Martin Simpson

I hope everybody had a great weekend and Father’s Day!   If you didn’t see it, yesterday I posted my tribute to my dad from a few years back.  If your father is still with us, I hope you got to spend some time with him yesterday.

I spent a good chunk of this last week making and repairing wooden window screens, and glazing some old windows.  I’ve mentioned before what a great pleasure it has been to be able to combine mental work with physical work throughout my life, and this summer is turning out to be a prime example.

I’m reading a lot, and writing these columns, and trying to get a few other writing projects off the ground, and that is engaging work.  But working with my hands brings a different kind of satisfaction.  I can almost feel the shades of generations of manual-laboring Simpsons looking over my shoulder as I tear down and rebuild wooden screens, or build new ones.

That work is doubly enjoyable because I get to do it in my old garage, which I’ve turned into an air-conditioned and reasonably well-organized workshop.  I know: I couldn’t sound more like an old, straight, retired guy if I tried.  And I am more than okay with that!

The window glazing is something I’d really recommend, if you have an old house and are looking for a quasi-zen, gratifying task.  I’ve got three old, two-story rental houses – built in 1886, 1922 and 1930 – containing around 50 windows needing some amount of attention.

Glazing involves two satisfying stages: removing old, brittle or failing putty, and then putting in a pristine layer of new stuff.  Does it help that I’m still basically a child at heart, and glazing putty is basically Play-Doh for adults?

It definitely does.

Plus, in a world where too many are pursuing pointless grievance study degrees and wallowing in gobbledygook theories – about policing, energy, infrastructure, the military, immigration, etc. – that will not work in a million years, it’s so refreshing to work with humble tools and materials that do the job they’re made for.

For example, when you work with any kind of pipe or metal fittings, there is always a male end and a female end, and they fit together perfectly.  When you’re doing wiring, you’ve got plugs and outlets that are male and female, and they work.  Meanwhile, you’re paying $60K a year for your college kids to learn that male and female don’t really exist, or are interchangeable, or something. 

(Our society needs a lot less Noam Chomsky and Nikole Hannah-Jones, and a lot more Mike Rowe, is what I’m saying.)  

A glazing tip is a tiny piece of metal with a point at one end, two tabs that form a vertical ledge just behind that point, and two flat metal fins behind that.  You place the tip flat on the window glass, put the edge of your multipurpose scraping tool against those two tabs, and you push the pointed tip into the wooden window frame, wiggling it in until the two tabs are touching the wood, and the fins are holding the edge of the window against the frame. 

Then you work the putty in your hands, and start pushing it into the groove where the glass meets the wooden frame, one putty-knife-width at a time.  Once you’ve got one window-edge filled in, you take the putty knife at one end of the edge, press it down at a 45-degree angle, and slide it along the bead of new putty. 

The result is a clean, fresh line of putty along the window frame, and a long snake of excess putty that you retrieve to use on the next edge.  Plus: aesthetic bliss. 

Okay, that’s a lot of babbling about something that probably doesn’t seem that important.  But I’m not so sure about that.

I have nothing against therapy, and I think that some anti-depressants have their usefulness at times.  But for me, a lot of the stresses of life can be addressed by walking in some woods, listening to some classical music, reading a good book, and making some wooden screens and glazing windows. 

Okay, time for a quick whip around the news from this week:

Remember when Biden campaigned from his basement, and he was clearly a doddering old man who wasn’t in any shape to be president?

Well those are looking like the good old days now, aren’t they?

I’m sure you’ve seen clips of Biden’s speech in Connecticut.  His bizarre closing – “God save the queen, man!” – has gotten the most attention.  And for good reason.  Because what the hell?

But I saw another moment that is just as weird.  He was making his anti-gun pitch – because second amendment, schmecond amendment – when he pulled this bit of fantasy out of Corn Pop-ville:

“In most cities, down in Philadelphia and New York… areas I know well… like up here… you’d see a truck pull up… pull to the curb… and selling weapons, selling guns, selling AR-15s, selling weapons.  Well, guess what?  You do that now, you go to jail!”

First, I cleaned up that quote a lot, mostly through slur removal.  Second, this is just getting sad. 

Does anyone believe that in most cities – even in the most dysfunctional, Dem-run hellhole cities – you’d see a truck pull up to a curb and start selling guns right out in the open? 

Is there no honest reporter in the room, to initiate this scenario:

Reporter:  When you said “you’d see a truck pull to the curb” and start selling guns, is it possible that that truck was playing happy music from bullhorns on the roof?  And neighbor kids would come running, and point to the pictures of frozen treats painted on the side of the truck?

Biden: Yeah, man! This guy knows what I’m talkin’ bout!  Those gun runners are bad dudes, jack!

Reporter:  That wasn’t the illegal-gun-selling truck, Mr. President.  That was the ice cream man.

Biden: C’mon man.  You lying dog-faced–  What about the ladder on the roof, to strap all the guns to?

Reporter: That was a roofing truck, Mr. President.

Biden:  Oh yeah?  Well what about the globe painted on the side, showing all the countries that they sell guns in?

Reporter:  That was a Sherwin Williams paint truck.

Biden:  What about the folding door that would slide open so that you could step up and go inside and buy a bushel-basket full of AR-15s?

Reporter: That was a city bus.  And nobody carries guns in a bushel basket, because it’s not 1910.

Biden:  Well guess what?  Anybody selling guns out of any of those trucks today is going to go to jail!

Reporter: That’s always happened.  No one can park an ice cream truck or a school bus on the curb and sell guns–  Who are you looking at?  Why are you shaking hands with empty air?

Biden:  The queen just got here.  Can’t you see her?  Give me a break, man.  AHHH!  Sandbag!

And… scene.

The next day, the Biden tragi-comic road show moved to Philly, probably because he needed to find someone who could make his mis-firing synapses look normal by comparison.

And since Ozzy Osbourne was unavailable, John Fetterman put on his most formal hoodie and shorts, and did a joint press conference.  I don’t have the heart – or the linguistic ability – to try to provide a transcript of his disjointed sentence fragments here. 

But at one point I’m pretty sure that he called Biden a collapsed bridge.  He also coined the terms “delegedation” and “infructure,” before introducing Dem rep Brendan Boyle as,“my friend, Congressman Boyle Bile.” 

But never mind that.  Watch with the sound off, and you can tell that everything is going swimmingly.  Biden alternates between a vacant expression and a big smile that is totally unconnected from anything Fetterman is saying.  Or trying to say.

Four local pols are behind them, and they all struggle manfully to make themselves invisible.  One stares at a point in the middle distance, one stares at Biden’s shoes, and the poor governor tries to stand stock still and maintain a poker face.  But he can’t help himself from looking intermittently perplexed.

The best part is when Fetterman discussed another collapsed bridge: “That that bridge was rebuilt less than a year… well well in front… of time.”  At the end of that “sentence” the gov gives a small tentative nod, almost as if he was able to figure it out. 

That’s a US Senator.  Standing next to the America President. 

I know.  Some of that riveting, window glazing talk is sounding pretty good right about now, isn’t it?

Well, I can’t send you off into a Monday with that grim tableau as a last thought. 

So how about we re-visit the best comedy routine since Norm MacDonald passed, delivered by cute little guy Rachel Maddow, explaining why MSNBC would not carry Trump’s post-arraignment speech live:

“As we have said before in these circumstances, there is a cost to us as a news organization to knowingly broadcast untrue things.  We are here to bring you the news.  It hurts our ability to do that if we live broadcast what we fully expect in advance to be a litany of lies and false accusations, no matter who says them.”

Got that? 

That’s why you’ve never seen Andy McCabe, Peter Strozk, KJP, James Clapper, John Brennan, Jim Comey or Michael Avenatti on MSNBC.  And why you never heard word one about Russian collusion. 

In fact, it explains why MSNBC has just run a test pattern, 24/7 since 2016. 

Biden delenda est!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/ Boyle Bile, 2024!

Because today is Father’s Day, I thought I’d re-post a column I wrote six years ago about my dear departed dad.  This one will be a departure from my usual snarkfest columns, but I hope it doesn’t disappoint, with its lack of jokes aimed at various mock-worthy leftists.  (That reminds me: Elizabeth Warren is as white as a curling competition in St. Paul in January.  #wemustneverstopmockingher  #evenonfather’sday)

If you’ve followed the CO site for more than a couple of years, you might have read this column already, in which case I apologize for the self-indulgence.  But if you haven’t – or if you don’t remember what you read six years ago – I hope you enjoy!

As this Father’s Day approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad.  He died not long before Christmas in 2014, and time has been doing its work, to the point that thoughts of him have shifted over to a mix of many happy memories of him, to go along with the pain of his loss.  I’m a father to two daughters, and have known hundreds of other fathers as friends, relatives, co-workers and acquaintances, and off the top of my head, I can’t think of anyone who carried out that role any better than my dad.

He was born into a family of four boys and four girls to working class parents in Illinois in the late 1930s.   He married my mom not long after high school, and had me and my younger sister, and raised us while working at the Northern Illinois Gas Company, until he was forced into an early retirement at the age of 57 by injuries.   He operated a variety of heavy equipment, and he took great pride in his work.

When I was little, I can remember him pointing out subdivisions or houses that he’d run services to, and whenever we’d pass a parking lot with heavy machinery, he’d brag that he could operate anything on that lot.  My mom had to explain to an excited young me (at maybe age 5 or 6?) that no, she was not going to let dad scratch my back with his backhoe.  (He’d assured me that he could do so, no problem.)

He was not perfect, as none of us are.  He could be short-tempered and impatient, for example.  But even then, he was the most unusual of people: he was a short-tempered man whom I never heard swear.  Not once in my life.  Not when he bounced a hammer off his thumb.  Not when the Bears or the Cubs went O-for-a-month.  Not when a Democrat got elected.

He used ridiculous euphemisms to avoid cursing – “son of a buck,” “dirty rip,” and the like – but as a grown man who rarely makes it across town in heavy traffic without dropping at least one trenchant Anglo-Saxonism at one of my many brain-dead fellow citizens who cannot seem to master a turn signal or figure out which lane is for passing, that’s almost more than I can comprehend.

People are freaking idiots all the time — I am too — and my dad was surrounded by them his entire life, but he never swore in front of his son!

In the summer of 2014 dad had cancer surgery that we initially thought had been successful.  But a month or so later we found out that it had metastasized, and a month after that we learned that it would be fatal.  I spent much of the fall of that year with my mom and dad in Tennessee, and I’ll always be grateful for that time.  I recorded dad sharing a lot of memories from his life, and I saw the evidence of how many lives he had touched in the form of a steady stream of visitors who came to see him, and to see what they could do for him and for my mom.

He kept his sense of humor throughout his final illness.  One of my cousins was visiting not too long before dad died.  That cousin is known for sarcasm and smart-assery – even by Simpson standards – and he has some Scottish background on one side.  Dad was sitting in a recliner and drifting in and out of the conversation, and the cousin was joking that he was going to try to learn the bagpipes.  He promised (tongue-in-cheek) to play them at dad’s funeral. 

Dad delivered his line with a perfectly dry tone: “That’s it.  I’ve changed my mind.  I’m not dying.”

Dad died on a Sunday evening, and he told me his last joke two days earlier.   He and I had both been Chicago Bears fans for life, and the Bears really stunk in 2014.  In the last couple of months in that season, they were on tv unusually often for a team that bad.  On the final Thursday of dad’s life they were on Thursday Night Football, and dad and I watched from our dueling recliners.  He was pretty heavily medicated and drowsed on and off; each time he woke up a bit, he’d ask me the score, and I’d report that the Bears were down by another touchdown or so, and he’d roll his eyes and make some comment before sliding back to sleep.

The next day, he asked me for a favor.  He had been unable to make it to church for a while by then, but his church made each week’s services available on DVD for members who had been unable to make it on Sunday.  Dad had several of those stored up to watch, and on that Friday, he asked if I could put a DVD in for him.  He seemed a little drowsy, but I put in the DVD and handed him the remote, asking if he thought he could stay awake for the sermon.

“I’m not sure,” he said, “But I don’t want the last tv I ever watch to be that stinking Bears’ game last night.”

To end his good life, he died a good death.   He had hospice care in his home, and my mom, my sister and brother-in-law and I spent some time with him every day in his final months.   He had the chance to tell everyone he knew how much he loved them, and that he was ready to go, and he was solicitous of others at a time when most of us can focus only on ourselves.  Because of great hospice workers and morphine (which by itself is proof to me that God exists, and that He loves us), he was able to die at home.

He slept for most of his final day.  In the evening, mom and I arranged a schedule; I would stay up with him, and give him morphine twice, and then she would get up early and administer the morphine while I was sleeping in.  She spoke to him the last time, kissing him and telling him that he had been a great father and husband, and that he could go.  Then she went to bed, and I’m convinced that he passed before she fell asleep.  I had some papers to grade, so I went down the hallway to get my computer, and brought it back to set up in the chair next to his.   By the time I got the computer plugged in and checked on him, he was gone.

Ronald Lee Simpson was born on January 22, 1938, and died on December 14th, 2014.  In between he lived a loving and generous life.  I think it is hard for some people to come to faith in a loving heavenly Father if they have an abusive, or neglectful, or absent earthly father.  I am a Christian because of both of my parents, but my path to God was made much easier by the example of a father’s love that I witnessed all my life.

I can’t wait to see him again.

I wish for you all that you have had a father like mine, or that you marry a father like mine, or that you are a father like mine.  Happy Father’s Day!

Before I get to the usual tomfoolery, I’ve got to admit that I am feeling an awful lot of agita about the upcoming election. 

When I saw CO’s recent prediction that Gavin Newsom may well be our next president, I threw up in my mouth a little.  And then a lot.  And then outside of my mouth.  

Mostly because I can’t confidently say that he’s wrong. 

On the Dem side, I’m more uncertain with each passing day that Biden is still going to be their nominee by this time next year.  The MSM has done their bootlicking best to prop up his barely animated corpse, but he is obviously disintegrating in front of our eyes. 

The only chance he has to be re-elected is if Trump wins the GOP nod (as it now appears he will), because I think that Trump is the only guy he can beat.   If any of the longshots were to get the GOP nomination (I’m still praying for DeSantis.  Literally!), the MSM will just have to cover Biden honestly for 10 minutes – “Hey, did you know he took bribes, and has dementia, and pooped on the Pope?  Who knew?” – and he’ll be toast.

And for all the talk that they’ll never be able to dump Que Mala – because of her race and gender – you watch them!  She’s so metaphysically awful that most lefties will put up a token fight about it (you heard me: token!), and then happily nominate the empty Hair Cut from the Late Great Golden State.

On the GOP side, I’m afraid that the left is playing our base like a fiddle, manipulating them into backing Trump by hitting him with one outrageous and blatantly biased indictment after another.   

If you take current polls at face value, DeSantis has almost no shot.  But I can’t help notice an anomaly there: if he were really 30+ points behind, why would the MSM spend the last six months attacking him so viciously?  They hate all conservatives – anyone right of Mao, really – and they’re always hating on Trump, as they do with all front-runners. 

But they’ve smeared DeSantis as much as they have Trump, and on much thinner pretexts.

And Trump has done the same, slandering a conservative rival with no statistical shot as if they’re running neck-and-neck.  And most disheartening to someone like me (who felt really grateful to Trump for governing as conservatively as he did), he’s doing it like a sleazy leftist!

He’s taking dishonest shots at DeSantis by praising one leftist creep after another, from grandma-killing ass-grabber Gov. Cuomo, to Ken-Doll Newsom, to soul-less Charlie Crist!  He’ll side with the leftist groomers at Disney and Bud Lite, and he’ll use Soros talking points, and smear the free state of Florida as if it’s being destroyed by RDS.

I know: it’s just politics. But it’s also why so many of us – even political junkies like me – hate politics.

Don’t get me wrong: if Trump gets the nomination, I’ll 100% vote for him.  And I would absolutely love seeing him win again, triggering a schadenfreude-tastic weeping and gnashing of teeth throughout the hive of scum and villainy that is the MSM and deep state. 

But I just don’t see it happening.  If rock-ribbed guys like me are going to have to hold our noses to vote for him, I can’t imagine the independents and non-hard-core conservatives coming out for him in numbers outside the margin of fraud that he’d need to win. 

But man o’ Manischewitz, I’ve never hoped that I’m wrong about something so much in my life!

Okay, let me turn this column around and get back to a little more of the optimism that gives this site its name. 

One bright spot this week comes from the legal world.  A Starbucks manager from New Jersey named Shannon Phillips was fired several years ago because she was white, and thus a scapegoat in a bogus racism pseudo-scandal. 

She sued Starbucks, and won – in New Jersey! – a $25 million judgment! 

Lately I’m finding myself in the very unusual position of rooting for lawsuits against many businesses.   I mentioned in a recent column that the first few verdicts have come in against insurance companies for mutilating and chemically damaging “trans-gender” treatments of children. 

I hope to see more of those, along with more discrimination suits on behalf of whites and Asians, and males, and Catholics and other Christians, who have had their civil rights stomped on because their race, gender or religion are denigrated by the elites. 

Another such lawsuit has been filed by a software engineer who was fired by his tech company, Bitwarden. (I’ve never heard of them either. But the “warden” part of their name seems spot on.) After they pressured him to put his pronouns in his employee profile – due to the company’s “inclusivity initiative” – he wrote “Assigned by God.”  

Good for him!  He was fired, of course.

Because nothing says “inclusivity” like an entire HR department screaming, “Get out, bigot!” to someone who just wants to do good work without violating the laws of common sense and English grammar.

I hope that guy gets at least the $25 mil that Shannon Phillips got.  

My favorite headline of the week appeared on a Red State article: “Headlines on Target Bomb Threats Show You Don’t Hate the Press Enough.”

Although that claim couldn’t actually hold up – I cannot possibly hate the press more than I already do! – they did provide yet another example of infuriating MSM bias.

The story cites various leftist headlines about the blowback that Target stores have been getting because of their new line of trans propaganda kids’ clothes.  WaPo, among others, printed some variation of this banner: “Target Stores See More Bomb Threats Over Pride Merchandise.”

Everyone knows the meaning that a casual reader was supposed to take away from that headline:  “Those dangerous right-wing trans-phobic bigots are at it again, threatening violence!  They probably think that young guys should be trying to tuck their penises between other (female) people’s legs, instead of their own, too.  What idiots!”

But if you read deep into the article, you find that the threats were actually “accusing the retail chain of betraying the LGBTQ community.”

That’s right.  A bunch of radical trans activist lefties were so outraged that a store might not market ridiculous products intended to sexually confuse children that they resorted to threats of violence.  Which is the opposite of what the propagandistic headline implied.

In other trans news, I know you all saw the way that Biden’s handlers defiled the White House lawn last weekend by flying the ugliest version of the pride flag on the White House, flanked by American flags.

Regular readers know that I don’t like to brag about the Nostradamus-like powers of my magical wizard hat.  

But I feel compelled to point out that seven days ago, I argued that there should be no sexual orientation flags flying at any American cemetery.  And less than 48 hours later, our first posthumous president flew that very flag outside of his own resting place. 

I know. Eerie, isn’t it?

In yet more sexual confusion news, the finest minds at formerly serious university Johns Hopkins have apparently caught the trendy mind virus that renders progressives unable to define what a woman is.  Because last week they amended their online glossary of LGBTQ terms – Happy Pride Month, everybody! – with a mind-bogglingly stupid addition.  

They defined “lesbian” – and I swear I am not making this up – as “a non-man who is attracted to a non-man.” 

Marinate in the wisdom for a moment.

According to Johns Hopkins University, the word “lesbian” could now logically refer to liberal women who – due to the utter repulsiveness of liberal beta “males” – are only romantically involved with what used to be known as a marital aide. 

(Now, sadly, more often a marital substitute, especially for the progressive gals who are getting what they’ve been voting for.) 

But I also think –- and feel free to check my math here – that according to those wacky Hopkinsonians, pretty much all of the females in the animal and reptile kingdoms are now, technically speaking, “lesbians,” since they are non-men, attracted to their non-men co-species members.

From heterosexual lady aardvarks, to non-binary lady komodo dragons, to bi-curious minxes.  (Literally, female minx.)  Also all species of monkeys, who are well known to be swingers.  (I know: ouch.  Dad jokes don’t get much worse than that.) 

(Sorry.  I meant “a man who is attracted to a non-man and who has produced offspring” jokes.)

And don’t get me started on the cougars, which you never stop hearing about if you’re a mid-quintile IQ or lower viewer of a lot of reality tv. 

It’s now all lesbians, all the way down, and as far as the eye can see.

Finally, I offer you reason #2,498,562 to leave the big blue cities while you still can:

A New York jury has officially indicted Marine/Good Samaritan/hero Daniel Penny in the death of a violent recidivist criminal who was threatening everyone on a subway car.

I generally don’t wish harm on anyone.  But if mentally ill criminals in New York have to attack anybody – and if history is any guide, they absolutely do – I hope that the next series of victims they brutalize are the members of the grand jury who voted to indict Daniel Penny.

Followed by the Democrat officials who decided to arrest and charge Penny, from Governor “Wicked-Witch” Hokul and NYC Mayor Eric Adams on down through the judge and the attorneys involved.  Followed by AOC and the other Dem officials who cheered this miscarriage of justice on. 

Followed by every Democrat who voted for any of those idiots.  They’re all fair game now. 

And as they find themselves cowering in a fetal position in a subway car — or on a sidewalk, or in a filthy alley – as they are getting the hell beat out of them by some career criminal, I hope they catch themselves mid-scream, thinking, “Why is nobody doing anything to help—”

“Oh.  Right.” 

Get busy, New York criminals!  It’s open season on leftist useful idiots!   Fly, winged monkeys, fly!!

And don’t forget…

Biden delenda est!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/ Non-binary lady Komodo Dragon, 2024!

0-0-0

If you enjoyed this column, please share it.  To see more of Martin’s past columns, go to Martinsimpsonwriting.com, and click “Follow” to receive a notice when new columns post.

It turns out I was at the start of a 4-day flu last Thursday night, when I wrote my last column.  I’d been feeling achy and a little thick-headed and feverish as the evening went on, and it didn’t help that I do most of my writing after midnight. 

I took some NyQuil halfway through the column, figuring I’d have enough gas in the tank to finish up before the ‘Quil kicked in.  And I did, and I finished and posted it around 4:00, then hit the sack and slept until noon.

When I woke up, I felt pretty lousy.  I put on some coffee and washed down a couple of vitamin M (Motrin) with it, and I began to worry about the column I’d written and posted.  Earlier in the week I’d made some notes on the “7 deadly sins” part, and the ridiculous amount of months, weeks and days devoted to the varying holidays celebrating non-hetero stuff. 

But as the caffeine began to restore clarity of thought, I started half-remembering details that got me a little concerned.  Had I looked up a bunch of odd sexual positions?  (And was one of them “the spork?”  Because if so, that’s pretty funny.  And if not, what is going on in my semi-conscious mind to cause me to come up with that?) 

And did I suggest placing bets on a clash between trans-activists and Armenians? 

I had the uneasy feeling that I may have done a columnist’s version of drunk dialing somebody in the middle of the night.  

So it was with a little trepidation that I opened FB and found and read my column.  And my worst fears were relieved. 

The column was no more eccentric or deranged than at least half of my regular columns.  And no one posted comments like, “How far into the bourbon were you when you wrote this one?” or, “We’re worried about you.” 

So I’ve got that going for me.

Also, “the spork” and “the butter churner” are both real positions, and they’re funny.   And thus they’re not part of some weird sexual Rorschach test from my fevered imagination. 

In fact, now that the fever has broken, I’d say that I stand by my late-night rantings:  Half of the calendar year should not be devoted to various sexual enthusiasms.  There should not be any flags other than the Stars and Stripes flying over military graveyards.  And never bet against Armenians, when sexualizing children is on the line, to paraphrase The Princess Bride. 

(Also, you can’t have too many Princess Bride references.)

Now that the fever has broken and I think I’ll be back to full strength tomorrow, I’ve got just a few thoughts on some smaller stories I came across when I was under the weather.  

First, an encouraging story out of Denver caught my eye, probably because my daughter is there, being the best pediatric nurse west of the Pecos. 

Last Tuesday there was an election in Denver, and a Hispanic incumbent named Candi CdeBaca lost badly, one month after she had called for white-owned businesses to pay “an additional race-based tax, which would be given in turn as reparations to minority-owned businesses.” 

She’s a Democratic Socialist (you say tomato, I say gulag archipelago), and she gives off an AOC vibe to me, in that she is youngish, far-left, and says many stupid things.  During her push for reparations, she excreted this gem: “Capitalism was built on stolen land, stolen labor and stolen resources.”

It doesn’t seem to occur to her that she’s thereby confessing that SHE lives on stolen land, benefits from stolen labor, and gets paid by stolen resources. 

Thankfully, Commie Candi lost by over 20 points, which local media called “one of the biggest blowout losses in the last 10 years.”

I’d love to see more far-left groups push these kinds of racist, immoral and unworkable reparations plans.  Mostly because the “mainstream” left has been promising these huge payoffs to their nutters, and they richly deserve the kind of blowback, infighting and electoral losses that will result when they can’t deliver.

Already Ken-Doll Newsom is having to scramble to avoid the ire of gullible grifters whom he led to believe would be in for millions in race-fare dollars each, when he established a high-profile reparations committee to look into the issue.  A committee in San Francisco proposed giving as much as $5 million to each black CA resident.

Don’t ask where that money will come from, because it’s as real as Liz Warren’s Apache ancestry (#wemustneverstopmockingher).  But Newsom still has to pretend, and continue leading them on.

Here’s hoping that Candi is the first in a long line of leftist electoral casualties of their dishonest race-baiting.

One final story comes from Washington, DC, yet another example of the kind of wise and competently governed big city that one-party Dem rule produces.  Some context: in 2018 there were around 200 carjackings in DC.  By last year, that number had ticked up slightly.

If by “ticked up slightly” you mean “skyrocketed by 500%.”  To over 1000 carjackings in 2022.

How did the DC council (11 Dems, 2 Independents, 0 GOP) respond?  By rewriting their criminal code… wait for it… to lower penalties for many crimes, including carjacking! 

That was too much even for the late Joe Biden and the Dems in Congress, who over-ruled the DC council’s attempt to legislatively invite even more carjacking.

Fortunately, DC’s famously leftist hometown paper is one of the most influential in the country, so they’ve been all over the story.  They’ve lambasted the city council’s idiotic approach, and called for the District to get tough on crime.

HA!  I kid.  They’ve actually put on blinders, clapped both hands over both ears, and loudly sang John Lennon’s “Imagine” to drown out the sounds of nearby carjackings and murders in progress.   (Just like the leftist media in LA, NYC, Chicago, etc..)

But they did publish a response to skyrocketing crime, in the form of a list of tips to any non-criminals still remaining in DC, to help avoid being carjacked.  Along with the usual advice about parking in well-lighted areas and paying attention to your surroundings, the WAPO includes these suggestions, which I am not making up:

“When driving, stick to the center lane.  This makes it harder to access your car.”

Sure.  Screw those morons driving in the right or left lanes; they deserve the mob of violent thugs who will be picking them off on both sides of you, while you safely glide along in your impenetrable center lane. 

I mean, as long as you never need to turn either right or left. 

“If you’re stopped, keep enough room for a way out.  The more space you give yourself around other cars, it will give you a better chance to drive away if someone attempts to take your car.”

Perfect.  Except if everybody is crammed into the center lane – to avoid the Hobbesian carnage in the right and left lanes – do you think there is going to be a lot of space between all of the drivers trying to avoid the World War Z situation unfolding on either side?   

The final tip is exactly what you’d expect: if someone does try to carjack you, give up your car with no resistance. 

What the brochure does NOT say, but what is still clearly implied: “After giving up your keys and car, loosen your clothing and assume the “catching” posture in the “butter churner” position, and place your fate in the hands of your attackers.

Or – and hear me out, because this might be just crazy enough to work – you could take a more Red-State approach. 

Which would be to drive in whatever damn lane you choose, and if a couple of mouth-breathing Biden voters run up and demand your car, use the guns that our constitution allows you to carry to fire some warning shots into their chests and heads. 

After which you drive over them on your way to the nearest police station, where you can report some possible damage done to your undercarriage. 

Or, suit yourself.  Stick with what you’ve been doing. 

But if that’s your plan, let your predators know that you’re partial to the spork position, if that’s an option.  

Biden delenda est!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Candi “Chewy” CdeBaca, 2024!

I know.  It’s only June 9^th, and you’re already sick of hearing about Pride Month.  But I feel compelled to add a little more ranting to the ongoing cacophony on this subject, presenting as it does the irresistible combination of out-sized cultural influence and the opportunity for some deserved lampooning.

To start with, am I the only one who remembers that pride is one of the 7 deadly sins, and thus not a promising tag for your movement and your advocacy month?  In fact, pride is the chief of the sins, and the one that turned Lucifer into Satan.  So, not a good label to establish for your cause celebre. 

Even if you’re inexplicably going to pick one of the big seven sins as your brand, aren’t there more appropriate ones than “pride?”  I mean, wouldn’t “lust” be an obviously better choice for a lifestyle group who places their sexual predilections at the center of their lives and identity?

And from what I’ve seen of the middle-aged fellas who are especially fond of wearing thongs and fishnets as they twerk their way through various drag performances, “gluttony” is a little more on the nose, isn’t it? 

“Greed” might also work, since they certainly seem fond of shaking down every cowed corporation in the nation for lucrative sponsorships. 

“Envy” is also at least in the ballpark, since many of the most vocal advocates go on and on about how the heteros have it so easy.  “Why is hetero-normativity the norm?  Why should the great love stories be ‘boy meets girl?’  Why should the straights have the logical pronouns, and be able to have babies without involving test tubes and alchemy and expensive human incubators?”

And what about “wrath?”  How many dudes have you seen with a Dick Butkus vibe and a James Earl Jones voice screaming, “Call me ma’am!” or “If you don’t want to sleep with me, you’re a transphobic bigot!” 

Or that old perennial, always rendered in the kind of enraged, spittle-flecked howl that is so persuasive in a public debate: “TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN!!”

In fact, the only one of the Big 7 that doesn’t seem to apply is sloth.  Because these people are at work 24/7 to plaster the entire country and everything in it with rainbows and an increasingly ugly series of demographically suspect flags.

In addition to their poorly conceived choice of a moniker, the radical LGBTQ crowd (not the “Let’s Get Biden To Quit” folks, it goes without saying) are also calendar hogs. 

Consider that the American standard for holidays until about 10 minutes ago was that even the biggest of them got only one day.  Memorial Day.  Independence Day. (No, it’s not “julyteenth.”) Veteran’s Day.  Martin Simpson’s birthday.

All of those are hugely important, and all get only a single day.  (Including the last one.  Which really seems like it should call for eight days of gifts, doesn’t it?)   

Even Jesus only gets two days.  And He had to rise from the dead to get the second one!  (So get out of here with your rank Christophobia, you Christophobes!) 

But this week I learned – and I swear I am not making any of this up – that in addition to pride getting an entire month, October is also LGBTQ History Month, and March is Bisexual Health Awareness Month.  So there goes a quarter of the year right there.

In fact, they can’t seem to get enough of awareness in general.   You can celebrate during Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week (right after Valentines Day), Non-binary Awareness week (mid-July), Bisexual Awareness Week (mid-September), and Trans Awareness Week (mid-November).

You won’t be surprised to know that the calendar is also littered with awareness days – because months and weeks just aren’t enough – such as Intersex Awareness Day (26 October), Drag Day (16 July) and National Coming out Day (11 October), just to name a few.

Good lord, but that’s a lot of awareness!  Do they think that any of us are NOT aware of them in 2023?  In fact, the only day of the anti-hetero year that I’m looking forward to is April 12^th, which is “LGBTQ Day of Silence!” 

Which sounds fan-freaking-tastic right about now!

They also love themselves some visibility, for some reason.  Mark your calendars now for Aromantic Visibility Day (5 June), Lesbian Visibility Day (8 October), and – of course – Transgender day of Visibility (31 March).  

Again, just like with the awareness… do they not think they’re visible?  

When I find myself walking down a crowded street full of eccentric “cis-gender” folks, interrupted only by a chunky guy with a Ron Swanson moustache wearing a sequined Diana Ross dress and a wig as tall as he is, beside a Jason Mamoa-type wearing a tiara, heavy rouge, a pink tutu and combat boots, you know what I call those two guys?

Extremely visible! 

These people have more holy days than the most observant of Catholics, or the most Orthodox of Jews.  I don’t even know if they have time to celebrate our traditional holidays. 

But I will take a wild guess, and say that if they have a “D-Day,” you don’t want to know what the “d” stands for.  (It might rhyme with “bildo.” Or possibly – and appropriately – “ick.”)

Colonizing the calendar isn’t the worst of it, though. Because they’re also elbowing the Stars and Stripes out of the way in favor of flying the pride flag on every flagpole they can get their hands on!  (Grow up,  you people with the same juvenile sense of humor as me.) 

The rainbow flag is flying over the Wisconsin capitol building as we speak (thanks, Dem Governor Evers), among many other government buildings, and in thousands of public school rooms nationwide. 

But the non-binary straw that should break our heterosexual camel’s back – c’mon, not every metaphor that flows from my over-taxed brain can be a masterpiece! – is that a graveyard for war veterans in Mississippi – the Biloxi National Cemetery – has raised a gay pride flag to fly among the American flags at the entrance to the cemetery. 

If you go there this month, I’m sure you’ll say, “What’s with all the flags at the cemetery?”  (And if you say that, be particularly sure to pronounce that fifth word VERY carefully, or you’ll be cancelled faster than the honored remains of many war dead are spinning in their graves in the Biloxi National Cemetery.)

As with most things “pride,” the relevant question isn’t, “Do you hate LGBTQ people?”  It’s, “Why must extremist LGBTQ activists inject (eww!) their sexual preferences and identity into EVERYthing that happens all the time?!”

Seriously. 

Yes, I’m sure that some of the vets buried in that cemetery were gay.  A very few might have had gender dysphoria, too.  But the vast majority were straight.  Does that mean we need to have a heterosexual flag at the cemetery?  If so, is it going to feature a couple of stick figures in the missionary position?

(The lady will have a ponytail, so you can tell who’s who.)  (And don’t bring up Dylan Mulvaney, because he doesn’t count.)

And if the missionary enthusiasts get their flags, will fans of doggy style, cowgirl or reverse cowgirl also get theirs?

And what about the more niche fans, position-wise?  Will there be no recognition of those who are aficionados of the butter churner, the snow angel, the standing wheelbarrow, or the spork positions?

And yes, those are all real things.

And no, I’d never heard of any of them, until I looked them up just now, as part of my onerous obligations as your humble Roving Correspondent.  (You’re welcome.) 

And for my wife, in case she reads this column, or otherwise stumbles across my recent internet searches and asks why I’m looking up “weird sexual positions?”

It’s research, sweetheart. Done for the great and powerful CO, and the CO Nation.  

Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, the classic four positions are just fine the way they are. 

Hey, everyone trying to come up with novel sex positions: You’re not some tantric yogi mystic, and heterosexual intercourse tops the list of things in this world that are NOT broken.  So stop trying to fix it!

On a side note, I was going to make up a phony position and try to sneak it into that list to see if anybody could spot the fake.  But all I could come up with was “the Hunter,” and it was so filthy and anatomically unlikely and gross that I gave up.

Where was I?

Oh yeah.  Sexual predilection flags in public places?  That should be a hard pass, in every schoolroom, and every state.   And especially at cemeteries!

Speaking of which, let me be clear about one more thing: I am definitely NOT telling you to find Sam Kinison’s gay necrophiliac bit and watch it.  Because it is not for the faint-of-heart, the weak-of-stomach, or the easily offended. 

Really.  Most of you are way classier than me, and that bit will likely not be your cup of tea. 

But I’ll tell you what: I miss that guy!  

Having said all of that, I do see some hopeful signs on the horizon, which suggest that the current trans-mania might be nearing the end of its peak-influence lifespan. 

Sports bodies are starting to get a lot of heat about the dudes smashing the women in sporting events, and some have enacted bans. 

And for once, lawyers might accidentally become a force for good (I kid my attorney friends!), by winning some huge amounts in suits over male-on-female bathroom assaults, or sports injuries, or discrimination cases.

And even though Bud Lite and Target seem to still be steering into the skid of the fiscal trans-annihilation they’re currently suffering, they now stand as a stark warning to other big businesses.  If anything can influence spineless corporate boards to keep their weird sexual politics to themselves, watching two giants lose tens of billions of dollars just might do it.

A lot of parents of school kids are also getting activated by this stuff.  They elected a GOP governor in blue Virginia, and they’ve recently been running through a lot of school board elections like Sherman through Georgia. 

My favorite recent example this week comes from Glendale, CA, where a clot of trans activists and antifa thugs showed up to harass a bunch of Armenian-Americans who were protesting a big push to trans the kids in the local school district.  

The “educators” were focused on getting as much sexual/gender ideology stuff into the curriculum as possible.  One assistant principal “even told staff to teach children that every person is, by default, ‘queer’ and ‘socialist.’”

Oddly enough, the Armenians were not having that.  They’re a pretty tough people – surviving a brutal genocide last century will do that to you – and although the lefties there threw hands first (as is their wont), you can probably guess how that turned out.

(Just for future reference: When a fight is brewing between androgenous trans activists and antifa basement-boys on one side and Armenians on the other, take the Armenians and the points.) 

Finally, I know a lot of gays and lesbians, and many of them are not thrilled by being lumped in with the most radical science-deniers who are trying to share an acronym with them. 

They realize that the “T” doesn’t fit well with the “L” and the “G,” and many of them know that many sexually confused young kids will either outgrow this social contagion phase, or else turn out to be gay adults.  Assuming they don’t get manipulated into mutilating surgeries and dangerous drug regimens first.

I’ll close with a quote that is better than anything I can write on the subject.  It comes from a short speech made in April by an award-winning, experienced Glendale school teacher named Ray Shelton.  Shelton is gay, and he said the following during a contentious school board meeting:

“Two plus two equals four. The world is not flat. Boys have penises; girls have vaginas. Gender is binary and cannot be changed. Biology is not bigotry. Heterosexuality is not hate. Gender confusion and gender delusion are deep psychological disorders. No caring professional or loving parent would ever support the chemical poisoning or surgical mutilation of a child’s genitalia.”

Transgender ideology is anti-gay, it is anti-woman, and it is anti-human. It wants to take away women’s sports, women’s rights, women’s achievements—it is misogyny writ large.”

After he’d said those words, the tolerant and loving administration cut his mic off, and the next day they suspended him, and violated state confidentiality laws by sending out emails to parents about his terrible use of “hate speech” in the meeting.

Shelton has gotten a lawyer, and I hope he’s an Armenian with a chip on his shoulder and a daughter in Glendale schools.

In the meantime, I salute Ray Shelton!  The only two ways to improve his speech?

First, shoehorn in the fact that Lizzie Warren is whiter than Tilda Swinton (#youknowwhatI’mtalkin’bout) (#wemustneverstopmockingher), and then close with the most important three words this election cycle:  

Biden delenda est!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Dylan “Billion Dollar Baby” Mulvaney, 2024!

Because many of you asked, I’ve got a quick update on my car, which broke down in Georgia last week.  The mechanic up there took several days to look at it, and then reported that the water pump and timing kit had failed, and that if it had happened at highway speed, the engine will probably require major work, too.

Spoiler alert: I was on the interstate at the time.  So yes, it happened at highway speed.  Plus a reasonable 8 miles an hour over that, because that’s how I roll.

Until my water pump blows up.

I’ve been with my mechanic here in town for over 30 years.  Since I’ve always driven older vehicles – my practice is to divert money that average people spend on new cars into buying rental houses that need work, and an old Cessna and flying lessons – I’ve been a faithful customer for him.

(I’m not saying I claim him as a dependent on my taxes.  But I’m not saying that I don’t.)

He took a flatbed up to GA and brought the car back for me, and agreed with the GA mechanic’s diagnosis.  He told me to prepare for a total bill of around $7K.

Fortunately, I can pay for that with all the savings on gas, groceries and consumer goods that our president has provided with his expert management of the economy—

D’oh!

Speaking of which, did you see how Biden hit the campaign trail at the Air Force Academy this week?

If by “the campaign trail” you mean “the stage.”  Cause he hit that baby like he was doing an impression of Methuselah doing an impression of Chevy Chase doing an impression of Gerald Ford!

My favorite part was that once he was helped up, he turned back and pointed accusingly at the sandbag on stage.  As if to say, “There’s the inanimate object that tripped me.  Get him!”

By the way, kudos to whoever put a sandbag on stage near a mentally checked-out octogenarian who under the best of conditions is as steady on his feet as Ted Kennedy leaving a strip joint with a 5-drink minimum.

Do you want to give us a President Que Mala, sandbag guy?  Because THAT’S how you give us a President Que Mala!

I don’t know if you saw it, but a few hours after that performance, Biden banged his head on the door of the helicopter when he arrived back at the White House. 

As someone who watched a lot of stupid 70s tv shows as a kid, I was really disappointed in the aftermath.  Because if tv has taught me anything, it’s that a good whack on the head – maybe a coconut falling on Gilligan, or an ACME safe falling on the comic foil in any number of cartoons – usually knocks many IQ points into the slow-witted victim.

I so hoped that Biden would shake his head as if dispelling the cobwebs, and then walk up to a mic and speak clearly and logically, saying words like “indubitably” and sentences like, “We can no longer be obsequious in the face of Chinese aggression and obloquy towards our steadfast allies in the Pacific Rim.”

After which he’d stride purposefully up to the White House, and then bang his head against one of the French doors. 

And then he’d be back to, “Duh… MAGA extremists… no hunters need an AK-47 because deer don’t wear Kevlar vests…Hunter is a genius… You think I’m joking, but I’m not!  Corn Pop!”

In more serious news, a mother in Oklahoma is suing her daughter’s public school after the 15-year-old was “severely beaten” by a “trans female” (i.e. a dude who’s either mentally ill or a scammer) in her school’s girls’ bathroom.

This happened back in October, five days after the cops had removed the offender from school because he had threatened the girl.  But he was somehow back in school, and in the girls’ bathroom, less than a week later.  In Oklahoma!

(Happy Pride Month, by the way.)

I hope the lawsuit costs the school and some bureaucrats’ jobs, but I’m more concerned about what this trend says about how badly our society has lost its way.  It feels like we’re regressing to a very different era.

I was born in such an era.  You may know it from textbooks as the Pleistocene Era.  It was a simpler time.  The earth’s crust had recently cooled, the continents had all reached their present locations, and there were rules for social conduct. 

And with law enforcement personnel often being thin on the ground to enforce those rules, local citizens often took a hands-on approach.

For example, if a local guy got too handsy (or worse) with a local girl, that girl’s father and brothers – which she usually had, because people used to have families – would visit that guy with some baseball bats or axe handles and conduct an old-timey intervention.

“But I identify as a sexual predator.  I have my own flag and everything!” the bad guy would never say, because society was not insane.  Instead, he would leave town – to focus on his physical recovery, the first step of which was often figuring out how to remove an axe handle from his rectum when both of his eyes were swollen shut – never to show his face there again.

The same process would apply to those who would violently attack citizens.  They would often be caught, tried and then hung by the neck until they were dead.  And not 34 years later – the next weekday after a local carpenter could throw up a rickety gallows!

I know, that sounds hard to believe.  Criminals wouldn’t be released without bail, and apologized to, and pursued by an ambulance-chasing reprobate to induce them to sue their victims and the city.  And they wouldn’t have their evil actions excused and defended by the dimmest members of society.

As you might imagine, long-term recidivism wasn’t as common as it is today, because long before somebody got to his 42nd conviction, he would have been hanged by the neck until he was dead, as I may have mentioned earlier.  (Even if he did an awesome Michael Jackson impersonation!)  And the community was okay with that.  Because they understood human nature and predators (both animal and human), and they hadn’t gone insane. 

But there’s a reason we tried to leave those days behind, and create a modern law enforcement system.  Because as emotionally satisfying as that older system could often be, it also obviously lent itself to abuse, vigilantism, and a cycle of violence. (See my forthcoming family history: “Born Feudin’: The Simpsons in Kentucky, Volume 1.”)

And especially if your town was run by old-school racist Democrats (not to be confused with modern-day racist Democrats) for example, black citizens in particular were a lot more susceptible to ending up on the wrong end of a rope for reasons that were murky at best. 

So a relatively competent law enforcement system was created, and worked pretty well, for a pretty long time.  Citizens learned to rely on that system.  

Not completely, of course.  There are some bad apples among cops, since cops are people.  And if a thug attacked you in public, or broke into your house, you still might shoot the thug and then call for a cop car and a hearse.  (And then accept the thanks of a grateful neighborhood.)

But in recent years, especially in the increasingly crime-ridden locales where the Left holds sway, creepy politicians have been working overtime to degrade and destroy that system. And they’ve made a lot of headway toward that goal. 

Between partially defunding the police, and ordering them to stand down, and working to ruin their lives if any criminal ever ends up hurt or dead at their hands, no matter how justified their actions, the Dems have emboldened the predators, and endangered their prey.

And then they’re shocked – shocked! – when self-defense and quasi-vigilantism has been making a comeback.  Not because people want to resort to it, but because it’s the natural response when a corrupt, incompetent and/or malicious government abandons its primary responsibility to maintain law and order.

Normal New Yorkers were outraged when Soros minion and NYC DA Alvin Bragg sent bodega worker Jose Alba to Riker’s Island to await trial after he defended himself by stabbing a career criminal who robbed and attacked him.

Regular people understood why Kyle Rittenhouse went to Kenosha, WI to defend a friend’s business after a mob of violent a-holes rioted and looted there, and they supported him after he was forced to shoot three sex offenders when they attacked him.

Sane people have donate millions of dollars to help Marine hero Daniel Penny fight criminal charges in NYC after he put himself at risk to restrain a violent recidivist from threatening everyone on a subway car. 

National Democrats seem alarmed by the increasing frequency of these kinds of events.  But if they really don’t want to keep reaping more of what they’ve been reaping, they better quit sowing what they’ve been sowing.

If they don’t want disordered males to get non-consensual Louisville Slugger suppositories, they better keep them out of women’s bathrooms.  And if they don’t want criminals and the violently mentally ill to be beaten or killed, they better put them in jail or force them into treatment.

And if they don’t want erratic deviants doing illegal drugs and getting their hands on illegal guns, they better make Joe Biden do something about Hunter.

Biden delenda est!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Alvin “Pro-Crime” Bragg, 2024!

I’ve had the better part of a week to try to get caught up on the national stories I missed while I was traveling with the cousins.  But I have one post-script to my Kentucky and Tennessee trip.

As you’ll remember, my trip ended in Illinois last Wednesday night.  From there I drove down to Tennessee on Thursday, to see my mom, sis and brother-in-law.  (Mom is doing just fine after her recent covid bout, and Eddie the dog is also doing fine after the weird seizure he had last month, thanks for asking.)   

On Friday I made the 10-hour drive back to Florida.  Or at least I made the first 7 hours of that drive, until my car died on the interstate in Georgia. 

And yes, I’m aware of the irony that I had just successfully traveled 1500 miles in a 47-year-old car with many non-functioning features, only to have my 9-year-old, normally reliable Acura break down three hours from home.    

This situation provided an opportunity to consider the “optimism vs. pessimism” world view.

On the “glass is half full” side:

• My engine died when nobody was close behind me or beside me, so I could safely cruise over to the shoulder.
• The breakdown could have happened when I was much further from home.
• Or when I was in downtown Atlanta, in which case I would have barely had time to make my peace with God during the 95 seconds it would have taken for my car to be plowed into by a moron texting at 83 mph or a trucker hopped up on amphetamines.
• Instead of being a stranded young woman – who crime shows tell me would immediately be picked up a serial murderer in a windowless kill-van – I’m an intimidating figure of a man with hands that are registered as lethal weapons.  
• There were still 3 hours of daylight left, and it wasn’t raining.

On the “glass is half empty” side:

• My reliable car died when I was three hours away from seeing my top-shelf wife and wonder dog after 10 days away from home.
• My dead car came to rest along a hillside that turned out to be covered with ants.
• Always try to break down right at 5 o’clock on a three-day holiday weekend, so no mechanics will be available within your time zone.

So I called my wife, who immediately got into her car and started the three-hour trip to pick me up.  (She’s the best!) Then I called Triple-A, and talked to a nice lady who I’m guessing was in Bangladesh.  Or possibly

 Rangoon.

I told her I was broken down along I-75 somewhere in Georgia, south of Macon, and that the next exit sign I could see was for Centerville and Warner Robins.

After some computer typing, she told me that she sees that there is a Warner Robins in Ohio. 

I thanked her for that Geography Bee info, and said that I would look that up the next time I’m in Ohio.  But right now I’m in Georgia, somewhere south of Macon.

More typing.  Then she said, “I see ‘May-kahn.’”

Then I said, “Yes, Macon.”

Then she said, “Have you passed ‘Buy-rahn?’”

And before I could say, “Do you mean ‘Byron?’” I suddenly realized I was in the hilarious Key and Peele black-substitute-teacher-taking-roll-in-the-white-high-school sketch.  (“Jay-quellen?” “Do you mean ‘Jaqueline?’” “If one of y’all says some silly-ass name, this whole class is gonna feel my WRATH!”)

In her defense, the Triple-A lady was very nice, and said that she’d called for a tow truck, but that it may be an hour or two before it arrived. 

Because I was once a Boy Scout, I am always prepared with a book to read.  So I climbed the small hillside beside the interstate and sat down to read about the Roman writer Tacitus’s book Germania, and how it became a favorite of the Nazis twenty centuries after it was written.

Thirty-seconds after sitting down, I learned that there were a lot of ants on that hillside. 

So for the next hour and a half, I paced back and forth reading about Tacitus. 

Sidebar: the book is called “A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich.”  If you are interested in Roman writers of the first century, the convoluted stories that explain how some ancient texts were able to survive into the modern world, or how Himmler and the Nazis could mine a Roman historian for racial propaganda, this is the book for you!

I eventually got the car towed and left at a local mechanic’s closed shop, and Karen got there, and I got home.  The car’s engine might be blown, but it’s being flat-bedded home, and I’ll soon see.

It was nice to be away from politics during my trip, but in the days since I’ve been home, I ran through enough stories to see that the supply of idiocy continues to outstrip the demand.  

I saw a short video clip of poor old Dianne Feinstein being pushed around in her wheelchair, and heard a snippet of John Fetterman struggling through an attempt to ask a coherent question of some unfortunate sap who was appearing before a congressional committee.

All I can say is that Feinstein is making Imhotep Pelosi look like a dewy young ingenue, and Fetterman is making Joey Gaffes look like a well-spoken and intellectually agile politician.  And if you’d told me that either of those things were possible, I’d have bet the mortgage against it.

I also saw the infuriating story of the MSM beclowning themselves over the “citi-bike Karen” story, in a way that is representative of our elites’ racially poisonous dishonesty.  It was another tale that was too good to check: entitled white lady victimizes angelic minority kids.

But just on the face of this story, it was absurd.  We were supposed to accept the idea that a diminutive, pregnant white nurse confronted several young black men and tried to steal THEIR citi-bike?  Of course it later turns out that she did indeed pay to use the bike, which the young thieves were trying to take away from her. 

I hear that she’s suing the hospital who suspended her without gathering any facts, along with the media who smeared her.  I hope she takes them all to the cleaners! 

On the bright side, I see that some sweet, sweet “reap what you sow” stories continue to abound.   

Exhibit A happened when Triple-Crown winner in the imbecility sweepstakes Joy Behar was blasted by everybody after her recent absurd attacks on conservative blacks who have actually accomplished something in their lives – as opposed to taking a paycheck in exchange for lowering the national IQ by yammering idiocies on the daily fat-suit follies on the View. 

Joy was talking about Senator Tim Scott, whom she said “is one of these guys, who you know, he’s like Clarence Thomas, black Republican, who believes in pulling yourself by your bootstraps, rather than, to me, understanding the systemic racism that African-Americans face in this country and other minorities. He doesn’t get it.”

Sure, Thomas was the son of sharecroppers and rose to one of the highest positions in the country, despite the sanctioned bigotry of the Democrats’ Jim Crow laws.  And Scott has been black his whole life, and was raised by a working class single mom.  But they both need a bottom-quintile-IQ dimwit like Behar to explain racism to them.

Thank you, octogenarian white lady!

Karma has also continued to Hillary-slap the corporate world.

Fox’s firing of Tucker Carlson continues to ravage their ratings, and deservedly so.  Disney’s years-long campaign to defecate on their brand’s legacy of wholesome entertainment in favor of advancing a bigoted, woke, “not so secret gay agenda” (their words, not mine) continues to produce unwatchable and unwatched movies, along with catastrophic flight of their audiences from Disney+ and a drop (so far) of a third of their stock valuation. 

Bud Light’s trans idiocy continues killing their sales and their stock price, and yet they continue in the face of their deepening crisis to say, “hold my beer.”  Which is easy to do, since there are huge, unsold quantities of it in every grocery store, retailer and bar from coast to coast.  (Also, hat-tip to whoever first called them “Trans-heuser-Busch.”)  

Target’s case is also hilarious, costing them many billions for their head-scratching decision to promote a sexual confusion message to very young children.  Until I read about their line of girls’ swimsuits for boys (yes: marketing genius!), I’d never heard the term “penis tucking” before. 

And now I can’t un-hear it. 

Of all of the events I would have happily gone to my grave without witnessing –  the election of another Democrat president ever; the invasion of our country by mostly dependent and unassimilated law-breakers as Biden has undemocratically obliterated our borders; the establishment of professional soccer in America – a major corporation pushing a castration-adjacent campaign to persuade young boys to take what God gave them and tuck it (painfully, I assume) into a girl’s swimsuit is definitely on that list!

I look forward to more financial and emotional pain for all involved.

 Biden delenda est!

“Dr.” Jill Biden/Joy “Black-Face” Behar, 2024!

Day 5 – Tuesday, 23 May 

We slept a little bit later than usual – it had nothing to do with the bourbon, scotch and tequila tasting the night before – and Sharon made some great scones for breakfast, and we took our leave around 10.  As we were filling up and putting some air in the tires in Townsend, a couple of guys came up and talked with us about the Caddy. 

One of them had a pistol in a holster on his belt in plain sight, and it didn’t bother me or anyone around us.  For any readers who live in big, blue cities, this is because guns are morally neutral tools that don’t shoot people.   

(But if I were in NYC or Chicago – where the police have been hamstrung and the criminals emboldened by leftist politicians – and sharing a train car or some other “legal-gun-free-zone” with a bunch of recidivist gang-bangers?  No bueno.)

We took a short drive on the Foothills Parkway, which climbed to a stretch of ridgeline overlooking Townsend, and then turned back to retrace our steps toward town.  On the way back, we came across an adult black bear calmly tearing into a fallen tree, no more than about 12 yards off the road. 

After a lifetime spent in farm country and college towns, I can never quite shake the impression that a bear in that situation looks suspiciously like a really big guy in a bear suit. Until you see one tearing a tree trunk into kindling while looking for grubs or whatever bears eat that comes from a tree trunk. 

After that we drove for over an hour with the top down through the same sort of pretty, rolling landscape we’d been seeing, before pulling into Wartburg, TN.  And yes, the city fathers really fell down on the town-naming front.  (“Come see charming Wartburg!  Just six miles south of Festerville on Poisonous Snake Road, or take Oozing Lesion Lane for 10 miles from Tumorton.”)

We looked around the very nice little Visitors’ Center for the Obed Wild and Scenic River National Park, and got a map and some park info from the rangers there.  It turns out that the first trailhead we found in the park itself is about 6 miles of winding road away from town.  We’d never heard of this park, but it was really impressive; I think it’s as pretty as the much more well-known Smoky Mountains park, but much less crowded.

The trails were similar: shady and cool, with a wide creek flowing on one side, and a steep hillside and occasional cliffs on the other.  The first people we came across on the trail were some young lunatics doing some rock climbing on one section of the cliffs.  The base of that rock wall was recessed just a bit, and the cliff face rose beyond vertical, so that the top of the cliff was extended out maybe 10 yards or more over our heads.

The effect was of a half-bowl of rock, with a cleared space beneath it, and a heavy canopy of trees that shaded the entire area.  The climbers were very friendly; they were a group of a dozen 20-somethings, three of whom were female, and they obviously knew what they were doing.  They had the right gear – ropes and clips and goofy-looking shoes – and they picked their way up the rock using handholds that I couldn’t see.

A very mellow baby lay in a carrier at the edge of the clearing, and I got him to smile at me.  (Or her.  I mean, I don’t even know what sex he was assigned at birth, so who’s to say?)  

We watched until one of the climbers beneath the cliff top crawled out, upside down just below the spot where the out-thrust rock bends back toward vertical, and lost his grip.  He fell for about 10 feet before his friends holding the rope below sent him swinging away from the rock face with some good-natured mockery.

Even though I knew each climber was rigged up with ropes, my heart went into my throat when he lost his handhold and fell.  As I passed the baby on our way back to the trail, I pointed up to the guy who had just fallen and circled my index finger around my ear in the universal sign for “cuckoo,” and the baby smiled at me.

He knows what’s up. 

Or she.  Who can say?

We hiked our way back to the trailhead and then drove up onto the plateau above the cliffs, and hiked out to an extensive series of wooden walkways that give a panoramic view of the park.  According to our map, we were looking at Clear Creek from the Lilly Bluff Overlook.  (You see, Wartburg? THAT’S how you name things.)  

According to a display on the overlook, Obed is a “dark sky” park, due to the remoteness and lack of light pollution there.  A poster listed a schedule of night sky observation events, during which visitors can bring their own telescopes, or use those that park rangers will have on site. 

That sounded amazing to me, and I really want to come back and see that sometime.  I was reminded of a quote from Emerson that has always resonated with me, about what an incredible event it would be if we only got to see the stars once in many years. 

Here it is: “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!”

Have I mentioned how many things we take for granted?

Back on the road and somewhere near the small town of Deer Lodge TN we saw a series of hand-made signs with directions to the “Redneck Haven Mud Resort.”  It doesn’t sound like my usual kind of place, but I’ve got to say that the name closes strong with a mud “resort!”  (You can take the Simpsons out of Kentucky, but you may not be able to completely take the Kentucky out of a Simpson.)

A while later we were driving along Route 127 around 10 miles south of the Kentucky border and came across the Alvin York home and burial site.  It was after 5:00, and the well-kept, two-story farmhouse was closed, but we saw the bust of York, with a plaque and some carvings on a pedestal outlining some of his accomplishments.  

During the WWI Meuse-Argonne offensive, York (a private, but an “acting corporal” – which I assume means the other corporals in the area were dead or wounded) led a squad of 16 guys on a mission to silence some German machine guns.  After capturing some machine guns and prisoners, the Germans had killed 6 and wounded 3 of his squad. 

Because he was an Ameri-CAN, not an Ameri-can’t, York took the remaining 7 guys and opened up an industrial-sized can of Tennessee whoop-ass (it’s like Tennessee whiskey, only more potent) on the remaining German machine gunners in the vicinity.  When it was over, he’d killed at least 25 German soldiers and captured 132, along with 35 machine guns.

It’s Memorial Day as I write this, and even though York didn’t die in battle for his country – he made the guy on the other side die for his, as Patton later advised – we still owe him our gratitude for what he did in 1918.

Twenty-three years later, Hitler welcomed the news that the Americans had entered WWII, because he thought that they were “soft.”  Apparently he’d never heard of a Tennessee farm boy named Alvin Cullum York! (I’m with the late great Norm MacDonald on this issue: “You know, with Hitler, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don’t care for him.”)

A little farther down the road, we had some very good Mexican food in a very small town, and then spent our last night on the road in Columbia.

Day 6 – Wednesday

This was mostly a get-back-home day, with about 7 hours of driving to do.  But we did manage to get one more stop in, this time to Lincoln’s birthplace, a Historical National Park near Hodgenville, Kentucky. 

Once again they had a nice museum with exhibits on Lincoln’s early life, including farm implements, his family Bible, and the pelts of some of the local animals that could kill you in the early 19^th century: a black bear, a mountain lion and a wolf. 

(They also had a sizeable beaver, which I guess could play hell with you if you happened to have a wooden leg, after previously tussling with one of the aforementioned three predators.)

The grounds included more shady trails, but the two main attractions were the Sinking Springs – which is still flowing in a recessed kind of grotto, and from which Abe likely often slaked his thirst – and a cabin dating from Lincoln’s time, which is enclosed in a columned, stone building at the top of a hill.

Lincoln lived in Kentucky for his first 7 years, and then in Indiana until he went to Illinois at age 21, but I thought it was touching and a little funny how the short films at each of those sites’ centers emphasized their state’s contribution to Lincoln’s character.  Kentucky pointed out the formative experiences young Abe had in his first 7 crucial years, and Indiana highlighted how he’d arrived there a boy but left a man.

When the ranger at one of those sites asked us where we were from, Darryll – who has a tendency toward smart-assery that I obviously don’t share – said, “the Land of Lincoln.”  The ranger took that in stride, and with a wry grin said something to the effect of, “I guess you guys have to claim Chicago, then?”

Check and mate.

We arrived back home that night in time for a late supper with yet a few more cousins, and I headed home to Florida the next day. 

I enjoyed this year’s trip as I had the previous two.  One additional good part of our travels was made possible by a set of blue-tooth speakers that Darryll brought along for the trip.  We were able to listen to a lot of great, Kentucky-centric and Appalachian music as we drove around the region from which those songs came.

Singers in heaviest rotation included Steve Earle, Tyler Childers and of course Sturgill Simpson.  (Though I’m not related to him as far as I know, if Liz Warren can say that Cochise was her great-great-grandpa, I can say that Sturgill is my second cousin, or maybe a half-brother.) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

One frequently played song was a live version of “Choctaw Bingo,” by James McMurtry – son of Larry, who wrote the great book Lonesome Dove, among others.  Even though that song is about the north Texas/south Oklahoma region, its themes and setting – a huge family reunion of a chaotic bunch, a least a few of whom are involved in opioid distribution – seemed to fit the trip.

Like his dad, McMurtry can turn a phrase.  Some of the lyrics that we found ourselves singing included mentions of a Desert Eagle (“That’s one great big ol’ pistol/I mean 50 caliber made by/ bad-ass Hebrews.”) and the exploits of a certain Uncle Slayton (“He’s got an Airstream trailer and a/Holstein cow./ He still makes whiskey cause he/ still knows how.”  And later, “Cooks that crystal meth/ because that ‘shine don’t sell/ You know he likes that money/ he don’t mind the smell”).  

Another song that I kept thinking of was, “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive.”  (My favorite version is by Flatt Lonesome, who have a female lead singer with a beautiful voice that just inhabits the song, but Ruby Friedman has a spare, haunting version that causes chills, too.)  Though it focuses on the coal mining areas that are well east of Campbellsville, the opening lines never fail to move me: 

“In the deep, dark hills of eastern Kentucky/ that’s the place where I trace my bloodline./ And it’s there I read on a hillside gravestone/ we’ll never leave Harlan alive./ My grandfather’s dad crossed the Cumberland mountains/ where he took a pretty girl to be his bride’/ Said won’t you walk with me out of the mouth of his holler/ or we’ll never leave Harlan alive.”

I’m very grateful that my grandparents left the hollers around Casey Creek, Speck and Knifley alive!  As beautiful as that country is, and even though my generation tends to romanticize the hard, gritty lives they lived there, they made good lives in Illinois.  And without that move, my dad would never have met my mom.

In fact, by the end of the trip, I found myself returning again and again to an appreciation of the long odds against my cousins and I even getting the chance to exist in the first place.  Walking through those cemeteries and tracing my convoluted bloodline brought home the fragility of life.

If at any of a hundred turns, any one individual Simpson in any of many generations hadn’t survived what Shakespeare calls “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” – vulnerable childhoods and dangerous work; wild animals, deadly plants and feuding neighbors; wars and disease and primitive conditions – I would never have been born.

Even discounting all of those odds against survival, each of the Simpson men had to marshall their Simpsonian magnetism and beguile their eventual wives into having their children.  Hezekiah Simpson had to close on his Mary in the 1840s, and William Lee Simpson had to seal the deal with his Nancy in the 1870s, and Grandpa Zack had to land his Rose a hundred years ago.  (He was 25 and she was 15 when they married, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.)

And that still left dad needing to meet and marry mom.  And her parents needing to meet, and their parents, and a chain of many more ancestors back in Germany, while dad’s people were knocking around Ireland and Scotland until they could catch a rickety boat to cross the Atlantic.

Am I saying that it’s a miracle and a blessing that I even get to be here, to live this life?

That’s EXACTLY what I’m saying.  And the same goes for you too.

And the fact that we have all gotten to virtually “meet” and get to know each other on this site that the great and powerful CO created on a whim?

Icing on an already delicious cake, baby!

Thank you all for reading about this latest trip, and remember…

Biden delenda est!

Day 3 – 21 May

We got an early start on a sunny and cool Sunday morning, and we spent a few hours driving through several hollers on the same kind of roads we’d been on since before we crossed into Kentucky.  (Linguistic note: “Hollers” got their name because of the distinctive, frustrated cries of travelers trying to get cell reception to call their Uncle Bob for more local color information.  True story.)

We eventually ended up at the Green River Tabernacle Cemetery, where we found the stones of Hezekiah Simpson and his wife Mary.   Hezekiah was my grandpa Zack’s grandfather, and a fine instance of the Old Testament-named Simpsons.  We have multiple Moses-es in the family tree, for example. 

(And I just now realized that there’s no logical way to write the plural of “Moses.”  Because you can’t go with the Latin “Mosi” for an OG Hebrew like Moses.)  (Luckily for all of us, we are very rarely called upon to summon up the plural of “Moses” in everyday conversation.) 

In all three cemeteries I noticed a lot of infant deaths, as well as many deaths tied to Spanish flu, and one of several wars.  (The things we take for granted, again.)  I also found one grave with a carved symbol that I’d seen on several graves at each cemetery: a hand with the index finger pointing upward.  But in this one, the hand was not particularly well-rendered, and the effect was that the middle finger seemed to be the one doing the pointing.  Beneath the hand were the words, “Gone Home.”

I know that that was supposed to be an earnest expression of faith.  But feuds were not unknown in Kentucky, and I’m tickled to think that maybe the woman beneath that stone was a fiery lady with a wry last message for some kin of whom she may not have been particularly fond.  (As in, “I’m gone home now, Jedediah, so suck it!”)

Not far from the Green River, we drove down a road where my dad and his brother Bob (Bobby’s dad) had spent many childhood summers.  (Dad and Uncle Bob were “Irish Twins,” dad born in January and Bob born in December of 1938, when Zack and Rose were turning out Simpsons at a furious pace.) We found the small home of one of their Gabeheart uncles – the house still in very good shape – on a beautiful little piece of land that dropped away in back to a creek running through some timber. 

In the backyard, halfway between the house and the creek was an old, weathered spring house that uncle Bob remembered and described to us, in between dropped phone calls.  Which made us – you guessed it – “holler” in frustration.

As we got out of the car on the road and took some pictures and video, a lady who looked to be in her 70s came to the front door of the house.  She invited us to come up and talk to her, and we told her who we were.  She said that she had lived in the house since the early 1960s, and gave us permission to walk around the property.  Darryll went into the spring house, where water was still running inside, though the building looked like you could knock it down by sneezing on it. 

After leaving the old Simpson stomping grounds, we cut across country on yet more winding and scenic roads.  Darryll eventually came to what looked like a private driveway between two very nice homes, and he drove right up and parked like he owned the place.

Then he led us across the backyard and through a gate in a farm fence, and then for about another 30 yards, where we came to an old wrought-iron fence surrounding maybe a dozen graves.  Three of those were Darryll’s ancestors on his dad’s side.  Their recently replaced headstones showed that they had all fought as officers in the Revolutionary War, and received land grants of 400 acres each, after the war.

I imagine those homeowners must be legally required to provide access to the old family plot, which is otherwise landlocked.  But I’d like to think that they’d do so anyway, out of respect, and because they’re not a bunch of grievance-study-majors who have minored in tearing down statues.    

Back on the road, we soon came across the Mill Springs Battlefield National Monument, near the small town of Nancy, KY.  The visitors’ center had an impressive array of weapons and equipment carried by Civil War soldiers.  We learned that the average size of the soldiers was 5’8” and 140 pounds.  So I could have been a god among them!

I mean, until it came time to load and shoot an old rifle.  Or hit a squirrel.  Or cook or eat the squirrel that I had somehow miraculously shot.

A display inside told of how Confederate general Felix Zollicoffer had a rough day, getting killed in the first hour of the battle.  He rode up to talk to some soldiers whom he thought were his – I guess the blue uniforms weren’t enough of a clue – and got shot by them.  (If I were to learn that that guy was the great-great-grandfather of bumbling Merrick Garland, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.)  

We crossed over into Tennessee in the late afternoon, ending up in the valley town of Townsend, where we’d be staying for the next two nights.  We took a half-hour drive into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where the forest seemed to envelope the road, surrounding us with cool air and bird song and a green canopy overhead.  The road rose gradually, turning in gentle curves alternating with tight switch-backs. 

Gliding along in a convertible gave us the full sensory experience.  The sounds of splashing water were almost constant, either from the shady creek that flanks the road or from small trickles of ground water that run off of cliff faces and rocky outcroppings that had been dynamited to make a path for the railroad that preceded the road.  

The woods were green and clean-smelling and sun-dappled, and we enjoyed a brief foretaste of the hiking to come, before returning to our destination for the day.

Darryll’s cousin on his dad’s side lives with her husband in a house above Townsend, and we eased the Cadillac up into the hills and then up their curving driveway, before bringing her to a stop on a flat section of pavement beside the house.  It was not unlike maneuvering a large boat into a small berth. 

That day ended with a warm welcome and a full table, courtesy of our generous hosts.

Day 4 – 22 May

We had breakfast at a mom-and-pop place, and our waiter was Larry. He was as friendly as can be – as was pretty much everyone we came across all along the trip – with a Tennessee accent as smooth as Tennessee whiskey, as the song says. 

It was the kind of accent that when he called each of us “buddy” – which he did repeatedly – he sounded like we were old friends.   (In most places, when a stranger calls you “buddy” it’s usually in a tone that suggests an unspoken “what’re you lookin’ at?” or “keep moving.”)

After breakfast we drove into the National Park again, this time driving the 11-mile loop through Cade’s Cove, a small and primitive mountain community that had been there until TN and NC began purchasing the land for the eventual creation of the national park.  By the end of the 1940s the residents had all sold their land or died, thus ending life-leases they had to their homes, leaving behind some scattered churches, cabins, barns and a gristmill.

The Cove road moves partly through forest, and partly along the edges of open meadows.  While there were a good amount of cars driving the loop that day, it gets much more crowded in the summer months.  A local said that the 11-mile loop takes 5 hours or more to drive then, so I’d suggest going either in the winter or spring. 

The traffic stopped ahead of us for awhile when we were maybe 3 miles in, and when we finally moved through, we saw that an adolescent black bear was eating and walking in the long grass maybe 20 yards from the road.  In a couple of more miles, we parked at the trailhead entrance to Abram’s Falls, and spent the next 3 hours on a 5-mile hike with around 600 feet of elevation difference to the falls and back.  

The path ran alongside another wide creek, and much of it wound between sweet-smelling mountain laurel and several other flowering bushes that we didn’t recognize.   The first half of the trek made a slow ascent, but after reaching a ridgeline, the path dropped more steeply down to the falls.  By the time we had retraced our steps up to the ridgeline and completed the hike, we were ready for a slow, cooling trip around the rest of the cove, and back to Townsend.       

We had supper out that night, and after we returned to the house above town, Bobby and Darryll’s cousin Sharon called it a night pretty early, but Darryll and I stayed up and hung out with Sharon’s husband Gary.  We talked books for a while, and he gave me a U.S. Grant biography that I hadn’t seen before.

Then he broke out the spirits. 

As a curiosity, we tried a Marsala wine, and it tasted just like you’d expect, if you’ve ever eaten chicken Marsala.  We did a taste test of his favorite bourbons – Booker’s and Baker’s – and then had some aged Talisker single-malt Scotch, which was very smooth.  I had the feeling that all of these bottles were way more expensive than your humble roving correspondent is used to, so I was hesitant to take very much of any of them.  

But like any good bartender, Gary has a heavy pour.   

We also had a shot of very good tequila, the name of which I can’t remember.  (Possibly because of the bourbon and Scotch that preceded it.)  The only thing we tried that I didn’t like was absinthe, which had the same weird, licorice-y taste that I remember from the first (and only) time I tried ouzo at a Greek restaurant.  

We hit the sack in a state of contentment after a very good day, with a plan to head back north the next day. 

Biden delenda est!

Today’s column will be a departure from my usual ramblings about politics and other ridiculousness, because I’ve been in a news blackout – or at least a brown-out – while I’ve been on my annual trip with two of my cousins.

Regular readers may remember that two years ago one cousin bought a 1976 Cadillac El Dorado convertible, and that May the three of us took it on a trip on Route 66, starting in Chicago and ending up at the Santa Monica Pier.  Then last May we took it on a “Lap the Lake” ride around Lake Michigan, starting in Chicago, and going up through Wisconsin and Michigan, and then back down through Indiana. 

We had some logical concerns about whether the old Caddy would make those trips, but she performed like a champ.  So we decided that we’d press our luck and try another trip this year. We left on Friday 5/19, for a six-day trip down to Kentucky to see where the Simpson side of our family lived before moving up to Illinois. 

We left home in north central Illinois on Friday morning under low skies and a light rain.  Our plan for that day was to wander south and east through the state, mostly on country roads, towards Vincennes, Indiana.  We had breakfast in Dwight – a small spot on Route 66 that we’d passed through in ’21.  By the time we got to Champagne the sun was out, so we put the top down and headed east under blue skies that held up the rest of the day.

If you’re wondering whether the political tough times in Illinois have kept the farmers there from doing their work, worry no longer.  Because we ended up driving behind one piece of farm equipment after another for what felt like the better part of 100 miles.  Those things take up a little more than half of the crowned roads they run on, and with the Caddy floating gently in a slight breeze, passing them can be an adventure.

The only other adventure that morning came when I pulled up to a country railroad crossing that was being crossed – slowly – from west to east by a train that appeared to stretch to Iowa.  After five minutes of boxcars ambling by, the train stopped. And sat there.  For a long time. 

The guy hauling a tank of fertilizer in front of me finally gave up and turned around. So we turned the Caddy around – in only six back-and-forth maneuvers! – and headed back the way we came.  By the time we reached a side-road heading east, I noticed that the train was moving again.  Because of course it was.

Now we’re in a parallel race with a train that’s picking up speed, and we don’t know how far the next crossing is, or how many farmers driving 30-foot-wide combines are between us and that crossing.  So it’s a Thelma and Louise situation, only with toxic masculinity instead of annoying Susan Sarandon.

I’m not going to say that we went airborne over the crossing when we reached it.  But the lights were on and the gates were just starting to come down when we made it across.  And we all raised both arms above the windshield in celebration, with a single finger on each right hand raised in salute to the train.  Because we’re essentially children.

We reached the Wabash River in the late afternoon and crossed into Indiana, where we immediately stopped at a monument to George Rogers Clark, a Revolutionary War soldier who took back Fort Sackville from the British in a strategic victory that secured the land that would later make up 5 states. 

Sure, the Brits went wrong when they named the fort “Sackville.”  Because come on: you’re literally asking for the fort to be sacked.  (My free advice to future military planners?  Give your forts scary names, like “Fort Razor Wire and Land Mines,” or “Fort Death to the Enemy!”)

We had expected a statue and a few plaques, but we found out that the site is actually a small national park, and it was way more impressive than we’d anticipated.  The monument itself is a round building of granite and limestone, the size of the Jefferson monument in DC.  A statue inside of Clark is surrounded by huge paintings of important events in the fort’s history. 

The one that depicts the British general giving his sword to Clark at the surrender was my favorite.  Clark had taken 170 men on a 4-mile slog through chest-high, near freezing water to catch the Brits by surprise, and when their commander believed that the besieging force was much larger than it was, he surrendered after two days of fighting. 

In the painting, he looks p*ssed!

At the foot of the pedestal on which Clark’s statue stands, the following quote appears: “If a country is not worth protecting, it is not worth claiming.”  Stirring words.  I don’t know how anyone can read that and not think of the chaos on our southern border, and not wish for a congressional delegation to confront Biden, and make him hand over his sword.

Except that he’d probably cut one of his spindly legs off trying to get it out of its scabbard.  Which would be fine with me.  

Afterwards we drove around Vincennes.  There’s a college there, and the home of president William Henry Harrison, who died after only one month in office.  (Those were the days!) They’ve got a cool old downtown, and a restaurant serving some good Italian food. 

We left Vincennes with full bellies and a plan to stop for the night at around 7:30 in Jasper, Indiana.  But the landscape and roads were hilly and pretty, the early evening sunset bathed everything in a warm glow, and the Caddy floated like a cloud, so we continued on until we reached Owensboro KY just as darkness was falling around 8:30.

Our only disappointment that day was that Darryll didn’t get to try the mutton BBQ that Owensboro is known for. 

Day 2 –

Saturday the 20th was another day that started out with some overcast and rain, but then turned sunny.  We were up early, and during breakfast we decided to backtrack a short distance to Indiana to see Lincoln’s boyhood home.  Because organized planning is not our strong suit.

The Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial is in the middle of nowhere, as it was in Lincoln’s day.  By the time we got there, the morning was crisp and cool, and the site made a strong first impression. The area surrounding it is heavily wooded, and the memorial has an impressive, crescent-shaped visitor’s center.

Outside we stood in the center of a semi-circle, surrounded by bas-relief carvings of moments in Lincoln’s life.  Inside, we walked through several rooms of displays of life during Lincoln’s youth.  From there we walked up a small hill to a cemetery where Lincoln’s mother Nancy is buried, having died when he was only 9.  Then we followed trails to a small collection of recreated buildings from Thomas Lincoln’s life: a small one-room cabin, a barn, and a workshop. 

A woman inside the cabin answered questions about the primitive living conditions, and a young man was hand sawing a large piece of oak outside.  We had a mile or more of some good hiking along trails that had stones associated with Lincoln’s life, along with signs explaining them. 

Some of the stones seemed pretty spurious – a stone taken from a mile away from Thomas Lincoln’s farm that Abe could have stepped on, one from a store three miles away, etc. – but there was also a stone from the White House, and one he had stood on to deliver the Gettysburg Address.  Darryll stood on that one and delivered the first paragraph or so that he remembered. 

And we booed him off the stage, as it were.                                                         

I came away from the site with a renewed appreciation for one of my boyhood heroes, and an appreciation for how insanely difficult life was on the frontier back then, and how much better we have it today, where we take most things for granted. 

From there we headed back into Kentucky with the top down, seeing a lot of rolling and beautiful countryside, along with many small and sometimes neglected houses or groups of houses.  We ended up taking a short detour to see Mammoth Cave, despite its website reporting that its guided tours had been sold out for weeks.  But we serendipitously got to take the shorter, self-guided tour, and it was great. 

Finally we drove to the Campbellsville area, which is where the Simpsons on dad’s side came from.  After a quick supper, we drove a series of small, winding and hilly roads to see several cemeteries.  Jones Chapel Cemetery is on a small hilltop beside a brick church, and we found the stones of Moses and Mary Mann, my grandma Rose’s grandparents.

Sidebar: When I was a small kid, my dad told me that Grandma was a Mann before she married grandpa.  Which may have been the first recorded case of gender dysphoria in Kentucky, and which scarred me in a way that triggered PTSD when I later saw “Admiral” “Rachel” Levine, and the nuclear waste bigshot who wore dresses and lipstick at the office, and moonlighted as a luggage thief. 

Oh how I miss the days when saying that “grandma was a man” was a harmless joke!

Walking through that cemetery, I was surrounded by many familiar names from my boyhood.  Half of my hometown was made up of Italians who immigrated to the Illinois River valley in the late 19th century, and the other half came north from Kentucky in a wave in the 1920s and 30s.  (Hence the nickname for Marseilles, IL: Martucky.)

The peaceful grounds of Jones Chapel were thick with names of the kids I went to school and church with. There were Gabehearts and Coxes and Farmers, along with the requisite number of Simpsons and Manns.  The oldest stones were barely legible, and some of the newest had photos of the deceased, and in a few cases the truck or car that the departed had loved.

The inscriptions included sentimental poems and expressions of hope for future reunions.  One that really touched me appeared on the marker of a mother who died in the 1930s: “She was the sunshine of our home.”  I’ll bet she was, and God bless her memory.

From there we drove through more green, hilly landscape, until we came to the tiny spots in the road that had once been tiny towns from which many Kentuckians left for the north.  We saw Speck (perfectly named!), and Knifley, and Casey Creek, all three of which combined couldn’t have more than several dozen residents. 

My paternal grandpa Zack was born in Casey Creek, in a house that is no longer there, on Feathersburg Road. Which is supposedly a county road, even though it is basically two wheel-ruts that wind through the backyard of a barn and cow pasture, and then go down into a section of the creek (proper pronunciation: “crick”) that cannot be forded by many vehicles.  Including a 47-year-old El Dorado. 

From Casey Creek we drove about a mile to the Roley Cemetery, where a herd of cattle grazed in a field next door.  We found the same range of familiar names, plus the stones of William Lee and Nancy Simpson, my grandpa’s parents. 

By then it was the golden hour, and we drove through some more hills and into Campbellsville, arriving just as a huge orange sun was sinking below the horizon.  

Next: More Kentucky Simpsonania, the etymology of “holler,” and then on into Tennessee…

Biden delenda est!