battle. It certainly must have been a morale booster for an army which had such a bad record at that time the result of poor generalship. Fredericksburg had cost 13,000 casualties and had helped give leverage to a movement to end the war. The units that went on Pickett's charge suffered 60 percent casualties. As they got closer they got hit with canister and grapeshot. Canister is basically a can packed with balls which when fired disperses cutting a wide swath through the enemy ranks. Now imagine several of those going off at the same time. As put in Ken Burns documentary 'Entire regiment's disappeared.' Lee never regained his offensive momentum after that. On July 3rd Vicksburg, Mississippi fell a crucial port of goods and with it the Confederacy's hope of victory. They were effectively cut in two. Parkers Hills a tour guide who I listened to when I went to Vicksburg said that basically after Gettysburg the war could have been over but the south chose to go on. As Shelby Foote says 'Especially that they were not going to get foreign recognition without which we wouldn't have won the first revolution.' England would simply not support a nation built by and maintained by slave labor. The people wouldn't stand for it. Anyhow whenever its a hot day around two o' clock in the afternoon, I think of those soldiers about to make that charge.

Fuckin' A.

The Mob killed JFK. Well not the Mob by itself but the Mob in collusion with the CIA. At face value this seems absurd. Sure you say the Mafia is a violent ruthless organization but carry out a hit on the Chief executive of the United States? Fuhghedaboutit! Wrong I say because the Mafia had both the motivation and the capability at that time to make it happen. The Mafia in the 60's was a far more powerful vibrant organization than the mob of today. During the 1950's the Mob was making millions of dollars in revenue from the casino it had set up in Cuba. Thanks to their partnership with with dictator Flugencio Batista the Mob had free reign on the island. When revolutionary Fidel Castro and his band of rebels overthrew the despot in 1959 a lot of wiseguy's from Florida to Brooklyn were not happy. After all they were taking a huge hit financially and a wiseguy's biggest concern is money. Johnny Roselli of the Chicago outfit had collaborated with the CIA in the early 60's in various efforts to oust Castro and the failure of the Bay of Pigs in 1961 must have further roiled some tempers. Also there was the matter of JFK's brother Bobby who was doing everything in his power as Attorney General to make life hell for the mobsters. They were pissed about this because the patriarch of the Kennedy clan Joe Kennedy had used his influence with the Chicago outfit to help get JFK elected. Frank Ragano, Santo Trafficante's longtime lawyer recalled a conversation with the Mob boss years later in which the aging mobster told him in Sicilian 'We shouldn't have killed Giovanni.' It could have been just boasting, or was it?

Have I ever told you how much I fucking hate IMs?

I was thinking recently about leadership. More specifically Generalship. How sometimes a commander who is beloved by his men might not always be effective on the battlefield. George McClellan considered by some in the northern press as the 'young Napoleon.' Who after months of plodding slowly advanced towards richmond. He was beloved by his men who thought of him as something of a father figure. Yet as a General he failed to get much done. As opposed to someone like Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson who was not always like by his men but followed because of his many victories. Long marches and gruesome scenes of battle. That it what total war is, right into the present. Grant who by no means wanted to see the casualties of war was prepared to accept them as a sacrifice to end the war. 'War is the remedy our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.' William Tecumseh Sherman said that and it pretty much sums up what he saw what no one else saw in the early days that this was total war. Countrymen against countrymen, brother against brother. Still McClellan was not prepare to accept this fact writing to his wife: 'I am tired to the sickening sight of the battlefield with its mangled limbs and rotting corpses, victory has no charms for me when purchased at such cost.' Then stop being a general you asshole find a new line of work. If you can't accept what it will mean then back
down. Stonewall Jackson rode his men hard but it paid off. Joseph Johnston also on the Confederate side was beloved by his men but notorious for retreating and being overly cautious. There was a story about Johnston before the Civil war. He was with a group of officers from west point hunting. When they came back he hadn't bagged even one. He was a good shot, they said but he was to hesitant always waiting for the perfect shot and in the end not shooting. McClellan may have been acting to not see more of his men dead, but his reluctance and hesitation in the end cost more lives and prolonged the war longer then it needed to be. 'War is the remedy our enemies have chosen and I say give them all they want.'Sherman said and it took a long while for people to realize what a total war it would be.

Yes indeed

A few years back on Thanksgiving I was watching a PBS documentary about Charles Shulz the creator of peanuts. I've forgotten the exact quote but he said something like 'When someone says 'I feel like Charlie Brown today.' you know what that means.' I thought that was fascinating. Because godamnit I do know what that means and how that feels. To wake up just feeling alienated and isolated and just plain fucking bummed out and you just don't know why. I remember in the documentary too how they talked about how Shulz himself was a very depressed inward kind of person. And how he pored his heart and soul into that comic strip. And how after he died he wouldn't let anyone else take over for him. And god bless him for it, I say. Because that strip was his work and he felt very personally about it. And he continued to draw it up until his death. And the football the Charlie brown tries to kick every time only to have it taken away by Lucy. How he talked about how he couldn't let him kick that football. That football represents something I think. Although i'm not sure what. That one thing that we are all striving for that somehow gets away from us. That demon we are chasing that always seems to elude us.

Ok! Time to wake up!

Carter walked slowly through the sun drenched village wary of everything around him. It was midday and the sun was at its zenith and the sun had slowed down to a standstill. Everything was quiet except the soft breathing of a gentle breeze. Carter could see why the people of the village shut down at this time, the temperature had topped 100 degrees. It couldn't even be called heat in his mind, it was more like a malevolent force bent on people misery. Still carter had acclimated himself to most climates so he endured it as best he could. When he had been in Vietnam he had seen many of his colleagues felled with heatstroke and sunburn he had remained unscathed. He looked around the village. It was of modest size with stucco buildings and architecture that had likely been there for ages. It was unfortunate that the people of the country had been ill-formed and chosen the wrong person as they're leader. They weren't really to blame as they had no way of knowing. General Mustafa was a charismatic man who was genuinely concerned about the welfare of his people. His opposition General Aziz was the polar opposite, a lying, corrupt drunk who displayed an obvious disregard to anyone's wellbeing but his own. Even Carter had found him intolerable. But still he was their man, their guy the one who would do what they said. So it was his job to right this wrong, to train and equip a 'resistance' force, to plant stories in the local papers and to make it all seem legitimate. A few old man stood in front of the cafe idly smoking on a hookah. He had tried it a few times and it had always left him was an intense head rush, a few of the time he had suspected that someone had sneaked some hashish in the mix. He over to the cafe keeping a close watch at the two old men who peered back the same.

Kill and scalp all, nits make lice.

A lot of people who are I think at least a little bit ignorant of history wonder why Native american groups take issue with sports mascots. In the town where I grew up, South Deerfield this was a big issue when I was in seventh grade at Frontier. A Native American group had taken issue with the name and gotten the school to change it and there was a referendum on what the new name should be. I always thought it should be changed to the 'Frontier Rednecks' because of my experience at the school. But there were several choices and the student body ended up choosing 'red hawks' which remains the name to this day. But still alot of people wondered what all the fuss was about. I mean besides reducing a population of millions to a population of 400,000 at the turn of the century. Perhaps its the long history of broken treaties and broken promises, of forced marches and massacres. And the language of this period is unmistakable in terms of the intentions of those who coveted Indian lands. Words like 'extermination' and 'extinction' are used frequently when reading about the history of Native American's in the west. And the abuse continues to this day with Native Americans on reservations typically living below the poverty line. Colonel John Chivington of the U.S. army before the massacre at Sand Creek in which 105 Indians women and children were killed and 28 men 'kill and scalp all, nits make lice.' After the Sand Creek Massacre George and Charlie Bent who were sons of a white trader and a Cheyenne woman, were so disgusted by the events they witnessed there that they chose to take up with the Cheyennes instead and forsake their father. And who could blame them, after seeing the soldiers mutilating the bodies of the Indian's as one Soldier put it 'in going over the battleground the next day I did not see the body of man, woman, or child but was scalped, and in many horrible instances their bodies were mutilated in the most horrible manner-men, women, and children's privates cut out & I heard one man say that he had cut out a woman's private parts and had them for exhibition on a stick.' Makes your stomach turn reading the kinds of things people are capable of. And I still see people around town waving the 'redskins' banner like they are some kind of patriots. Fucking rednecks.

A good day to fight a good day to die.

She always hated the whiskey trader. He was a heavyset man with a large beard, who seemed to constantly reek of something a strange unpleasant odor she could never quite define. But mostly she hated the dark liquid that he pushed upon her people, that had turned half of her village into wife beaters, and thieves who would sell their firstborn for a taste of that vile liquid. It had turned her father in the space of a few years into a proud warrior and provider, loving father, and husband into something else. A vacant, decaying, husk of a human being. She saw him now passed out in the small room of they're small cabin the bottle half-full on the table beside the bed. She wanted to pour it out, to grab the rifle that hung on the wall and walk out into the village and shoot the whiskey trader dead. She knew this was a sentiment shared by more then a few in the village. She had poured it out before but her father had beaten her mercilessly for it. She had to constantly remind herself that this was not the same man who had reared her. Who had taught her how to live and be a good person in the world, who had comforted her when she was scared, when she felt helpless and in despair. She watched the whiskey trader from outside her window now, he was bargaining with an old man who was attempting to barter a belt or something for a bottle. He would demure at first, but eventually he would give the old man what he wanted. The whiskey trader seemed bound and determined to ensure death and ruin to her people, to sow the seeds of destruction for all of them. A few of the old men of the village had attempted to warn against this vice but their pleas had gone unheeded, unheard, except for a few. It would consume them all, there was no hope.

Love is coming to us all.

So I was thinking about doing some writing for a while now and finally i have managed to actually get down to it. Feeling low the past few days. Real low. Darkness, despair, drinking hoping that somehow that fleeing feeling of exuberance will cure what ails me. That ingesting something and feeling like shit and then doing it over the next day thinking it will be the cure. To fight fire with fire. So here I am at 5am just pondering what to do. What exactly is wrong. Can't seem to see through the haze. Got on this dating site and the hardest part of explaining who I am and what I'm doing. What am I doing? I really don't know. It saddens me this feeling. This utter detachment I have from myself. A feeling that I don't really care what happens. It reminds me somewhat of something Shelby foote said about Lincoln 'that he could remove himself from himself as if he were looking at himself.' I think in some ways thats how I feel. A lack of ego, of self-esteem, of pride. Something went wrong somewhere down the line and the shit just seems to come piling in. Sitting, stagnating, getting fat, old, useless. Eroding all my sense of dignity and self-worth, drowning myself in rivers of whiskey and malt liquor to dull everything. The pain, of what? Its not even fun anymore and the taste is fleeting. Feel disgusting and bloated every day and its just getting worse. Seems like everyone around me has confidence and know what they want but I just fall behind. Watching everything pass me by day by day not really knowing why. Why I live like this, why I don't want to move to do something with myself, to get out to live. Letting everything go to where I make an absolute fool of myself for no damn reason. Drinking just takes from you, at first it seems to give you things but then it takes. Until you don't know why your'e doing it but you still can't stop. Every day you wake up and you just don't want to. And people who know you ask you 'why are you still drinking?' and you can't think of damn good answer because you just don't know. And you just want to stop and just be like everyone else and just lead a relatively normal existence but you can't. And you can't just sip, or have a few beers like other people can. You have to swig, chug, and guzzle the stuff down as fast as you can. And the more you put in the more you want, but it never seems to fill the vast chasm you have inside you. Something missing. Something askew, but what is hard to say.