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The Fire Eater 2009, Volume III
Lee in the Mountains
Walking into the shadows, walking alone...
Clint's Corner
This in from Alderman Lacy:
It's deep, SPLC, former National Park Service Director, James McPherson, Bill "Weather Underground" Ayres...
For Freedom and Missouri,
Clint
About Clint!
 Clint E. Lacy is Press Officer for the John T Cofee Camp #1934 Inc., Sons of Confederate Veterans. He currently serves as an Alderman in the City of Marble Hill, Missouri.
A Confederate Teenager in Yankee New England (It Just Wasn’t Done!)
by Al Benson Jr.
4 June 2009
As a youngster, from about age ten onward, I guess I would have to call myself a Confederate sympathizer. I knew virtually nothing about the War of Northern Aggression at that tender age, but I occasionally saw a movie with “Civil War” battles depicted in it. I can remember rooting for those ragged guys in the tattered gray uniforms and hoping they’d win out over all those guys in those fancy blue uniforms. I suppose today that would make me guilty of “thoughtcrime.” As a youngster I lived in Southern New England, the haven of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Abolitionists, and so rooting for those “rebels” was something that just wasn’t done, at least not in my neck of the woods. But, then, even at age ten, I guess I was a bit of a non-conformist.
When I was ten years old I bought my first (of many) pair of cowboy boots. I had worked doing odd jobs and running errands for almost a year to save up the money for them—a dime here, a quarter there, until I had almost enough, and my Dad, though not a non-conformist, paid the little bit I was short. You just didn’t wear cowboy boots in Southern New England in the late 1940s and early 50s—it just wasn’t done. Most people didn’t even know what they were. Guess they just didn’t watch enough Western movies.
Southern New England being what it was and I being who I was, things gradually slid from bad to worse for me. I was one of those people who just couldn’t seem to follow all the Southern New England do’s and don’ts, which dealt with how folks are supposed to live in Southern New England, often to the consternation of my own family. I was “different” and in that part of the world at that point in time “different” was something that just wasn’t done!
But, when I reached the ripe old age of fifteen, I really slipped the traces, and from then on, I didn’t bother looking back. I remember that, one warm summer evening my Mom and I went to the Shrine Circus, which was something the Shriners put on every year to raise money for their charitable projects. It was somewhat like a typical circus, and during a break between the acts there was a carnival midway where you could go and spend your extra money if you had any. As Mom and I were walking down the midway we came to a vendor who was selling Yankee and Confederate kepis. (There’s a word for you kiddies to look up in the dictionary).
Although I looked, I was going to just walk on by when my mother stopped and said “Would you like a hat?” I don’t think she ever fully realized what she started with that question. I walked back and said, “Yes,”
I’d take one, and she then asked “Which one do you want?” Knowing that either would be controversial in our neighborhood (anything was except baseball caps), I hesitated—and it was then that I heard what I have always described as a “non-audible voice” which in my mind, though I could not physically hear it, seemed like it was about three and a half feet in back of my left shoulder, and it very clearly communicated to me that I should “Take the gray one.” So I did. And I started wearing it the next day.
Remember, this was back when much of the phony “civil rights” stuff was just starting up and New England, like the rest of the country, was being fed all of “Mississippi burning” propaganda about how bad life was all over the South and how mean and nasty all those racist Southerners were. Interestingly enough, the racist Northerners were never mentioned, and growing up where I did, I definitely knew there were quite a few. But for the prostitute press, racism did not exist north of Mason-Dixon. You didn’t discuss its having any presence in the North. It just wasn’t done!
However, wearing that “rebel” hat did not win me many friends, which helped, I guess, to make me even more of a rebel than I already was. It wasn’t that I consciously tried to aggravate folks—I just wanted to do my own thing and be left alone. That wasn’t altogether possible in the Southern New England of that day. Seeing that I didn’t really know a lot about the War and all the reasons for it at that point, it was a bit hard to defend my position. All I knew was that it wasn’t about slavery, but since no one else there that I ran across seemed to grasp that, it wasn’t much help to me. In his own good time the Lord gave me the information I needed to deal with the subject, but He didn’t do it right then.
But that “rebel hat” was the beginning—no, maybe the cowboy boots were the beginning. I’m not sure which. Either way I learned that, for whatever reason, I just did not have a New England mindset. I think I would have been more at home in rural Mississippi than I was in Massachusetts, both then and later.
As for the event I’ve just described and the reasons for it, I have reflected many times. I’ve mentioned this event to a few of my Southern friends. They seem to have no problem accepting and understanding it. Some of them have had similar experiences of their own. I mentioned it to one of my Northern friends several years ago and he said “You had a conversion experience.” I had never thought of it in quite those terms. A decade later I did have a “conversion experience” which brought me to faith in Jesus Christ. To me that was a conversion experience, not the other, and yet the other was not insignificant because it pointed me in a direction I might not otherwise have taken consciously. So I believe that the Lord used it in my life also.
Years later, I got another “rebel hat,” along with most of the rest of the gray uniform, and have worn them in several Southern heritage parades over the years, and to conferences and other events. I have never been ashamed of that gray uniform or of the “rebel hat,” and those who prattle about the War being all about slavery and racism are either ignorant of the real reasons for the War or they hope you are. Either way, they can keep their leftist propaganda and I’ll keep my “rebel” uniform. My wife, son, and I now live in the deep South, and we’ve been more content here than anyplace “up North” we ever lived. So I reckon, God willing, we’re fixin’ to stay.
About the Author
 Al Benson Jr.'s, columns are found on many online journals, such as The Sierra Times, The Patriotist, and The Fire Eater. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Confederate Society of America. Additionally, Mr. Benson is editor of the Copperhead Chronicle and author of The Homeschool History Project, a study of the War of Southern Independence. The Copperhead Chronicle is a quarterly newsletter written with a Christian, pro-Southern perspective.
Email Al to sign up, or write:
The Copperhead Chronicle
P O Box 55 Sterlington, Louisiana 71280
The Gitfiddle
(From “Buffalo Bob & The Clown Prince of Darkness”)
MacDonald King Aston
4 June 2009
The simple story was Zach picking up a cheap classical guitar and playing three of his songs for them. The real story was Bob and Rick Richardson crouching on the floor, Nick leaning against the wall, and Bernie cross-legged on the small bed, and Zach’s hands waltzing over the strings. Nothing complex, nothing simple. Lots of minor chords, hammeroffs, and a free-bleeding soul for the world to see, if it chose. Words that burned.
O do you remember?
When you and I were young,
And flowers hung in windows
And songs were always sung
I can hear a voice calling
An old man’s life from here.
But you can’t wipe away the memory
Like you wipe away a tear.
The arpeggiated E-minor singing a sadness too old for Zach’s twenty years. Somewhere, behind the music, Bob saw a picture of himself, five years old, in Maryland, staring out of a basement window. But you can’t brush away a memory like you wipe away a tear.
Bob looked back at Rick. Rick’s eyes were focused on Zach’s hands. Phwack-diddle-phwack-phwack-dong. He’d never seen a classical guitar hammered that way. Again nothing complex, but when Zach strummed he slammed the strings. He turned to look at Rick. And then, from the chaos of the slamming chords into a slow E-minor to D to C. Karla, Karla, Karla, Karla. Thence to silence. No one spoke for a few seconds.
Zach handed the guitar to Bob. “Here, that’s enough of my stuff. Why don’t you play some?”
Bob took the guitar. “Ah,” he fumbled, “all I know is the cover tunes I’ve been playing.”
Then Zach surprised him. “I’ve got an idea, boys. Here’s a plan. I say we jump in the car and head out for the Bird Sanctuary, first having secured the necessary and correct Mind Balm, in both post and haste, to wit, namely, that thereto and henceforth do we seek out the waterfall at the path’s end, do indeed, and not only that, but take guitars to accompany said Balm and boys, nor stop until we have MASTERED THE SUN. And we’ll take out gitfiddles with us, commencing to sing only after we have stocked our larder.”
This speech was Bob’s first introduction to the curious mixture of implausible vocabulary, irreducible syntax, and imploded semantics that often rolled out of Zach’s head. In the next few weeks he was to find that Zach kept journals devoted to abstruse and esoteric vocabulary, poetry, and quotations. Zach would spend hours by Bernie’s pool memorizing this verbal armamentarium. When necessary, he would pull an exotic word, a phrase, or even a whole poem from his horde, casting it forth with a Delphian brevity. At twenty years, armed with a prodigious capacity for reading and four years of high school Latin, Zach gave the impression of a college professor.
“I’ll bring the cigars,” Nick said.
“I’ll drive,” said Rick Richardson, who had remained silent until now. “I’ve got a full tank just about.”
“Sure,” said Bernie, tossing his long brown hair over his shoulders. He looked nervous though. Meeting new people was never easy for him.
About the Author
MacDonald King Aston is a Fire Eater, writer, musician, artist, father, and husband. A member of the Choctaw Nation, his folks have lived in Dixie for over 10,000 years.
Dead Men Tell No Tales But Do They Cash Stimulus Checks?
by Al Benson Jr.
21 April 2009
In this era of ever increasing socialist bureaucracy it seems that the federal government in Washington wants to usurp more and more functions of our daily lives unto itself. Yet more and more, it proves itself unqualified to handle most of them. Could it possibly be that the federal government really doesn’t care whether it handles these various unconstitutional functions well or not as long as it controls them? After all, if the feds control everything then they can show us proletarian masses where the power is really at, can’t they?
Only recently I read an article from http://www.myfoxny.com dealing with those stimulus checks everyone has been checking their mailboxes for every day now (the same stimulus checks they are going to tax us on next year). The article stated: “This week, thousands of people are getting stimulus checks in the mail. The problem is that a lot of them are dead.” As I read the brief article, my first thought was “I wonder if those stimulus checks to the dead folks are part of the political payoff to those deceased citizens of Chicago, Illinois, and Gary, Indiana, who, faithfully every election year rise from their graves and vote and vote and vote”
I have often wondered how many Chicago politicians who are now in office would have made it without the votes of the deceased.
The Fox News article mentioned a lady in Valley Stream, New York, who was expecting her $250 stimulus check. When the check finally arrived and her son opened it they found that the hoped-for check was made out to her father, who had passed away in Italy 34 years ago! He had been a US citizen when he returned to Italy back in 1933, but had only returned to the US for a visit back in 1969. It turns out that this gentleman was never even part of the social security system! Of course, maybe the present administration, looking at his Italian name, thought he was an illegal immigrant and so sought to buy his vote with a check. Who knows? Whatever their rationale is, his stimulus check is probably not going to help his daughter out very much, especially since he’s no longer alive to endorse it.
The Social Security Administration has, reportedly, sent out 52 million checks so far, but admits that some of those checks mistakenly went to dead folks because the agency didn’t have any record of their deaths. That may be, but how do they happen to send out checks to dead people that were never on social security? They saw fit not to address that issue. It seems there have been between 8,000 and 10,000 checks sent out to people that are no longer among the living. Even if you figure it on the low end that’s about $2 million that went to corpses somewhere. Wonder who will cash them.
Remember, this is the same federal government of which FEMA is a part. Most of us here in Louisiana can remember how well FEMA handled the Hurricane Katrina affair. While New Orleans was flooding, the head honcho at FEMA was being interviewed on television where he was showing off the latest addition to his wardrobe. Though he didn’t fiddle while Rome burned, he did pose while New Orleans flooded.
This is the same federal government whose response to the international terrorist problem is to seek to disarm honest Americans because, as everyone on the left knows, all Americans are right-wing extremists and potential terrorists and so the Second Amendment should be annulled so they can’t buy anymore automatic weapons to ship to the drug dealers in Mexico--who, if you believe the leftist drones in Washington, get all their weapons at US gun shows!
Another fine example of the federal government operating at peak efficiency!
And just think, these are the people that want to be in charge of our health care system! Heaven forbid! Just goes to show you how socialist redistribution of the wealth really works. Why even those who couldn’t take it with them when they passed from this life will now get stimulus checks. And your great-grandchildren and their grandchildren will get to pay for all this.
Is socialism a great system or what?
About the Author
Al Benson Jr.'s, columns are found on many online journals, such as The Sierra Times, The Patriotist, and The Fire Eater. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Confederate Society of America. Additionally, Mr. Benson is editor of the Copperhead Chronicle and author of The Homeschool History Project, a study of the War of Southern Independence. The Copperhead Chronicle is a quarterly newsletter written with a Christian, pro-Southern perspective.
Email Al to sign up, or write:
The Copperhead Chronicle
P O Box 55 Sterlington, Louisiana 71280
For His Wife in Winter
MacDonald King Aston
18 Mayl 2009 (17 February 2007)
Though I wander astray from you,
Yet never far. For the Light
Behind all things speaks the true
Tongue of you and me, never the spite
Of the hasty, nor the mere self
Consumed by its brief labor in time,
And yet not: laying up the dingy pelf
Of itself. There where up we climb
The final stairs to that Light, and to
The knowledge of it, stands a door.
It opens only for me and only for you,
And when it shuts, the Light shines more.
About the Author
MacDonald King Aston is a Fire Eater, writer, musician, artist, father, and husband. A member of the Choctaw Nation, his folks have lived in Dixie for over 10,000 years.
Little Satilla: The Voice of T Warren
MacDonald King Aston
10 April 2009
The voice is not plain, nor rugged, nor weatherbeaten. It is the voice of One Who Has Been There. One who knows. T Warren sent some advance copies of his latest music to me recently. I’ve taken my time to listen, and now it’s time to speak.
Little Satilla struck me right away. With its pedal steel floating against the solid drumbeat, its two-fold reading, its honesty, I listened to it for two weeks to fix it in a place, a genre before realising that I could only fit it into the T Warren genre. Is it country? Yes and no. Is it rock? Yes and no. Is it folk? Yes and no. Is it pop? Well, no. So be it. The closest I’m going to get is a blend of country, folk, and rock, salted with blues. Notice, by the way, that blues and rock were born in the South.
With Little Satilla, the first impulse is to lump it into the love-song category:
Little Satilla you been on my mind
Seems I’m thinkin’ boutcha most the time
There’s a place you hold, deep in my heart
Though miles of madness keep us apart
But the next verse begins to reveal the real love:
Folks up here well, they don’t understand
The spell that ya have on this here man
You’re all through my system gets worse every day
Till I get back to Georgia it’s gonna stay that way
And the love is confirmed by the chorus:
My Sweet Satilla, I been all over this land
Spreadin the message in a redneckin band
Little Satilla is a love song. But the Little Satilla is also a blackwater river welling up from the coastal swamps of Dixie, wandering past cypresses and gumswamps, pines, sweetbay, red maples, and emptying into Saint Simon’s Sound in Glynn County, Georgia, home of Sydney Lanier’s The Marshes of Glynn.
The invocation of the Little Satilla marks a coming home—one day. It’s a song about coming home to the Southland, to the magnolias and seawind, to the truth of God’s Country, to the winding of the Little Satilla through the marshlands of southeast Georgia. For T Warren, it is a declaration of his entire life, perhaps. Waiting to get home to God’s green and holy land. Both here and there. 
For me? Little Satilla is indeed both here and there. Both Dixie and God’s Country. Both holy. And listening to T’s voice, you can tell he knows it.
“Miles of madness” is the this-here sorrow. But this-here sorrow is never lost to one’s heart—providing one’s heart is big enough to hold on to the this-there-then truth of God.
And T’s heart has held on, for in the last line he says, “Little Satilla I’m headed your way.” One day.
Of course, T grew up on the move, following his daddy’s oilfield work. Where was home? Where is home? To those who know T well, home is his music. And perhaps that’s why Little Satilla found a place in my own heart, for there is no difference between the “real” Little Satilla and the music of Little Satilla. They are one and the same, both flowing from T’s genius, a word which I seldom use of most musicians.
I think, for example, of someone like Don Henley. Enormously successful, rich, the whole shebang-doodle-bang. But where, if anywhere, is the single note of God’s voice sounding in any of his songs? T does not have the wherewithal to produce his music in fancy studios in Los Angeles, and that is both good and bad. It’s bad because we don’t have the surround-sound quality, the gussied-up stereo cuts. But it’s also good, because what we do have is so real, it takes guts to listen to its reality. And that reality is the genius of dirt and clay, the song of the man who is man and no other.
I could go on about the other music T sent to me. They’re all gold. But they’re all T Warren as well, and they’re all about the long road traveled and the road back home. The upbeat Southland, for example, yet another great song:
Southland callin’
She’s calling me home...
Lord I wanna go home
Dixie’s callin’ me home
One of the things I realised over a few days listening surprised me. T’s lyrics have actually, hmm, what’s the word? Deepened? I first noticed it in the line from Too Damn Old (the title of which is too damn good): “Sittin in a house so quiet the silence reminds me of you.” And from the same song, the familiar honesty of T’s music:
Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder
It rips the heart apart
Or even more so, from Fight On My Hands:
The demons have found me
And sometimes surround me
Even though I don’t call them up
Guess it’s their way of sayin’
They plan on stayin’
Takes all I got just to keep them at bay
I’ve gotten older, still a troubadour soldier
Fightin causes best I can
Keepin the fight on my hands
I’ve got a fight on my hands
Well, we all have a fight on our hands, now don’t we? But as long as we’re in the scrap, it helps to have the Real Stuff alongside. And T’s music is the Real Stuff. Want Hollyweird? Go grab some Don Henley. Want the truth? Then keep your eye on http://www.terrywarren.net.
Meanwhile, I’m gonna light me up a seegar and listen to Little Satilla for the umpteenth time.
All lyrics © T Warren Red Dirt and Redskin Music 2007-09
Alabama
by MacDonald King Aston
18 May 2009
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