Country Manners

(Jim at the Willow bar. Photo Socotra.)

I was talking to Old Jim at Willow last night. It was a back to work Monday, and the Christmas decorations were up and I am still not ready for it. I had done some Internet Monday stuff when the network at the office cooperated, and had a bit of buyer’s remorse about the whole thing.

Jasper had been up on the bar through the afternoon, stringing ornaments off the faux ceiling. “I’m a monkey,” he said with a modest grin. “I am the one who can get up there.” I shivered a bit, imaging falling off the bar and crashing down to the hard wooden floor.

Funny what you think of, when life changes. I used to enjoy crashing into things. Not so much any more.

Jon-without was working on a PowerPoint presentation on the bar in front of him. He was drinking happy hour white, and he explained he was supposed to deliver the pitch to a visiting Ukrainian delegation seeking smart solutions to coal-fired power generation, which is to say, “go ahead and burn the stuff if that is what you got.”

People lobby for the oddest things around here, but of course this is Fantasy Island, not reality. I know the coal industry is on the block, but it seems sort of crazy to be junking a whole economic sector before something else is in place. But what do I know, and besides, I have resolved to stay away from politics for a while.

“You guys have been driving me nuts,” glowered Jim. “I am just glad the election is over and you lost.”

“I am not a Republican,” I said primly. “I am a libertarian without a party.”

“It amounts to the same thing,” he replied. “You and John-with and Jon-without and Jerry the Legal Beagle can just stuff it.” Jerry spread his grin wide. “Four more beers!” he called to Jasper. “And mind your manners!”

ENS Socotra stopped by to deliver a dozen eggs I had asked him to get at the Ft Myer Commissary, the single most influential outlet in the Defense Commissary system, and then we talked about the prospects for his next set of orders. He would prefer San Diego, natch, as opposed to someplace out in the sticks like NAS Lemoore.

The new scheme is to open up the aperture, a concept which includes the possibility of going to a Strike-Fighter squadron on the Washington Maru out of Yokosuka. The idea was striking. Japan is a great place, once you get the manners of the place straight.

“In Japan, people feel it is OK to come right into your house. It is natural for them to stop inside the front door, which would have consequences here.”

“It seems a long ways away,” he replied. “But I imagine I could get used to it.”

“It is not as far as you would think, once you get used to the local manners,” I said. “You should see how far away Cajun Country seems right here in our own country.” I fished in my backpack for the iPad, slid the little slider thing on the screen and entered my security code. “Check this out,” I said. “My pal Boats wrote me another one of his treatises on Vultures, Universal Mongrels and manners in the country. I have been taking some notes on how to act down at the farm. Take a look.” I handed over the device and the ENS looked over these words:

At my Uncle Mel’s place the “Circle M,” a cattle ranch in what was in my childhood the deeply rural part of St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana several dogs stayed in a large dog house about 50 yards from the house…they never really bothered visitors, they didn’t leave the doghouse area, they weren’t that attached to the human house. In this sense they were alarm, not watch dogs.

(Country Barn. Photo Dave Allen.)

These dogs fully expected my Uncle, Aunt, or one their five boys to appear at the door before the car, or rarely horseback or pedestrian visitor reached the house. If the visitor was not identifiable to the humans in the house, the residents would go inside and reappear with the duty shotgun.”

This must have appeared quite sensible to the dogs, which generally paid no further attention to the matter. Humans would come and go from the house at different times and for different purposes and would always elicit a “heads up” response from the dogs who would rarely stir from their restful positions around the dog house.

The dogs had quite a different reaction when someone exited the house with a shotgun and walked away from the house. That signaled the hunt was on. They would fall in behind the gun-bearing human and follow to the edge of the woods or fence line, then take the lead, heads down and sniffing. We’d simply follow them to rabbits and quail for the table. Occasionally they’d scare up a wild turkey.

Keep that turkey in mind a its a key to the system I’m trying to describe to you. But first since this may find its way to a Yankee audience I’d appreciate a few words in defense of my gun-toting relatives.

Now in defense of what seems like an inhospitable attitude of greeting unknown visitors with a shot gun to the average Yankee who simply writes off the Southern Rural practice as a sign of cultural backwardness, keep in mind if a stranger intends to do you harm when your nearest neighbor is miles away, and go outside to greet the possibly ill-intended visitor unarmed, you are dead.

Lots of these sorts of thing happened ion the Deep South between 1865 and 1965. My Aunt and Uncle didn’t point the shotgun at the stranger, they just had it in hand on first greeting which was usually delivered in a friendly tone.

Most people in the South at the time understood the precaution and never took offense at the mere sight of a person with a gun not aimed at them. The idea of being offended by the mere sight or possession of a gun is a concept totally alien to the South. Frankly, we believe that people who will not purchase, train with, and maintain a gun can not answer the county or parish sheriff’s call for militia or posse back up, and therefore should pay a special tax for the extra police protection that such an attitude generates.

While the New York City mind sees gun ownership as a danger, the Southern rural mind sees it as a civic obligation and response to posse call out, or enhanced physical security, as a sort of tax in kind.

If you won’t provide the service you should pay a cash tax to support the extra police personnel that it takes to keep order. We’re not saying the New York attitude is wrong for Manhattan, but why do they think what’s good for them is good for everyone else?

When the local sheriff received state police intelligence of bad guys headed our way, a telephone tree was activated as a simple reminder to those located outside the town limits of the Parish Seat to lock doors (not a usual habit), and follow the usual precautions (which everyone knew meant answer the door or a strange visitor with gun in hand.)

My grandmother saved at least one life, and captured two thieves on her property with this practice and my Uncle foiled one robbery on his property the same way. The distance between the events was over 50 years but that apparently was often enough to reinforce the lesson. You really have to wonder how bad the rural crime level might have become if the custom hadn’t have evolved, and local law enforcement learned how to harness it.

Let me get off my soap box now. We Cajuns actually appreciate the the “back to the land movement” among the children of our late invaders. Perhaps finally non Southerners may understand that some of our “cultural quirks” are not “quirks” at all but just good common sense for a rural or semi rural environment, including a “gentleman’s estate.”

We Southern children of the “Greatest Generation” learned these things first hand, even if we were raised primarily in the city. The South was the last place in the country where most people still had relatives they spent time with living on the land.

Today in Atlanta, Houston, and quite a few other places young Southern adults are growing up without this connection and understanding of the land. In terms of attitude, this next generation of big city Southerners seem as alien to my generation as New Yorkers.

Yuppies from Houston, and Atlanta, as well as New York worry me. I’m afraid they may not be able to survive more than a ten minute drive from a Starbucks, yet they are dead certain that their attitudes and knowledge are superior to everyone else.

So, we’d like to encourage all of the members of our generation north and south who possibly can to do so, to get some small acreage within an hour or so drive of the grandchildren. Get the little ones out there often and teach them the lessons of living a bit closer to the earth.

For many of you Yankees, that may mean learning the lessons first yourselves. Back around 1900, our values were closer to those of the founding fathers. Those values were formed in closer proximity to nature.

With now less than 3% of the population literally living off the land, we need more people at least living on the land even if their income is derived from non-agrarian activities.

That is where our seemingly contradictory traditions of self-reliance and cooperative endeavor first found their unique American balance. We need to replace the class warfare thing with a bit of that.”

The ENS looked at me skeptically. “You are going back to the land? That is absurd. I can’t see you plowing up the front yard of the farm to grow vegetables.”

“Well, it is sort of a metaphor about manners,” I said. “Plus the Russians are actually growing things already, and are going to put in grapes.”

“Figures you would be living a metaphor and mooching tomatoes.”

“Would you care for another beer?” I asked.

“That is the sort of metaphor I can get behind,” said the ENS.

“Mind your manners,” I said.