One hard-ass, workin' Texas gal, a story

This story is fiction only because the names have been changed and all the facts can’t be verified. So, this story is about as true as reporting is on the most important stuff. You know, secret prisons, what’s behind the influence of the CIA, etc. Just like that. True as hell; try and prove it ain’t.

A guy named Bill told me it in a bar. If we hadn’t ended up in a booth with no one nearby he’d have never told me, especially the part about one event that happened when he was a child that he seemed to be over within less than a year, but which now he claimed ruined his entire life. I mean, compared to, say, having a drone sneak up on your uncle’s wedding and killing your entire family except for you and you’re just eight years old - compared to that this is just whining, but I found it compelling – I was spellbound for nine beers.

“ So, ok,” Bill begins, “This is too complex if I try and separate all the parts that I saw happen, that I was a part of, from the parts that I figured out later. And then there’s the stuff that preceded this, ok, so it’s more like a snapshot of a moment. But in that snapshot you can see lot’s more, you know? Like a Diane Arbus picture, you know? Like, what we were just talking about JFK and Bobby and Martin, you know? That moment when it hits you like a punch in the gut and you go, ‘Oh my God, the government killed them all,’ you know.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got you. You know I had a cousin who just died of some kind of heart disease. It’d been diagnosed over a year before. The doctor told her she could die at any time, right? Now, get this. Her husband is a Baptist preacher, right? And this is a small Texas town. Everybody knows everybody. So I hear from my sister, ‘She died in her sleep. And the autopsy showed it was her heart.’ And, in the moment, you know, I just want to finish up the conversation, ok? I got the news, sorry to hear it, well we all knew it was coming, thanks for calling, would you mind putting my name on your card? You know. Then I hang up and it hits me. Autopsy?! What the fuck they need an autopsy for? Did someone think her preacher husband had killed her in her sleep?”

“Yeah, I hear you. What is this shit with autopsies? Cutting up bodies. It only makes sense when you suspect a crime has been committed, you know? You know what, talk about a punch in the gut. You know how every time there’s a plane crash they conduct a thorough investigation. Spend weeks, months if they have to. Finding the black box, looking at this, looking at that, right? So, it hits me. 9/11. Bush ordered the mess cleaned up as soon as possible, right? He fucking ORDERS that there will be no real investigation, right? And barges haul all this debris, which is the evidence, right? Barges haul it to secret locations and places that are off limits, classified sites and shit, you remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” I answered, “I’m with you. So, the most important plane crashes in American history occur. By the end of the day, they say, ‘We know who did it. We know how it all went down. Here’s pictures. It was Osama Bin Laden.’ And they’re flying his relatives back to Saudi Arabia, right? But, this Baptist preacher has to have his wife’s body invaded before the burial?”

“Yeah,” Bill says. “And Bush says. It’s too distressing for Americans to see all this. We’re going to clean it up pronto. Get it out of sight. You ready?”

“Yeah, I’ll stick with Bass. I gotta go to the little boys room. I’ll get the next round.”

“Sure.” Bill gets this look. “And when you come back you’ll be seeing a man about a dog?”

“Huh?”

“ You go. And if it doesn’t bore the hell out of you I got a story to tell you about a dog.”
“Ha. Gotcha. Be right back.”

So I’m not a bar kind of guy really. I always looked at it like hey, I can go to the store and buy six beers for the price of two in a bar. But now, I’m gettin’ up there. I’ve most always done my drinking alone while I was playing guitar. But now, fuck it, I’m lonely. You know, I got no male drinking buddy. My wife won’t drink. Doesn’t like me to drink. So, it’s worth it to go to a bar. I always talk to somebody and once in a while I hit it off with some stranger and I end up getting stuff off my chest that I wouldn’t, or couldn’t tell another living soul, you know?

So, Bill and I settle in. He starts in, “I was just thinking. This story may bore you to tears. So just tell me, ok, and I’ll stop. I mean, we’ve never seen each other before and I may never see you again. And I want to tell somebody this thing that hit me in the gut. Well, I’ll know if you think I’m a nut and I’ll stop the story. Or you just …”

“Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. I’m into it. Tell me before I’m too drunk to listen, ok? I do this, too. Go. Tell me about the dog.”

“Ok. I’ll just start with the whipping.”

“You whipped a dog?”

“Hell no. My momma was whipping me.”

“Yeah?”

“Ok, I’m like eight years old. We just moved into a nice brick house in the suburbs.”

“Where?”

“Amarillo, Texas. I grew up there. It was nice for a kid, you know? Both my parents worked. It was, let’s see, I was eight. It was 1958. We left our doors unlocked, you know? I could walk to and from school. I’d get home, I could ride my bike. In five minutes I’d be out of town, out in farmland, pasture land, you know? I was really into riding that bike man.”

“Ok, got it. The dog?”

“Pudgy.”

“Ok, was he fat”

“No. I can’t remember why I named her Pudgy. She was a cute little cocker spaniel. Not a pure-bred, but she was a cocker spaniel. For the first time we had a nice fenced in back yard so I got a dog. My first memories about her are me, like, tickling her chest. I was sure I made her hair go curly there from all the tickling. She was … you like dogs?”

“Oh yeah.”

“So you understand me when I say I loved her more than anything? I mean more than ANYTHING. If you said, ‘Bill you can either ride your bike or stay home and play with Pudgy,’ there’d of been no contest. I’m with the dog.”

“Gotcha.”

“You ever see “Old Yeller?”

“Oh yeah, cried like a baby man.”

“Me, too. And I read dog books. I remember “Big Red” and “Lassie Comes Home,” right? We had a World Book Encyclopedia, man, and when I looked up dogs they had pages of dogs. Neat pictures. Hunting dogs. Working dogs. You know.”

“Oh yeah. Don’t tell me the internet is ever going to replace looking through a good encyclopedia.”

“No way. So, anyway, I loved her. Thinking now I think I loved her more than I loved my family, but you’re a kid, you’re only eight. You don’t think about that, you know? They’re your family, right? You think you love ‘em. And you do, but it’s, what? It’s a … it’s a conditional love, you know? We were Baptists. I believed I was bad, you know? ‘For all have sinned …’ stuff.”

“Gotcha.”

“So, my parents would spank me with a belt sometimes. And this one day, I don’t remember why, but my Mom was wailing away at me on the back porch. I’d put my hands back there, but she kept on, hurt my hands, so I moved them. And then, there’s Pudgy, man. And she was barking and snarling, scratching at my Mom’s legs, you know? Protecting her master, it’s just instinct, right?”

“Sure.”

“So my mom had just gotten in from work. She worked in an office and she liked to dress snazzy, you know” She wore nice, I guess silk, stockings, and Pudgy was tearing ‘em up. I remember laughing, like right from crying and going, ‘No, mommy, no’ to laughing - kind of hysterical I guess. So she takes the belt to my dog, but Pudgy stays in there, man. I don’t remember her biting mom, just scratching up her legs and snarling. Man, to me it was like a book or a movie. That’s what dogs do, right? You don’t have to train ‘em. They love you to death. They’ll die for you, man.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“So, I don’t know. I’ve got a vivid memory of her spanking me. My butt, my legs, my hands, whatever. And I remember laughing and then everything changed. Her expression. I don’t even remember if I had got down to protect Pudgy or if she just stopped. I think she just stopped and went in the house, Pudgy still going for her legs.”

“Wow, that’s a dog, man.”

“Yeah, and I stayed outside. Me and Pudgy hugging and her licking me, you know?”

“Sure.”

“So, I don’t remember how things went down when my Dad came home. He probably whipped me some more for good measure. Inside the house. Anyway, all I remember is the next day I get home from school, the back gate is open and Pudgy is gone.”

“Shit.”

“Pudgy is gone. But you know, Lassie comes home, man. She could have gone out, but she would have would have come back in, too. She knows where home is.  But she’s not in the alley. I spend the whole afternoon walking up and down the alley, calling, ‘Pudgy, Pudgy, reet, reet, reet (he was whistling), here Girl, Pudgy.’ But she’s gone, man. My parents get home about the same time and say, “Well, did you leave the gate open when you threw out the trash?” Man, all my life all you had to do to get me was lay a guilt trip on me. So that turned my mind to blaming myself, then there was some speculation. She looks like a pure bred. I bet someone took her. Maybe someone opened the gate from the alley and left it open when they left. Anyway, I was just a stupid kid. It didn’t hit me until I was middle-aged with two out of three kids grown up. All these thoughts like, if someone came into our yard they could have come on into the house and stolen SOMETHING. You know, and a lot of other things it’d take too long and whiny to get into, but one of them was remembering so vividly that look on my mother’s face when she went from  being mad as hell, whipping my ass, to just stopping. Oh yeah, she said, “That dog ruined my hose,” and just went inside.” So one day it hit me like a punch in the gut, “My mom had my dad take Pudgy away. I wonder if he shot her or just took her so far away she couldn’t find her way home.”

“But Lassie comes home.”

“Yeah. Every day after school I came home and looked for Pudgy. On foot, on my bike. With binoculars even, ha. I remember going out in a snow storm looking for her. Man, I just knew I’d find her. I just knew she’d come back. I didn’t give up for months, man.”

“Pudgy was dead.”

“Yep, I think so. If my Dad didn’t do it then I’ll bet she got her daddy to.”

“ So before we both start crying here let’s get set up.” So Bill got the beer and I took another leak, thinking. Feeling bad for that little boy looking for his dog. Then it hit me like a punch in the gut.

We settled down again and, what the fuck, if this had been a friend I might not have had the guts to handle it this way. I said, “Bill?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me quick without thinking one good thing about your mother.”

“Huh?”

“Quick.”

“Well … That woman worked her ass off. Her good job is the reason we got by. My Dad was a salesman all his life and he either got a good commission, a bad commission, or nothing at all when things were bad. Oh, and she was in the union, man.”

“Which one?”

“Communications Workers of America.”

“Telephone company, huh?”

“Oh yeah. That’s pretty good, huh, for Texas? A union woman from the 1940s when she was a telephone operator. You know, plugging in those wires.”

“Did she cook?”

“ Damn good meat and potatoes. Not much on vegetables. From a can. Oh, except for fried okra. And you know what? Every Saturday morning for a long time she got up on Saturday morning and made cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Hey, I see where you’re going with this.”

“You remember, about two hours ago when we first met we were talking about that damn Keystone Pipeline?”

“Yeah?”

“We talked about Rick Perry and how he wanted a mile-wide line all the way through the United States? And how the damn Democrats would probably open the door to that by okaying the pipeline? And how that’d be the thin wedge that, after that, why not lay down some train tracks along side, and a highway, and electrical lines, and the damn Democrats would end up making Governor  Rick Perry’s wet dream come true?”

“Well, yeah. Now, I don’t see where you’re going.”

“Well, excuse me, but you know I told you I was a songwriter? And I’m drunk and I’m going to go poetical on you.”

“Ha ha. Go man.”

“Well, that Pudgy thing? I understand it broke your heart. I bet your Mom did it, too, but you know what? That thing is your own personal Keystone Pipeline and …”

“Oh, brother, you are drunk.”

“I know. Fuck it. But man, that thing is like the Keystone Pipeline in your heart, man. It’s the thin wedge that took you down the road into forgetting all the good stuff and the more you dwell on it, the wider that pipeline gets.”

“Fuckin’ corny man.”

“ So are some of my songs. But they make a point.”

Bill looked at me, kinda opened his mouth, then shut it. I think his eyes got a little moist.”

“If you’ll shut up, I’ll buy a last round.”

“Done.”

We got our beers and Bill held his up. I reached mine over and we clinked glasses.

Bill said, “Burl, to my Momma …” I could tell he had more but couldn’t get it out.

“To your Momma. One hard-ass, workin’ Texas gal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hey Bill.”

“Huh?”

“ How can we convince those damn Democrats not to open the door to Rick Perry’s wet dream?”

“I think we’ll have to meet tomorrow and figure that out.”

Damn, it was good to have a drinkin’ buddy again.

                                                      Aillen Gilliland Dunn, 1923-2012
My kids would be appalled that I called her "hard ass." They remember a sweetie. Sure, she was that, too. The story is fiction, however.

it's time to break the CIA into a thousand pieces!

Well, the Republicans finally managed to score points in the only way they know how - the smear. They lied enough, of course with the media's help, to prevent Susan Rice from becoming the next Secretary of State. Now a report from the State Department points a finger at itself. Don't worry it'll come back in an attempt to bite candidate Hillary in the a.. if she indeed runs for president. That's what it's all about, power for the Party.
No word about the other governmental agency who had a major presence in the Bengazi tragedy, the CIA. Oh yes, they were there, a whole houseful of them. The CIA did not stop the attack, predict the attack, or change the situation. You see, that's not what they do. I think there is a good CIA and a bad CIA. Of course neither you or I can PROVE anything beyond a reasonable doubt about the CIA because it's SECRET. It has to be SECRET. They protect us so we allow their secrecy, right? Wrong! Did they protect us from 9/11? Did they play a role in preventing the war in Iraq - that morally bankrupt war that, I think, was designed to bankrupt the nation? Did they provide any SECRET guidance that has led to success in Afghanistan? No, and why not? Is it just because the bad CIA is dominant? Well, that doesn't hurt their incompetence, but I put to you that the very concept of an on-going SECRET agency is anathema to any free democracy. Remember that the CIA and the NSA and their ilk were created at the end of WWII  from the war-time secret agencies, created indeed at the most secure moment for America in the entire 20th century. No country in the world could challenge the U.S. at that moment and yet the populace allowed its government to expand in a manner that began all the self-fulfilling prophecies that have led us to believe we can't do without their continual dominance. They became more powerful than the Presidency in November of 1963 and have grown ever since. They create murder and mayhem on such a scale that we may never truly be safe again.
And the CIA did nothing to prevent the Bengazi attack, but bear no blame because no one is safe from them. They worked with the Mafia in the 60's; what makes you think they don't work with the Mafia today? Indeed, we have allowed the creation of private SECRECY companies to work the famous "dark side." So, now the link between money and SECRECY is out in front of us. Who can be surprised that Blackwater, by whatever name, left the U.S.? They are a criminal enterprise who wrongly thought they might get caught except that no one dares go after them. No, they are now based in an oil-rich Arab country and remain available to work the dark sides for them too.
Why did we fall prey to uncontrollable SECRECY at the time of the greatest strength our nation ever had? Simple, they wrapped themselves in the flag. And now that they, and American politics, are wrapped in both the flag and the Bible they think they are untouchable. Are they? Only as long as We the People behave like sheep who have gone astray. The government will not do this for us. If a politician or public figure was powerful enough to threaten them they have two routes to go. One, they discredit that person until s/he loses all credibility, or two, they kill them. This is only one major reason why our nation's dependence on "the President" is wrong-headed. No President since Dwight David Eisenhower will ever be again be powerful enough to stop them. And he tried to rally the People to stop the Military/Industrial Complex, but we didn't heed him.
Now we must add SECRECY to the complex: the Military/Industrial/SECRECY Complex is not on our side. They are on their own side. They flourish only as long as We the People allow perpetual war and fear to dominate. They are on the side of the 1%. They are mostly on the Republican side, but have the Democrats effectively bottled up.  And the wealth and power of the 1% are now tied to international big money in such a way that putting America first is a near impossibility. Peace would mean their demise. Evil must be turned around so our children can live. We must have a nonviolent orange-style revolution in America and it can't come from the top down. Those at the top are either part of the problem or their hands are tied. The two-party system in the U.S. cannot live without them and is becoming ever more entrenched. The two-party system will never fix America. The Republicans want a country with a federal government that does nothing except fight wars and perpetuate SECRECY. The Democrats try to do this and that without the nerve to tell us that the best way America could save money is to shrink the Military/Industrial/SECRECY Complex. They will forever be liable to the notion that they are the big wasteful party of spenders because they want to have both guns and butter. Lyndon Johnson couldn't do it and he had more control of his party than Obama.
And who, I ask you was the only candidate during our last presidential election cycle who spoke out about these issues and the "blowback" they create? You know, the one who said we should treat other countries the way we wish to be treated? (Sounds like, and is, another way to quote Jesus Christ.) And where was the audience who laughed aloud when he said it? Why it was Ron Paul in North Carolina, the Republican/Bible Belt!
We need Ron Paul's voice in the national debate. We need his Campaign for Liberty to leave the Republican Party because it cannot be reformed any more than the Democratic Party can. Left and Right mean nothing anymore. There is a Wheel of Life and if you travel far enough in any direction you will meet your opposite. While I do not support all Ron Paul stands for, he who confronts my biggest enemy is my friend! Applied common sense on the Wheel of Political Life would show that there is a great commonality between two apparent opposites, both of whom are capable of speaking great truths - Ron Paul and Jim Hightower! I'd like to see that debate in the open sunshine of true Democracy!!

"about a return to Common Sense"

Well, here I go with an idea I’ve been mulling over for years. My argument is that there is almost nothing in our national discourse that is untainted by greed and the need to feel superior to others merely because we were born in the USA. I hold it to be self-evident that almost no American actually reads and follows the Constitution and the New Testament. What we take to be news is mostly opinion and propaganda. We, the people, have been fooled and we act like fools because of that.

At the end of WWII we were fooled, first of all, into believing that even though the US helped win WWII, the Russians were now our number one enemy, that they were out-spending us on the machinery of war, that they were brainwashing us, that they actually COULD take over the whole world. Meanwhile, The USSR was starving and in no way capable of taking over the world. And they had died in massive numbers to aid our fight against Hitler. They had been our ally for God’s sake. I bring this up, not because my blog will be about Russia, but to show an example of how we were fooled by the secret agencies that grew out of WWII. I don’t even know how many there are. Let’s see, the CIA, the NSA, they spring to mind. But do not all American military branches have their own secret agencies? Were not private companies granted the status of our military (Blackwater, aka whatever), except that they were MUCH better paid! Why was there the destruction of 9/11? Had we not paid enough taxes to support our spies, both good and bad? Shouldn’t the cockpit doors on our airliners have been reinforced, locked doors, ever since the Palestinian hijackings of the 1960s? Shouldn’t the FBI have listened to the field ops that reported middle-eastern non-citizens taking flying lessons, but didn’t care to learn how to land? Good God! And NO ONE was fired or demoted after 9/11 except the field ops?

Recently, a relative of mine died. She was in her 70s, had undergone open-heart surgery, and her husband was a Baptist minister. Guess what? An autopsy was ordered to determine cause of death! The US investigates plane crashes to the nth degree, but Bush said it would be too troubling to America to do a scientific analysis of the debris at the World Trade Center? No autopsy for the body of the only attack on America since Pearl Harbor? That makes no sense, unless there was something to hide. You see, we’ve lost our common sense. We are no longer an informed nation; we are a nation allowing the super rich to form US into what THEY want. I’m sick of it.

The same people who will believe anything a Republican says deny any truth to anything Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi say. People admire the “Christian” act of burning the Koran and other acts of phony or ignorant preachers and can’t see with their own eyes that President Obama has spent his presidency reaching out, not getting angry  (even when called a liar during his State of the Union address). In other words, he behaves in a humble Christian manner, on our national political stage. And let’s not forget something, lest you think it’s all because he’s black. The vicious attacks on President and First Lady Clinton began immediately upon his assuming the office. Let’s see, they killed someone in the White House, and… and… and… The battle goes back, way back, yet we Americans aren’t allowed to know the truth. It’s classified Top Secret. So are the lies. How can all these people believe Obama is not a US citizen unless the CIA, NSA, and all levels of spies know it? Why do they not stir up a fuss with them? It makes no common sense.

So my blogs are about common sense and finding that common sense in two important documents: the Bible and the Constitution. Actually, I’m only using some verses from the Old Testament book of Leviticus, the RED letters (Jesus’s words) in the New Testament, and a copy of the Constitution that includes the original language as well as strike-outs of that original language as changed by amendments.

So there’s the starting point. We, the People cannot any longer know what our government is really doing. We cannot believe most of what is said on the radio and TV and written in newspapers. So, let’s go back to original documents and apply common sense to them in light of today’s America. Get your Bible (red letter edition) and your Constitution and let’s go!