A Cub Scout salutes the fallen at the Punchbowl National Cemetery in Hawaii.

It is a rainy, dreary Memorial Day here in South Carolina so since most barbecues and picnics will be called off around here today, I’ve spent the morning thinking about what Memorial Day was enacted for — remembering our fallen soldiers. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a hawk, but if our boys and girls go into battle, my support goes with them. A true soldier, sailor, or marine doesn’t get to pick his or her war. At enlistment, they all took an oath to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and that’s the end of it. They may have serious ideological differences with their commanders over what they are fighting for, but the true soldier follows all lawful orders and, if needs be, dies for what his country if not his heart has told him is right. That bothers a lot of people these days because this is America and we thrive on the choices of the individual. We ask, “why should a soldier fight and die for a cause he does not passionately agree with?”

I think G.W. Chesterton hit nearest the mark answering this question when he said, “the true soldier fights, not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” Our soldiers defend our country. They always have. Some of the greatest heroes were also some of the most reluctant, like Sgt. Alvin York who despised the very idea of killing another human being, but who, when his country called, answered, went to the Argonne Forest, and became a hero.

Then there is the story of the Four Chaplains of the USS Dorchester. One was a Jewish Rabbi, two were Protestant ministers, and one was a Catholic priest, but when the Dorchester was torpedoed in frigid North Atlantic waters, the four men of differing faiths worked together to calm the panicked men and restore order to the passing out of life jackets. Then, when no more life vests remained, they each gave a frightened sailor their own. When Rabbi Goode pressed his vest into the hands of a frightend sailor, he didn’t stop to ask the man if he were a good Jew. Father Washington didn’t seek out an altar boy to give his vest to. They did what had to be done and when nothing more could be done, they joined hands — four faiths — on the fantail of the sinking ship and prayed.

So remember today and every day if you can’t support the war, please support the men and women fighting it. Bullets kill doves as easily as hawks. To remember the day, I’ve included a beautiful and solemn video of the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington Cemetery. Hopefully it will remind us of the multitudes of brave men and women who have paid the final price to keep America’s light shining in the world.

When Budge and I first married, we lived with Mama and Rob for a while until we got on our feet a little better financially. Budge helped Mama with the housework and laundry, but Mama did all the cooking just because . . . well, just because, I guess.

Anyway, one weekend about six months into our nuptials, Mama and Rob went to visit Grandma Lowe for the Lowe Family Reunion up in the hills of North Carolina. Since we had the house to ourselves, Budge decided she’d make us dinner. She’d cooked a few things for me before and they hadn’t be half bad. Tonight, she planned to pull out all the stops. She knew my favorite side item in the world was breaded, fried okra, so she obviously planned for that to be prominent on the menu. It was here that things got interesting.

Now, as a side note, my Budge is a wonderful wife. God knows she’s a whole lot more than I deserve and I am deeply appreciative of her. One issue she had early in our marriage, however, was putting way too much pressure on herself to be a modern day June Cleaver complete with pearl necklace and apron. She liked things to be perfect. Unfortunately, Budge never had much hands on experience cooking. Her mother passed away suddenly when Budge was 15 and she just hadn’t had time to learn much about the culinary arts. The second factor adding to this tense situation was the fact that Budge had only seen Mama cook fried okra for me and Mama always fried her okra in Granny’s cast iron skillet.

Now from that sharp intake of breath, I see that y’all, at least the cooks out there, realize what’s going on. In this day of non-stick, space age polymer pots and pans, a cast iron skillet has mostly been relegated to baking corn bread. The reason for this demotion is simple — it’s hard as crap to cook in a cast iron skillet! Budge did not know this.

So, blissful in her ignorance of cast iron cookery, she filled the pan about a third of the way with Wesson oil and waited. Once the oil started smoking and looked about to catch fire, she dumped the bag of Southern Home frozen okra into the pan. I didn’t know Budge knew some of the words that came out of her mouth when some of the hot oil spit out onto her arms and bare feet. If you wonder what I was doing at this time, I was sitting at the kitchen table watching intently and keeping my mouth shut like any intelligent new husband watching his wife cook.

Time passed. Budge watched the okra for several minutes with no discernible results, so she decided it would be safe to prepare other parts of the meal, just like she’d seen Mama do. Now, for the laypeople out there, here is a VERY important fact — the interval of time between “perfectly golden and delicious” fried okra and “blackened pea gravel” fried okra in a cast iron skillet is about three tenths of a second. Those three tenths of a second passed as Budge was pouring up the glasses of tea. I knew something was amiss by the way Budge looked at the frying pan when she crossed back to it.

I couldn’t see her face, but I thought I caught wind of a slight “sniff” as she carried the pan of okra to the sink to strain the oil off it. As she used Mama’s aluminum colander, I heard the unmistakable sound of river rock being ground in a coffee grinder. Still, how bad could it be? She set the rest of the meal on the table and it all looked extremely tasty. I fixed my plate then asked, “Baby, where is the okra?” She didn’t answer, but sighed heavily and brought over the bowl.

You know those lava rocks some people use as mulch around their flower beds and trees? Think harder and smaller. The bowl was half full of what can only be described as jet black ball bearings with bits of blackened cornmeal mournfully hanging on to them. I glanced up at my bride’s stricken face where her eyes were just beginning to tear up and did what any self respecting husband would do in such a situation. I poured the entire contents of the bowl onto my plate and began eating.

Under her watchful eyes, I ate the entire bowl of food formerly known as fried okra. It was crunchy. Ever ate charcoal flavored Grape-Nuts without milk? Make no mistake, it was charcoal. I could have drunk a liter of pure strychnine mixed with dioxin and the amount of charcoal in my stomach would have neutralized it instantly with no need for pumping or antidotes.

It was worth every bit though to see the tears vanish from Budge’s eyes as I declared the okra “quite tasty”. We both knew the truth, but that’s what you do when you love someone. You make allowances. Mama later explained to Budge with a smile just how hard cast iron cooking was and introduced her to The Fry Daddy. Budge makes very good deep fried okra. I’ll have to tell you about her peanut butter pie later though!

Keep your feet clean and remember who loves you!

No ribbons?!

One of my good buddies has a little girl in kindergarten. Now to look at him, you might not think Mike would be the “soccer dad” type, but he does a pretty good job of faking it. He called me earlier to tell me about his day. Seems the mother of his child “volunteered” him to help with Field Day. Now Mike, like me, had some fond memories of Field Day in elementary school, but what he described, and what TRIGOOBITM (who has her Field Day tomorrow) confirmed has totally destroyed a part of my childhood.

As Mike put it, “Coach, they’ve ruined Field Day!”

Now, if you remember field day like I do, you remember signing up for all sorts and types of athletic events that will never see the light of of an Olympic torch but which made for outstanding fun. I’m talking about wheelbarrow races, three-legged races, egg and spoon relay, and water balloon tosses. This was the day to see who was most athletic or at least who could be the best problem solver. Above all, we competed as INDIVIDUALS (or teams in the case of relays and the Tug-of-War) If you won a given event, you got a blue ribbon with a little tag on the back naming the event, then second place got a red ribbon and so on all the way down to the pale yellow ribbon proudly proclaiming you took seventh place! If you didn’t make it into the top seven (usually out of 15) then you got a purple ribbon that said in not so many words, you tried.

Apparently, they don’t do that anymore. Now, the kids compete “as a class” against “other classes” and no one makes notice of “winners” or “losers”. The flour sack race and the softball toss have been replaced by benign events requiring little or no grace or form. Worst of all as far as Mike and I were concerned, no one gets a ribbon! Of course, if you aren’t going to crown a winner, what’s the point in a ribbon? This is a tragic development. My buddy Wishbone still has all his Field Day ribbons from GC-O . . . every ribbon for every Field Day for every year, including BOTH his fourth grade years!

As I understand it, the traditional athletic gala that was the Field Day of my youth was too damaging to the psyches of today’s tender children. See, if you recognize a winner, then by definition, everyone else must be a loser and we have to avoid dividing the little ones into winners and losers at all costs. If someone actually compared a blue ribbon to a red ribbon, the poor child might be irreparably damaged.

This way of thinking is everywhere now. It’s why everyone on every team in rec league baseball gets a trophy even if they don’t win a game. It’s why peewee football doesn’t count the first quarter because “everyone plays” in the first quarter. Kids have to feel good about themselves so we have to avoid all pretense of “winning” and “losing.”

In the end, though, all we’ve done is make everyone a loser. We’ve created a generation of divas, male and female, who think they are entitled to some sort of reward just because they showed up and not just any reward, but a reward every bit as good as what the person who did “the best” got (although “the best” becomes rather debatable under these conditions.)

I hate to tell all the do-gooders and warm fuzzy makers out there who have emasculated Field Day, but the kids know who wins and loses. They are smarter than we give them credit for and they know it’s a sham. We had winners and losers and we turned out fine. I knew I’d never run as fast as Brian or Billy-Ray . . . and they knew they’d never have the grades I had. We had our niches and we were happy. Even Stephan was happy. Stephan had something wrong with him. I don’t know what it was, but when I was in school, we didn’t have short buses and “special classes”. Stephan was in class with me from K5 all the way to 8th grade. He wasn’t ever held back because everyone knew Stephan would eventually end up in a “home” where he’d be looked after.

At school, he was looked after . . . by us. Stephan tried to learn his times tables just like we did and when he got his 2s down by heart in fourth grade, the rest of the class congratulated him and cheered for him just like we did when Greg went from the 1s to the 12s in 2 minutes with no mistakes. Stephan wasn’t a loser; he was just different. He didn’t get a blue ribbon on field day because he didn’t WIN a blue ribbon . . . but he got a shirt full of purple ribbons because he tried and we appreciated him for that.

Not any more. Now, everyone is rewarded according to the lowest common denominator and we wonder why students have such fits when they don’t get their way. It all started going south when they ruined field day and took away the purple ribbons. I’m not sure what it’ll take to get things made right, but we need to start soon.

Until then, keep those feet clean and call me if you can hold your own in a three-legged race . . . I need a partner!

Love y’all 🙂

Danger Pessimist Ahead

I have had a variety of nicknames throughout my life. Obviously with a last name like “Wham,” every group I ever met, every class I ever taught, every chat room where I was stupid enough to use my real name, some joker would say “Wham? Wham! Bam! Thank you ma’am!” like I’d never heard that before. Then I had my other nicknames. Stay-Puft was a popular one after Ghostbusters came out at the movies. Before that, I was The Great White Marshmallow. Unfortunately, both of these monikers draw attention to my status as The Man The Sun Forgot as well as my rather large girth. It didn’t help that Mama had a propensity for dressing me in horizontal stripes in grade school so Michelin Man was another of my nome de plumes.

My most ironic nickname, however, is one that I’m not the least bit proud of — Last Stop Before the Razor. Here’s the story in brief. I am not an optimist. I really, really want to be an optimist, but it’s just not in my DNA. I am the scion of a lengthy lineage of pessimists. Not just pessimists, FATALISTIC pessimists. We never met a bad situation that we couldn’t make worse by pointing out the utter hopelessness of success, rescue, resolution, etc. Definitely not the lives of the parties.

Now, I got my unfortunate nickname from a colleague I was talking to about her love life. She was having man trouble and we’d spent a good deal of time and lunches hashing out this problem or that problem when I made the statement that branded me The Last Stop Before the Razor. I said, after listening to another twenty minute tale of woe, “Well, considering your luck with men in the past, maybe you just aren’t meant to have a husband or a long term boyfriend.” My buddy sat there stunned. Clueless as usual to my conversational gaffes, I just looked at her and said, “What?” That’s when she said, “If I ever want to kill myself, I’m coming to you first and laying out all my misery and sorrow so you can say ‘maybe it’s just meant to be’ and then I can go slit my wrists. You are the last stop before the razor.”

As the Lord Above is my witness, I really wasn’t trying to be mean. I was trying to help. I just looked at the situation in a full and honest light and gave what I thought was an accurate assessment of the situation. Later, I was relating the conversation to Budge and when I told her what I’d said she blurted out, “You said WHAT? Why didn’t you just tell the girl she was fat, old, and ugly and be done with it?” (for the record, the girl in question is not fat, old, or ugly. Budge has a tendency to hyperbole.” She reiterated what my buddy had already said, “Honey, remind me never to come to you for comfort when I’m depressed.”

I’ve tried to get better and more tactful, but I still have a bad habit of blurting out the unvarnished truth that, while truthful, isn’t always well received. So, Budge spends a lot of time prefacing her statements with “what he means is . . . ” while I remain The Last Stop Before the Razor.

Love y’all. Keep those feet clean.

The news is rife with tales of funding woes all over the state of South Carolina. My wife’s district is the largest in the state. Two years ago, they hired around 550 teachers. Last year, the number was down to 220. This year, with all the cuts projected and the increases in class sizes, speculation is NO teachers will be hired. Folks will just get moved around until things work as best they can.

One neighboring district is reducing the teacher force by 115 positions. Another district, and a small one at that, is cutting 65 jobs. My former district told every first and second year teacher and every retired teacher back in March that none of them would get a contract for the upcoming year and at least ten or twenty of the remaining handful of positions are being eliminated.

It is so bad that even here in the depths of the football crazy South, talk has turned to eliminating sports and other extracurricular activities in a last ditch attempt to make ends meet. Folks, when the wild eyed Southern boys start talking about doing away with football, you can say that the Apocalypse surely draweth nigh.

Every edition of the local paper speaks to teacher layoffs and teacher pay cuts and the increasingly dire situation of the classrooms. Of course, the comments and letters sections are also full of people saying their taxes are too high and teachers need to quit crying and be thankful they have a job at all.

To top matters off, all projections for the state revenue stream point to matters getting WORSE next year. A colleague of mine from my former district has been in every position from classroom teacher to district superintendent since he entered education in 1962. He is now the CFO for the district more or less part time. According to his long memory, this current “slump” is the worst he has EVER seen. If funding levels were restored tonight, he thinks it would take at least four to five years for the damage to BEGIN to be undone.

So that’s the preamble. Here’s the question: What is the worst case scenario in education?

I mean, what happens once there is no money in any pots to pay for anything including teacher salary, light bills, paper, etc? It looks to be headed that way in this state right now at a rapid pace. Does anyone out there know of what happens when a state’s educational funding goes belly up? Do schools shut down? CAN schools shut down?

If anyone out there has any knowledge of what can or maybe has happened in the past, please leave a comment and please pass this on the educational grapevine. Are other states anywhere near this bad of shape? I know Kansas City (one of them anyway) shut half the schools down and consolidated students. Is anything else like that going on under the national radar? I don’t think the nation has any idea just how bad the situation is South Carolina. I’m trying to get the word out to see if there is any hope.

If you know anything . . . please tell me so I can pass the word along. I’ve got a LOT of scared people around me.

Love y’all.