From: phil osborn (philosborn@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Jul 01 2000 - 22:47:01 MDT
>From: "S.J. Van Sickle" <sjvan@csd.uwm.edu>
>Subject: Re: Will Atlanta change Eliezer?
>Date: Sat, 1 Jul 2000 09:58:11 -0500 (CDT)
>
>On Fri, 30 Jun 2000, phil osborn wrote:
>
>The guy who started the "Glory Road" intentional family, modeled after
> > Heinlein's families depicted in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," also got
> > started in Rome. At one point, Glory Road had about 50 members, with
>all
>
>Gee, nobody ever told me *any* good stories like this when I lived there.
>
I think that the smart people had this strange tendancy to leave... ;)
> > What was the name of that big family entertainment center up North of
> > Armuchee? With the big swimming pool, lake, horseback rides, etc.?
>
>Never heard of it. Whenever I asked anyone there about entertainment
>possibilites, they tried to get me to join their church. Evidently, I was
>asking the wrong people. Or they have gotten *very* good over the years
>at maintaining their cover...
>
I recall spending some of the most miserable time in my life at one of those
churches - 2nd Avenue Baptist - especially during "Vacation" Bible School,
which is where the parents who were not happy with having their kids
underfoot dumped them. The fat, stupid, mean young women who ran these
prisons for kids would have gone straight to their rightful reward in their
equally boring hereafter, if I'd had anything to say about it. Then there
was Sunday School, where the guys told racist jokes and talked football for
45 minutes and spent fifteen minute piously trying not to fall asleep as the
adult read the days' lesson. (If you didn't long for life after death
there, then where were you supposed to find it?) Then you went to the
actual church service, where they laid this incredible guilt trip on you -
You're goin to HELL! ifin you don't walk up that there aisle raht nauw and
confess Jesus Christ as your lord and savior! Gack, let me gag for a second
in remembrance...
>Say, where did all the black people live? I was shocked when I discovered
>that Floyd County was 40 % black because I never *saw* them. I thought it
>was creepy that they could stay so well hidden, and even creepier that
>they would find it...convenient.
>
>steve
>
I didn't see that many black people when I was there either. They were
pretty effectively segregated by the default that the banks wouldn't lend to
them, and the real estate people wouldn't sell them property, or rent a
decent house to them. So they lived often in barely renovated chicken
coops, with a dinged up Cadillac on the lawn - or dirt, more likely - and a
TV antenna. This life style was then taken as proof of their
incorrigibility.
My grandfather from Vermont, a crusty, fearless old Vermont farmer with a
damned good education and a sharp sense of humor used to visit for months
and go out picking cotton just for the exercise. The only other cotton
pickers were black. As he and my grandmother would be returning from the
fields, together with the black workers, he noted that a bunch of white guys
would be leaning up against the sheds, sucking on straws and chewing
tabacco. They would be making comments in passing about "them lazy,
shiftless nigras."
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