Some Whining, then a little bit about my childhood

Depressed and angry.  Looking at recent diaries, I think a lot of us are.  

I watched some independent movie.  I read a couple of rant diaries.  I read in the other peoples news areas that pet shelters are seeing major upticks of families giving up their pets because they no longer have a home.  In the body of the story, it is worse.  Starving animals.  Animal foster groups evolving into temporary shelters for folks who are trying to find animal friendly apartments.  

It is just another tick in the stuff that sucks.  Pets are small potatoes compared to troubles in other countries.  There are 43 flavors of blood shed and heart ache in Kenya.  People are breaking down walls to try to get somewhere where there is food and some safety in the Gaza strip.  
I take 2 valium and drift off.

My middle name is Lurlene.  I was born in 1954 and mom claims to have heard Lurleen (Dad never was great at spelling and I never knew it was spelled wrong until recently), George Wallace's wife at something in Beaumont.  I think it is more likely she heard her on the radio, but mom was a true Texan who never let the truth get in the way of a good story.  Anyway, she was the most educated woman mom had ever heard.  Or, as she would say, "She talked so purty, I knew she was important."  My mom hoped I would grow up to be a grand, educated woman like Lurleen.  As they say...be careful what you wish for.

George Wallace was originally thought of as progressive on racial issues.  He refused to walk out of the Democratic Convention with the other southern Democrats over Truman's civil rights stance in 1948. He was, I think, in the Alabama state legislature at that time.  He later joined the Dixicrats after losing a gubernatorial election in 1958 by speaking out against the KKK.  The quote is..."I'll never be outniggered again."  And he made good on that commitment.  In 1962, he took the governorship of Alabama on a straight segregationalist platform.  Anyway, he was a vile, unscrupulous man who managed to finagle another term as governer by running Lurleen, but this story is really not about him or her.    

The Brown decision was also in 1954.  The supreme court ruled that state laws requiring separate schools for whites and blacks were unconstitutional.  But that changed little in the South.  I was born in the Liberty Texas County hospital near my home town of Winnie, Texas.  I remember when I was 6 or so being pulled away from a drinking fountain because it was the wrong one.  I remember the 'colored people's' laundry mat in town.  The small town was peopled by rice farmers mostly.  There was also enough oil money that we had a nice school for our size.  The racial divide was very simple.  The blacks worked the rice field for the farmers and lived in shacks, many provided by the farmers.  My Dad worked in the oil fields.

We bussed the school children to the next county where there was a fine colored school that taught home economics and shop.  We integrated in something like 1965.  I was in 5th grade.  Since we were bussing out of county, there was no help to it, my family explained to my sister and I as we prepared for our school year.  

Back then, we had classes based on testing and grades.  The blacks or 'coloreds' as they were publicly called back then, were tested and placed in the lower classes.  Since the 'colored school' had little academics, the low testing was pretty much a given.  There were a couple of exeptions as we had one family who's father taught in the 'colored school'.

I was in the top class so only had gym class to share.  I was surprised at how quiet and easy the change seemed to go.   We were warned to report any problems by teachers and our parents, so we expected trouble.  It was years later that I was told why it was so quiet.  The rice farmers had held a meeting with their help and warned them that ANY trouble and they would be fired, blacklisted, and turned out of their homes.  

I was skinny as a rail, wore my cousin's ill fitting clothes and tested out top in my grade.  I lived in a Sun Oil company provided house on the bad side of town.  I was not in the main stream.  Bored with school, I began to sit at the back of the class with the trouble makers.  My first boyfriend was one such who spent all his classroom time practicing his penmanship.  Eddie had a great future as a caligrapher.  But he was a reader in disguise also.  With the help of a liberal history teacher, we soon found our cause.

I proudly told mom I was a communist.  I explained it was the only fair way for a country to be run.  My mom opined, "Fair is a place to take a pig and hope to win a prize.  This is America." and slapped me silly.  My dad added a good bible belt beating when he got home.  I was undeterred.  I was sent home two weeks later when Eddie and I had a sit in after lunch.  He had a crown of barbed wire and his hair combed straight down his forehead, I guess in an effort to make it appear as long as possible.  I don't know why the barbed wire, but some things, you don't have to make up.  You just tell them.  We sat in a circle on the grass and chanted "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh" and "Hell no, we won't go".  This was my first exercise in civil disobedience and the first time I was expelled from school.  There were more beatings at home.  When we got back to school, a lecture from the vice principal, who was a cold war vet about the importance of standing up for America.  We laughed, we got most of the class to laugh, and red faced, he marched us down and called for our parents.  Rinse and repeat on the beatings.  

All I have energy for today.  Now, pooties.

Miko and Bud right after rescue (note the huge snooping dane nose):

Chloe then joined us, another rescue:

Herc, the jerk