Blue Highways: Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia

Unfolding the Map

The events of the past three weeks, particularly with gun violence in the US, stirred me to write this post as I did.  My intent is to add to the national thought surrounding the recent tragedies, not to stoke antipathy among any readers.  Of course, I have my opinions and I share them with you as a thoughts and reflections for myself.  William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) laments the loss of boys' ability to play war.  I lament the loss of boys and girls in Newtown, Connecticut and other places because we as a society can't seem to come to terms with the violence that permeates our culture.  At right is the Virginia state bird, the Northern cardinal.

Book Quote

"Three children raced from under the oaks out over the grass to reenact the battle with guttural gunshots from their boyish throats."

Blue Highways: Part 10, Chapter 1

A memorial to Ohio soldiers killed in the Civil War battle at the Spotsylvania Court House. William Least Heat-Moon remarks on the names of some of these men in Blue Highways. Photo by "cowpie21" and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia

As I write this past, the day after Christmas in 2012, the holiday joy has been saddened by recent gun violence that have shaken the nation and could create a sea-change in how Americans perceive and regulate gun ownership in the United States.  Or not.  I will admit that I've only chosen part of LHM's passage to fit this post.  The full quote goes on to lament that in the age of the nuclear weapons, boys who want to play at war will have to find their inspiration elsewhere.

There has been a lot of carnage over the past few weeks: twenty schoolchildren and six school staff killed by a disturbed young person who then turned his gun upon himself, in Newtown, Connecticut; firefighters lured to a fire by a deranged man, who then shot four of them as they got out of their truck and whose note said that he was doing what he loved best - killing people.

It occurs to me that boys have found other ways to inspire themselves to play at war, sometimes with tragic results.  The United States, so prudish about sex, has glorified violence to the extreme.  Movies and television have pushed the extremes of violent depictions.  The cartoon violence that I grew up with has turned into graphic depictions of throats slit, bullet wounds, spurting blood and separated body parts.  A recent study of the James Bond films has determined that seriously violent acts in the long-running series have doubled.  My wife and I recently started watching an HBO series called Game of Thrones, and we see at least three or four extremely violent acts such as beheadings and bludgeonings per episode.

Video games provide kids with another access point to violence.  First-person shooter games such as Call of Duty and Halo are extremely popular.  I am not going to moralize on the games other than to note that there are some, perhaps with addictive personalities, who spend a lot of time on these games where death simply means that one can get back up again and continue shooting or start a new game.

When these cultural influences are mixed with our gun culture in the United States, it can become a very volatile mix.  There has been much written about the interpretation, or what "should" be the interpretation, of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution.  The actual text of the Second Amendment reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."  Does the right to bear arms as spelled out in the Constitution simply apply to the time when the US did not have a standing army and therefore arming volunteers was key to keeping the fledgling Unites States secure?  Or, did it intend to help the citizens of the United States defend themselves against a potentially tyrannical federal government?  Did the amendment intend to allow people to keep and bear any arms, or can the federal government infringe on some rights and not others.  Unfortunately, the answers to these questions have not been clear and our inability to come to any meaningful answers has had a direct bearing on our culture and our public and contentious moral quandary comes front and center after every new tragedy that involves the procurement and use of weapons hits the media.

I think that at the root of our problem is America's addictive personality.  We may be addicted to violence, and addicted to the tools of violence.  People who are addicted to anything, whether the addiction be to drugs, alcohol, sex, or anything else, gradually increase their tolerance and also become numb to the effects of their addiction.  An addiction over time means that those who are addicted usually want more of what they are addicted to and at the same time, are unaware of the chaos that they bring to those around them.  Often loved ones, family, and friends wring their hands over what to do to help the addicted person, and yet are afraid to confront them, fearing their erratic behavior and possible rage.  It's easier to turn away than deal with the problem, especially if the problem is also partly enabled by the behavior of those who want to help.

As I watch the debate unfold over the latest tragedies, I see addiction.  We have enshrined the right of the purveyors of violence (video games, television, movies) to continue to provide their product in the name of Constitutional free speech.  Some propose that the solution to the problem is to provide more tools of violence, weapons, to everyone or at least well-trained individuals to protect us.  To me, this is similar to a an alcoholic arguing that he or she will be okay if they just get another drink to steady their nerves.  On the other hand, nobody in the United States seems to want to confront the hard problems of addiction and mental illness.  In the 1980s, the government cut funding for services to the mentally ill and since then those who would have previously been in treatment have had to get by on their own.  When our own failings as a society are brought to light, it's often easier to blame our "gun culture" than consider some of the deeper problems we have.

I am not blind with naivete.  I grew up with guns and saw the best and worst of them.  I also grew up with addiction and to this day I'm surprised that, when these two things mingled in my family, nobody got killed.  I still remember insisting to my father that he let me carry the gun when he demanded that we go on an evening deer hunt and stumbled out of our camp and into the hills.  When my father died, the Savage Model 99 rifle, along with a shotgun for hunting quail, stayed in a closet in my mom's house until she decided to give them to a cousin.  I have a twinge of regret that they are gone, but I don't really miss them.  I benefited from having guns in the form of venison meals and quail dinners, but I realized how dangerous they could be in the hands of individuals who, for whatever reason, should not be carrying them.

As we go through another round of debates, I would encourage us to not only debate the proper use and scope of the tools of violence, but also add the deeper roots of our cultural addiction to violence to the conversation.  And I encourage us to remember the martyrs of our societal moral quandary: the Newtown 26, the Rochester firemen, the Columbine dead and wounded, the Aurora dead and wounded, the Tucson dead and wounded and all the others who have been killed in our culture of violence.

Musical Interlude

Robert Earl Keen's version of the song Sonora's Death Row is a great illustration of the tragedy that comes with combining our various forms of addiction.  The rough and wild Old West was a gun culture, and full of all of the temptations of substance and sex money could buy, and it sometimes didn't end well.

If you want to know more about Spotsylvania Courthouse

National Park Service: Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania
Spotsylvania County: Spotsylvania Courthouse
Wikipedia: The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House
Wikipedia: Spotsylvania Courthouse

Next up: Cuckoo, Virginia

Blue Highways: College Station, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe pull into College Station, Texas for the night with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM).  If you've lived in Texas, you know that College Station is Aggieland, and just how big their rivalry with the University of Texas is.  To see where College Station is located, click on the map, and gig 'em, hook 'em, or whatever you feel like doing!

Book Quote

"...on the way to College Station."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 1

Photo located at forbes.com. Click on the photo to go to host site. 

College Station, Texas

This was the first Aggie joke I ever heard:

A pickup truck with two University of Texas students in the cab and two Texas A&M students in the bed of the truck skidded off the road and went into a lake.  The two University of Texas students let the water fill inside the cab, equalizing the pressure, and then opened the doors and swam to safety.  As they reached the surface, people pulled them out and onto shore.  Somebody asked, "what happened to those two Aggies in the back?"  One UT student said responded: "They're still down there.  When we swam by, they were still trying to get the tailgate open."

Okay, so the you get the picture.  Texas A&M is located in College Station, Texas and Aggies are Texas A&M sports teams and students.  It is a pastime in Texas to tell these jokes which highlight just how unintelligent Aggies are purported to be.  Here's another I learned:

Texas A&M had to close the library because a student went to the library and checked out the book.

Wait for it...wait for it...okay, there, you got it!  But there's more...

The library had another tragedy this week.  The student returned the book, and had colored in the pictures.

In Texas, almost every ethnic or stereotype joke can be made into an Aggie joke, which makes such jokes acceptable in public locations.  The funny thing is, most of the jokes I heard about Aggies were told to me by an Aggie.  Sam, who lived downstairs from me while I lived in San Antonio, attended Texas A&M and took perverse pleasure in Aggie jokes - he knew practically all of them.  He was also a Mexican-American from El Paso, and knew practically every Mexican joke ever uttered.  Perhaps it was a way of reducing the power of these jokes by taking ownership of them.  That's my politically correct liberal interpretation.  In reality, I think he just liked them and found them funny.  He certainly didn't match any of these stereotypes - he is one of the quickest and most intelligent people I ever met.  He's an engineer, and a good one, and probably makes more in one year than I do in five.  So, Aggie stereotypes, as usually all stereotypes, don't quite add up.

Here's another I found on the web:

There was a group of Aggie science students that wanted to send a probe to the sun, but some UT students said that was impossible and that the probe would burn up long before reaching the sun.  The Aggies replied that they planned to send the probe at night.

Of course the University of Texas Longhorns got ribbed by Aggies.  Because it is the flagship school of the state of Texas, the students there could be regarded as from the Texas elite.  The stereotype was effete snobbery, leading the UT students to be called "tea sippers" or simply "tea sips."  When an Aggie referred to a University of Texas student or grad, he or she might call the Longhorn a tea sipper with a hand gesture that resembled someone holding a cup of tea.

Other hand signals used, especially around the annual Texas-Texas A&M football game involved making a fist, holding it up with palm sign out and then poking out the pinkie and the forefinger while shouting "hook em' Horns!"  Aggies, on the other hand, stick out their thumb like they are hitchhiking and shout "gig em' Aggies!"

Here's another one:

There was an Aggie that was down on his luck. In order to raise some money he decided to kidnap a kid and hold him for ransom.  He went to the playground, grabbed a kid, took him behind a tree and told him, "I've kidnapped you."  The Aggie wrote a note saying "I've kidnapped your kid. Tomorrow morning, put $10,000 in a paper bag and put it beneath the pecan tree next to the slide on the north side of the city playground. Signed, An Aggie."  The Aggie then pinned the note to the kid's shirt and sent him home to show it to his parents.  The next morning the Aggie checked, and sure enough a paper bag was sitting beneath that pecan tree. The Aggie opened up the bag and found the $10,000 with a note. The note said, "How could one Aggie do this to another Aggie?"

Beyond the fun and games, Texas A&M is a very good school.  The George H.W. Bush Presidential Library is located there.  I'm a political scientist, and a position in the political science department at A&M is considered to be a plum position.  Texas A&M has its own military corps, called the Corps of Cadets, of which 42 percent go into a commission in the U.S. Armed Services, according to Wikipedia.

On the eve of the big football game with the University of Texas, Texas A&M had a tradition called Bonfire.  A huge structure of logs was built and set alight, symbolizing A&M's burning desire to beat Texas.  Tragically, in 1999 the structure collapsed while being built and killed and injured a number of student volunteers working on the building of the structure.  Since then, there has been no official Bonfire, and a Bonfire memorial was created to honor the victims.

I appreciate Texas A&M because some great musicians have gone through College Station and the university.  I will end this post with one that I really like - Robert Earl Keen.  He is so beloved in Texas by Aggies that they follow him around to his concerts.  The story is that he and Lyle Lovett, another Aggie, lived together and played around College Station together before going on to their own musical careers.  The YouTube embedded below does not give any video, but is his song, The Front Porch Song, from a live album he did some years ago.  The story he tells in the middle of the song references College Station and Aggies, and is a good companion to this post.  Enjoy!

If you want to know more about College Station

Bryan-College Station Convention and Visitors Bureau
Bryan and College Station, Texas (blog)
The Eagle (newspaper)
Left of College Station (blog)
Texas A&M University
Wikipedia: College Station

Next up: Dime Box, Texas