June 27, 2009
The United States of Tobacco Road
Erskine Caldwell wrote a seminal novel in 1932, Tobacco Road. I won't say I don't like the novel, as I had him autograph a deluxe Beehive Press edition for me in 1980, when he was 77 years old (as perverse serendipity would have it, he ultimately died on my 30th birthday).
Caldwell was certainly no Faulkner, or O'Connor, or even Styron. Tobacco Road, like its successor God's Little Acre, was painfully and acutely written in a vernacular both evocative of, and denigrating to, the poor white trash sharecroppers that populated the author's world. If Caldwell had a major fault (and he had many faults) it was in his disavowal of those sharecropper roots, and his willingness to let the novel be staged on Broadway and then be made into a motion picture, both instances being cruel efforts to take the book at face value.
Both subsequent versions of Tobacco Road were considerably altered from Caldwell's vision. While he used humor to accentuate the defeatist and woeful lot of Jeeter Lester and his ilk, these versions played it all for laughs, and the audiences were given a full-blown treatment of southern depravity and ignorance with none of the redeeming virtues these Depression-wracked individuals exhibited. Tobacco Road became synonymous with all of the bigotry and stereotyping of the South in one easy read. It was so bad Caldwell moved to Maine and ran a bookstore for many years. He never returned to the South.
I'm not attempting to deconstruct that unlovable son-of-a-bitch Caldwell here, merely to evoke that time and place when the sturdiest and most prideful of men got tired of eating turnips every day, while his children gnawed sweet potatoes. That time and place when the man in the suit finally knocked on the door of the clapboard shack and said I'm from the government, and I'm here to help, and the desperate fool sold his soul for a relief check embedded with invisible barbs.
Yea, verily, a lot of men let their spiritual sails luff, and suckled the teat of government help. Many men, however, did not. And a generation later you could almost see the great tear in the American fabric: union men on one side, with their sense of entitlement and money-for-nothing that that milk from the teat of the New Deal had nourished in them, and the self-made men on t'other side. On the one side the men who would take any wheel of cheese the government threw their way, men who took pleasure in reaping the grain another man threshed, men who felt no sense of shame picking up the dollar bill that fell out of the other man's pocket, men who, having nursed upon something-for-nothing, came to expect it. They called it opportunity.
On the other side are the men who refused to take the bait, or rise to the siren's song of entitlement. These men ran the gamut of success from Croesus to repeated failure. But a failure who could pick himself up and try again. Who owed nobody nothing, damn it, except for perhaps an education. And I say now that the G.I. Bill was no government teat: that was earned. A man puts his brainpan in the enemy's sights, he gets a well-earned payback for that selfless act. The G.I. Bill was a minor annuity payment in compensation for a man's soul. These men were entrepeneurs, or toiled in good faith for capital entities under the handshake understanding that they worked in a meritocracy, and virtue and hard work could translate to reward.
Now we are a weaker breed of man, and find ourselves in a similar circumstance of uncertainty and dire straits. Who will we be? Who will we prostrate ourselves before for the metaphysical equivalent of a sour raw turnip? I am no diviner of entrails, but a quick glance at the electoral map shows me that we are, to a statistically significant factor, sucklers. And not for that sweet potato: we are as a nation sucklers for someone to mitigate our mortgages, to pump the bilge from the holds of our foundering 401ks, to guarantee our jobs even as it means creating ourselves silly, self-procreating paperpushing jobs from the sweat of another man's brow.
We are become Jeeter Lester.
We are hallooing at God for our fate, and ready, willing and eager to steal another man's turnips for no other reason than we want them. It isn't out fault. It's never our fault. It's that other guy what did it to us.
We are present at the onset of the most earth-shattering, revolutionary capsizing of a civilization ever contemplated, and we are allowing ourselves to be rushed headlong into it, with no more forethought than one would give the purchase of a laptop computer. If we were even given the opportunity, as third party witnesses, to have a say.
One thing is for certain: these changes are immutable. There are no do-overs. There will be no roll back on any programs that manifest themselves as insane or worse. And my fear is, at the end of the day, we'll all just be like Jeeter Lester. Coveting another man's bag of turnips, incensed they are not ours. And petitioning, as debased supplicants, our right to have what that fellow there has, even if it means having the authorities wrest it from his rightful grasp.
We are, I fear, soon enough a nation of Tobacco Roads.
You have been suckling at the Teat of Epictetus, my friend. And it suits you to a TeeT.
Excellent piece of work... from an excellent Piece of Work.
Posted by: Elisson at June 27, 2009 10:42 PMBeautiful piece of writing.
My fear is that, even more than mere desire for the other man's gain, it will be a sheer desire to survive which will create the stealers of turnips.
When this administration and his congressional minions are through (and I pray we will live to see that day) we may be so poor a nation...poor for money...poor for sustenance...poor for virtue...that we will devlolve into an 'every man for himself' scenario.
God help us.
Posted by: jmflynny at June 28, 2009 12:40 AMCaldwell and most authors are like social stenographers, interpreting and conveying the practical threat of extinction with all its choices and moral complexities.
The difference is that today's poor have so much. Clothes with a designer stamp; a computer and a car or maybe a mile-high stack of bills from Dillard's.
I think FDR shrewdly built a dependent voting bloc by offering means of survival, which gives him the rare overlap with Obama. We need to see that our have-nots aren’t actually begging for a wheel of cheese, but maybe paying off a house that was forced on them by unscrupulous greedy pols. Meanwhile the haves are watching. They are not heartless or callous, as much as that falsehood supports the progressive agenda. Decades back, pride was more of a virtue to covet and carry, whereas now entitlement has replaced self-sufficiency. It’s acceptable, and usually with a person’s ego and social standing left intact. It makes greed a no-brainer.
Cool autographed book...
Posted by: Vermont Neighbor at June 28, 2009 2:26 AMI always enjoy your writing - this piece is a chunk of scary truth. Thank you.
Posted by: Guaman at June 28, 2009 6:04 AMKnocked the back out it, again...well done.
Posted by: Sam at June 28, 2009 8:39 AMMy parents were products of that great depression...and products of Texas during the era. They were among those who had to much pride as well as confidence in their ability to fend for themselves and refused the government hand outs. They survived to teach me to do the same. Maybe it is the code of the west..."take care of the 'wimmin' and childrens and don't start no shit and there won't be no shit." Works for me.
Posted by: GUYK at June 28, 2009 10:29 AMExcellent!
When the spit hits the fan in the near future, I'll go west of Jax and hunker down in a travel trailer tucked way back in the pine and palmetto.
Protected by the self sufficient people of Baker County; and doing my part as well.
When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuiing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
Posted by: james wilson at June 28, 2009 3:46 PMExcellent piece of writing. All too spookily accurate.
Posted by: Nicole at June 28, 2009 5:50 PMI taught my son welding, the art of bricklaying, concrete, plumbing, how to buy a car, and how to fight in order to walk away unscathed, no matter the size or number of opponents.
The University Of North Texas is teaching him accounting.
I have no fear of the future if my son is involved.
Beautifully stated and sadly true,,,
Posted by: Michele at June 28, 2009 6:56 PMAnother, well done.
Posted by: doubletrouble at June 28, 2009 8:46 PMThere are yet many who as Dylan Thomas wrote, "Do not go gentle into that good night", who "Rage, rage against the dying of the light", or in this case of Liberty's flame.
The race has not yet reached it's end, and I for one chose to continue the good fight in my own small way with, hopefully, the efforts of many others who feel the same way.
Your masterful portrayals of the problems serve as fuel to those still willing.
What could one add to this, except to sit and consider and nod the noggin'? It's a wonderfully crafted essay and worth bookmarking, emailing, forwarding-- and one with which to agree wholesoreheartedly.
Posted by: Joan of Argghh! at June 28, 2009 11:00 PMPREACH it, brother!
Posted by: Marianne at June 28, 2009 11:07 PMThere is good, damn good, and that which can only be explained as inspired by a higher power. This entry falls squarely into the third category. Outstanding essay!
Posted by: Guy S at June 28, 2009 11:37 PMAnother well written and profoundly prescient essay. There are few among us that are still able to accurately divine from the swirling morass of disparate events, views and opines- past and present- the road that brought us to this place. Sadly for us as a nation, V-man convincingly lays out the case for what is to be our own downfall.
Posted by: tkimoro at June 29, 2009 10:20 AMMichelle Malkin has the names & numbers to call, as do a number of sites. Cap & scam passed by just a few votes, so blocking the Senate's support right now is critical.
Call or e-mail lawmakers today and warn in advance... or lodge a complaint against the Gang of 8 who voted for this nonsense. This latest BarryScam has gotta get a severe beating before anyone picks up their government quill.
On a side note, I just realized it's Jenny Sanford who should be in office. She's vocal about what's acceptable and what's not. She seems to understand family values. Cancer or not, look at the choices of Elizabeth Edwards... greedy and duplicitous, collecting money and support just to get into the White House.
Posted by: Vermont Neighbor at June 29, 2009 12:18 PMIf CNN broadcast the President of the United States acknowledging his plan for Change involved burning the Constitution and renaming our country 'United Socialist States of America,' there would be a collective ring-tailed fit eclipsing the Revolutionary War and Civil War combined.
Because that same president proffers socialism in well-designed, visually appealing tidbits, garnished with mind-numbing publicity and served with an appropriately aged glass of hip, Hollywood politics American citizens are being deceived and the media oligopoly is free to stifle any outcry.
Methinks the downfall of America is being postponed until the Greatest Generation dies off. As the last generation that truly understood Evil in all its forms, those men and women stand as socialism's last major obstacle.
**sigh**
A sharp Navy salute to you for an outstanding read. I haven't been this enchanted by an author since Rich Carroll published 'Orphaned Heroes.'
Posted by: Bobby Jean at July 15, 2009 11:48 AM