Baseball, golf - what do they have in common besides a little white ball? Well, I can think of two things right off the top of my head. In the first place, my mother loves both of them, and anything my mother loves has to be a good thing. Although I hate golf, personally, and I went on strike from baseball when the players went on strike from the management, and they never really gave me a reason to come back.
The second thing they have in common is that they are both played with a club of some kind, which brings me to the primitive nature of mankind, generally. See that smooth segue there? That is what you get for your money when you go to an expensive hidden Ivy school like St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota.
Of course, having said that, I feel honor bound to mention that when I attended this illustrious institution, it was not nearly as expensive. In fact, back then it wasn't that much more costly than attending the U of M, once you added in room and board. And no one had ever heard of hidden Ivy's, either, which, in any case, wouldn't have meant anything to me. Because the main draw for me at the time was the fact that I could run away home in less than half an hour, and I missed my mom a lot. And if it had really been all that exclusive, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been allowed to grace the hallowed halls, because I was poor financially and academically, and not all that motivated, either.
And let's just clear the air, while we're at it, on a misconception that causes me a lot of grief. St. Olaf College is not located in the same place as Betty White lived in "The Golden Girls." I loved that show, and I love Betty White, but I seriously wish they had used another name for her fictional home town, like Oleville or Lena City, because I am tired of the snickers I hear when I wear my sweatshirt and try to show a little collegial veneration to the alma mater.
Besides St. Olaf, Northfield is known for two other things, Carleton College, and Jesse James. [There is no more golf in this story, because I hate golf, so if you are waiting to hear about Jesse playing golf, you are going to have a really long wait. Although you never know, since I do have an annoying tendency to lose track of what I'm talking about, and sometimes I end up right back where I didn't mean to start in the first place.] Since I don't acknowledge Carleton, being they are the adversary in town to the saintly institution of higher learning which I myself attended, I guess I'll have to talk about Jesse James.
As you may or may not know, my current abode is in the greater Kansas City metropolitan area. I am not bragging about it, because if we didn't have the skyrocketing crime rate and the jaw dropping stupidity of the school board and the city council, not to mention the current mayor, Mark Funkhouser, who has confused his office for a home business and his wife for an unpaid advisor, [I think that's what he is calling her in these sad days of the Mammy-gate fiasco,] we wouldn't have anything to talk about at all. However, sprinkled amongst the mindless politicians and way too many criminals, are a lot of really nice people who also call Kansas City home. Which is why it is such a nice place to raise children, even if they don't have anything to do once they can drive.
Anyway, Jesse James is from Kearney, Missouri, another of the many suburban outliers of the metro area. I have been following with some interest over the last few years the debate over whether Jesse James was really buried in Kearney in the grave that bears his name, or if it was all a ruse.
I think it's significant that his mother was alive at the time, and personally ordered his grave stone, which reads, "IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY BELOVED SON, MURDERED BY A TRAITOR AND COWARD WHOSE NAME IS NOT WORTHY TO APPEAR HERE." I don't know about you, but that sounds like one mad mom to me, which leads me to believe that she knew something a whole lot of other people apparently didn't. Namely, that Jesse James was well and truly dead. It doesn't seem likely we would need to be digging him up and making trouble out in the spirit world for ourselves, since we have enough trouble to keep us busy just with the people who are still around, but no one consulted me.
Maybe the doubters think he is hiding out with Elvis somewhere. Kilroy was here, but Jesse left the building. Anyway, it seems that the bones that are all that is left of the legendary outlaw were DNA tested and proved to be truly the remains of one of the most dangerous men of all time, and there is at least one less outlaw to worry about around here.
Before the whole discussion of whether it was or wasn't him in that grave, he tried to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, which turned out to be a pretty significant turning point for him. In the end, he got away, but he and his gang were never the same again.
One thing he surprisingly didn't learn, growing up in the small town of Kearney, is that in the truly small town, the stranger is noticed. And the sight of a few guys with guns standing around guarding the entrance of that bank in little Northfield got the attention of a whole lot of people. When the outside lookouts fired shots in the air, thinking they would scatter the crowd and frighten them into hiding, they misjudged the situation with deadly results.
Those citizens may have been small town folk, but they knew how to shoot a gun as well as anyone, and the warning to run for cover was merely the incentive they needed to find a safer place from which to shoot the fleeing criminals. The James-Younger Gang took some heavy losses that day, and their reputation suffered as well, after one of them shot the unarmed clerk in the back of his head.
That was Jesse's real downfall, the shooting of that clerk. Because up until then, they weren't robbing people, according to the media which were already sensationalizing stories for the purposes of raising their readership numbers. [And here we thought that was just a current phenomenon.]
The romantic tall tale went that they were modern day Robin Hoods, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Which was, of course, so much nonsense, since they were taking from trains and giving to themselves, but you know how it is when a story gets passed along from one person to the next. By the end, you wouldn't even recognize your own name, it would be so garbled. So when we know for sure that Jesse James came to a certain end, it isn't something to be sad about.
Kansas City is a dangerous place these days. The murder rate is on the rise, and even as we are figuratively strip searched and forced to sign over our firstborn in order to procure a little Sudafed for allergy relief, the meth capital of the world continues to poison the populace more or less unabated. I am forced to muse on the rationality of strict control over the sales of Sudafed while promoting the sale of guns on the open market at shows, but perhaps that is just my own personal bias showing. I can't help but notice that they seem to be conspicuously linked, in this town, at least, and if we must treat Sudafed as dangerous, shouldn't we be treating guns just the same?
I don't know anything about illicit drug use personally, as I prefer to be in control of everything at all times, particularly myself, and eschew anything that would prevent that from being the case. However, those that have been caught in the snare of cocaine have said that it is more addictive than almost any other drug, harder to kick than anything except tobacco, which is apparently the hardest addiction on earth to break.
I have read that it takes 21 days to break a bad habit and substitute a new, better one, but I think kicking the smoking habit is a lifetime battle, much like alcoholism. I have known many smokers who stop for awhile, but it seems to have long talons. It claws them back in again and again, as they battle themselves for supremacy over a habit that rules their lives and drives them to commit suicide by millimeters. It's a death dance in many acts, as the smoker struggles to leave that enticing lover behind. In the end, like Satan's apple, it seems to draw them back in, reminding them until their final desperate breath that they remain possessed by a demon from which they will never be free.
On a purely practical level, by the time you add up all the packs of cigarettes an average smoker buys in a lifetime, you would have a pretty nice sum of money saved up. Just think of what you could have done with that cash, had you not burned it up at your fingertips. You could have bought new cars, you could have paid off your house, you could even have taken a fabulous safari, or gone on vacation to South Africa, and toured the diamond mines.
Which brings me to the diamonds mentioned at the top of this post. [I'll bet you didn't think I could get there when I was talking about Jesse James, did you?]
What, exactly, is a diamond in the rough, anyway? Of course, we all know that means someone of stellar quality who is a little unpolished around the edges. But why do we value people in the rough, when we value only the gems that are polished? Why is it that with people we mistrust the polished and the precision crafted? Why do we prefer the down home, fried chicken and french fries variety rather than the pheasant under glass enthusiasts? What makes jello superior to creme brulee, anyway? And if you make red jello and add little pieces of fruit, what does that do to change the equation?
Because all metaphors aside, I think what we are really saying is that jello is like us, while the creme brulee is for the people who have Gotten Above Themselves. And let's not even get into Baked Alaska, which would be timely, but the thought of making that metaphor work gives me a headache.
I think the dumbing down of America is well underway. It began in the ghetto among the seamier underside of the nation's least fortunate citizens, where education coincided with leaving the grinding, relentless poverty behind. I think the jealousy that escape engendered caused a backlash against those who were fortunate enough to find a way to run away. It has gradually, slowly, risen to a point where now even our nation's leaders downplay their education, lest they be perceived as elitist, a code word for someone who is out of touch and out of place in the world of the regular person.
I, for one, decry this development, and I see it as further evidence of a culture in decline. Those who do not seek to improve themselves will instead tear down those around them in order to level the playing field. I don't know about you, but I don't want the country's leaders to be level with the majority of the people who surround me in this metro area. I strongly believe that to lead you must be, first and foremost, smarter, stronger, braver, and more dedicated than the people around you. It is always my hope that our leaders rise to the top because they are the cream, not the fat that we discard because it's bad for us.
Of course, even in the rough, a diamond has great potential value, because the hidden interior may be perfect, flawless - it's just waiting to be revealed. One false move while the diamond master is cutting will ruin what could have been a flawless gemstone, however, and all the value can be gone in an instant of misjudgment.
I don't know that people aren't sort of like those rough diamonds after all. When we are born, we are all potential. But it seems that some people are fatally flawed from the get-go, and no matter how carefully they have been handled, they go the wrong way.
Other people are certainly damaged by the misdirected whittling of their parents and others, who should have tended them more carefully. Although I would point out that even flawed diamonds have their uses in the industrial market, where they make fine tips for such things as dentist's drills and oil drills for extreme locations like the ANWR. So just because someone looks like a lost cause today doesn't mean they might not have some redeeming qualities somewhere under the bad stuff.
Jesse James wasn't a diamond, though, he was more of a cheap rhinestone. Except to his mother, I guess. He would have been better off using a club to play golf instead of a gun to shoot people and rob banks and trains, since he finished off his life being shot in the back by a greedy accomplice looking for the reward money. I can't help but feel we have not advanced a whole lot in the intervening 150 years. The motivations may have changed, but the outcome is still too many innocent people dead for no good reason. We do have both red jello and creme brulee today, however, so I guess that's something. I think there is a lesson in there somewhere for all of us, and as soon as I find it, I'll let you know.
