Part One –
Red Neck
Freebird's long, languid opening licks stir my soul.
Like Philly boy,
Ray Benson, I’m a Southerner at heart.
Ray saw “miles and miles of Texas” and never looked back.
I hail from the east side of the Delaware. From New Jersey. South Jersey, that is. Our North Jersey neighbors have gone on record that the southernmost part of the Garden State is Ghetto, populated with Pineys (Jersey's hillbillies), Trash, and is “Pretty Much Alabama”. Sweet Home Alabama.
Yeah, I’m a
displaced redneck, all right. I have a
taste for biscuits and gravy, barbecue, bourbon, collards, cornbread, Krispy
Kreme, Cajun and Creole delights. I love Bob Wills, Bill Monroe, Hank, Waylon,
Willie, Patsy, Dolly, and the Opry. Emmy
Lou is my queen, but I’m becoming an Ella Fella.
And I tip my hat to
those patriotic Southern gentlemen and good ol’ boys who stood up for their
homeland in Mr. Lincoln’s war. Heroes one and all.
Need I point out
that the Treaty of Paris, which ended the War for Independence, was concluded
with one country on one side (Great Britain) and thirteen newly sovereign
nation-states on the other. The text
lists them individually as parties to the accord
"His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States; that he treats with them as such”
Each former colony
was recognized as a free, sovereign, and independent state, just as
France, Germany, or Italy are sovereign and independent states.
America's newly independent states banded together in a federation for shared purposes just as our European friends band together for mutual benefit in the EU. It was always understood that any nation could leave at any time, as the Brits did with Brexit.
On this side of the pond, the Founding Fathers understood that any or
all of the states could withdraw from the federation if it ceased to serve
their interests.
By 1860, the South was getting seriously hosed by the North with no solution
in sight. Federal government policies
were skewed heavily in favor the North to the detriment of the Southern states
An essay by Matthew Miller put it succinctly:
By the mid-19th century, the United States
had become an economic house divided. The North, rapidly industrializing,
favored protectionist tariffs to shield its manufactured goods from foreign
competition. The South, agrarian and dependent on exporting its cotton and
other cash crops to Europe, required free trade to prosper—or at least minimal,
temporary protectionist tariffs. The federal government, under Northern
control, increasingly imposed tariffs that extracted wealth from the South and
simultaneously benefited the North. They were not merely policies of economic
preference but instruments of exploitation, as much of the wealth extracted was
spent on Northern internal improvements.
The political hurdles to overcome this were insurmountable. The Northern Republicans held a 147 to 87
seat advantage in the House, and a 17 to 15 edge in the Senate. Lincoln was a minority president, garnering less
than 40% of the popular vote while carrying zero Southern states.
If “no taxation without representation” was just cause for the thirteen
colonies to sever ties with the Motherland, then no taxation without effective representation is an equally plausible reason for Southern
secession.
As they did four score and four years ago, the Southerners asserted
their right to peacefully exit a bad deal. This time, Abe Lincoln played the role
of King George. The North pressed its
overwhelming advantage in manpower, money, and machinery to crush the agrarian
Southern upstarts for the benefit of its bankers, merchants, and
industrialists.
Just because they won did not justify the carnage of Mr. Lincoln’s war. Might does not make right.
God bless Virgil Kane. God forgive those who visited pain, death,
and destruction on his homeland and his family.
And please do not say that the War Between the States was a struggle to
end slavery.
Lincoln’s Republican Party platform was committed to preserving slavery
where it already existed. In a letter to
newspaper publisher Horace Greeley, President Lincoln confessed: “My
paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union… If I could
save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it,”.
In that same letter, Lincoln,
who was a philosophical descendant of Alexander Hamilton, declared that he
sought national authority to be restored.
Two years after the North
commenced hostilities, the Emancipation Proclamation was proclaimed as an
afterthought. It was a propaganda ploy to
clothe a tawdry cash grab in a cloak of moral righteousness.
As always, it was all about
the Benjamins, or whoever’s face was on the currency back then.
Despite the soaring rhetoric of his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln’s
vision of centralized authority is anathema to liberty. Thoreau nailed it. "That
government is best which governs least"
‘Nuff said.
Part Two – White Trash
A cursory look at my pigmentation and features suggests that I am of
European lineage. What we call “White”.
The man and woman who conceived me disposed of me at
birth. That makes me “trash”. White Trash.
Fortunately, I was gestating in an era when unwanted babies were put onto the salvage heap for others to claim.
Had my birth mom been pregnant with me twenty years later, I probably would have been disposed of with the medical waste.
It could well have been a hard-knock life for me. Luckily, a loving,
childless couple, Joe and Kay Siano, rescued me. Praise Jesus!
I can’t say much about White Privilege, except that I was privileged to
have them pour their heart, soul, time, talents, and treasure into giving me an
awesome childhood and every advantage they could afford.
Think of Steve Jobs, another infant adoptee of my generation, and the wonderful working-class couple that adopted him. Steve may never have had the opportunity to change the world without the love and support of his adoptive parents.
Consider the case of Tim Tebow.
Doctors advised his mom to abort him. But Mamma Tebow said “no”.
Her baby, Tim, went on to win a Heisman Trophy and two national championships. The Associated Press honored him as the GOAT
college quarterback.
Dr. Fauci might say Tim's mom was“anti-science” for
ignoring the advice of “medical professionals”.
If life is like a box of chocolates. so is every child in the
womb. You never know what you're going
to get – a Steve Jobs, a Tim Tebow, or me.
Where there is life, there's hope.
Choose life.
Part Three – Blue Blazers
Mr. Lincoln’s war began a long erosion of states' rights as the newly invigorated central government grew in size, strength, and ambition. The odious, post-war Fourteenth Amendment pushed national,
one-size-fits-all solutions onto the states and localities.
In this instance, the long arm of Uncle Sam reached down to the sleepy burb of Pennsauken. It
handed my folks notice that I was to be removed from our nearby school
and bused far across town to satisfy some DC bureaucrat’s notion of social
justice.
Ma and Pa Siano would have none of that for their precious boy.
Even Joe Biden, while he was still cogent, knew busing was stupid. In a 1977 Senate Judiciary hearing, young Joe said, “Unless we do something about this, my
children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle
with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some
point.”
During the 2020 Democratic debates, Kamala Harris wiped the floor with old Joe
over this. It was her proudest moment.
Back to my story. My folks elected
to forgo a no-charge public school education and pay for me to attend a newly
opened Catholic school within walking distance of our house.
They had no money to spare.
They worked multiple blue-collar jobs so that I might be a blue-blazer
boy. They sacrificed time, energy, and
money for my education and a shot at the American Dream.
At St. Stephen’s, boys wore blue blazers, white shirts, blue ties, and dark pants. The girls wore blue
jumpers over white blouses. Their skirts had to be no more than an inch or two above the floor when measured from a kneeling position.
School days were highly regimented.
One teacher, usually a nun, had to ride herd over sixty kids, for six hours every day. We processed into
the building and took our assigned seats in height order and in silence. We spoke only when spoken to. Discipline came swiftly. Sometimes painfully.
Detailed homework assignments were written on the blackboard and were
expected to be copied into our notebooks word-for-word.
Parents were expected to read the assignments, review that work, and
sign off on the completed tasks.
Failure to comply resulted in swift discipline.
Sometimes painful for tough guys.
When classroom control slipped, our Pastor jumped into the
breach.
Father (later Monseigneur) John O’Brien was a fire-breathing, short-fused, old-school martinet from the Old Sod. OB sported a huge turnip head atop a tree trunk body with ham hock mitts that would do any pugilist proud. He was the avenging angel who made “promises” of reprisal, not “threats”.
We would later understand that the fire breath was Camels and cheap
scotch.
Forgive me for quoting liberally from the Kinks' underappreciated Schoolboys in Disgrace album. Its lyric poetry evokes my time at St. Stephen's.
From an ocean away, rock's Poet Laureate captured OB's essence:
Boys like you were born to waste,
You never listen to a word I say
And if you think you're here to mess around,
You're making a big mistake,
'Cos you're gonna find out the hard way,
You gonna find out the hard way.
No matter what I do or say,
You're much too dumb to educate.
One day life's going to turn around and slap you in the face,
Then you're gonna find out the hard way.
You'll take the hard way,
Gonna take the hard way.
Well, you'll do it your way and I'll do it my way,
And we'll see who's the one to survive.
You'll find that with no foundation
Or qualifications
There's no way that you can get by,
No, there's no way you can get by.
Why don't you take the easy way?
Why don't you co-operate?
Don't just sit there and vegetate.
Do you want to end up illiterate?
You think that life's a vacation
And you've no inclination
To dust away the cobwebs of your mind.
Now it's time for confrontation
And I'm tired of being patient,
So I've got to be cruel to be kind.
Yeah, I've got to be cruel to be kind.
I'm wasting my vocation teaching you to write neat
When you're only fit to sweep the streets.
Your intellect is such
That it requires a killer's touch.
So I'm going to play it your way,
We'll take the hard way.
Going to take the hard way,
You can take the hard way.
Gonna take the hard way,
Gonna take the hard way.
They pushed us. We pushed back. Eight years of jostling and sparring, punching and ducking. We took our hits, but like the Bayonne Bleeder, we hung in and never backed down.
Frankie was the role model., "I faced it all, and I stood tall, and did it my way”
Old Freddy Nietzsche got this one right. "Out of life's school of war—what does not kill me makes me stronger."
He could not have been more correct.
By not being mollycoddled, we learned our 3Rs, and became resilient. We grew up to be accountable, responsible, and self-supporting men and women.
Like Marines forged at Parris Island, the Blue Blazer Boys and Blue Jumper Girls owe a debt to St. Stephen’s and our parents who sent us there. It’s a tribute to the Greatest Generation that they wanted even greater things for their kids and were willing to sacrifice for it.
Our moms and dads pushed us towards “greatness”. A greatness not
measured in dollars and cents, but in faith, loyalty, and character.
So, let’s close with Mr. Davies as he fondly recalls his old school:
If ever you think
about the happiest days of your life
Cast back your mind for a while
And remember the time when you were a child
Don't think of things that make you sad
Just remember all the good times that you had
Do you remember only happy days
Full of flaming Junes and summer holidays?
Or do you remember those stormy Novembers
As we walked in the wind and the rain?
Schooldays were such happy days
Now they seem so far away
I remember and I'll always treasure
Schooldays were the happiest days of your life
But we never appreciate the good times we have
Until it's too late
I miss all the acquaintances we made
And I'd go back if I could only find a way
Schooldays were the happiest days
Though at the time they filled me with dismay
We only remember what we choose to remember
When I was a schoolboy I loathed regulations and rules
I hated my textbooks and my school uniform
'Cos it made me conform
And teachers were always disobeyed
Feel the lump in his throat upon leaving.
God bless you, Rednecks, White Trash “deplorables,” and especially you Blue Blazer Boys and Blue Jumper Girls who roamed St. Stephen's hallowed halls
Rock on! We’re still standing.
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