When I started class in the fourth grade, my dad had moved us from the cool Mississippi Coast to Appalachian Kentucky.
From my perspective it was like starting in a new school in North Korea. I couldn’t understand the dialect, the other kids wore old hand-me-downs, and they stared at me like I was from, well, South Korea.
The teacher distributed--of all books--Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer around the classroom for a reading-proficiency exercise. I watched the kids stumble and stutter at the simple words and cringed all the more as the devilish book got closer and closer to my desk.
When my turn came, I stood and gave a flawless reading, until the teacher stopped me with a joyful, “Thank you, Michael!” She clapped her hands together, and I passed the book forward to the next person, who was glaring at me. I just couldn’t understand.
But I soon would.
The recess bell rang, and everyone ran to the dirt field behind the school. There were no swing sets or fixtures of any kind. Just the ever-present trees, dirt, and sloping hill to the creek.
I was jumped by a gang of boys by my class and beaten to within an inch of my life for “showing off” in the classroom. That was my first lesson learned in Southeastern Kentucky. Do not show off in public. My intelligence immediately dropped about 30 points.
I knew I had to do something soon about fighting skills, and fast. Them ol’ boys could punch, and I mean hard.
Their daddies had only a few choices for employment if they wanted to have a job for their family. They could work in the coal mines, in the few government or hourly retail positions, or they could just take welfare.
Most opted for the mines. Some still made whiskey or grew weed. At that time California was only first to Eastern Kentucky in illegal marijuana growth and trade. Kids in the fourth grade had to face many problems at home, and some didn’t have a lot of reasons to spend time studying much about what Mark Twain had to say about anything.
Many had to work at home after a long walk up a mountain hollow with very little to eat. School lunch might be soup, beans, and a sausage. That would be the protein for most of them for the day. They might have a truck-garden patch to tend or a chicken hutch to muck out. They might have to tend to a baby for the rest of the night.
But it was typically something besides schoolwork for many of them, because their lives were hard. Poverty for Appalachian children is the rule, but it is still embarrassing for the entire family. It leaves one unstable, unbalanced, and one step away from disaster.
Yet in Washington, D.C., our “best and brightest” sit for decades in polished furniture, possessing no real plan for Appalachia or the Mississippi Delta or the Indian Reservations.
They gobble sirloin with lobbyists at the nest tables under the lowest lighting, while their drivers wait for them in their cars in downpours, ready to open the umbrellas and doors.
Small business folks carry their own umbrellas to five-year-old cars to get home late at night, because some plumbing cracked. They had to stay late and wait for the plumber, then mop up the back of the business and hope nothing was damaged.
Over 60% of the revenue they generate will go to “The Swamp” to be divvied out by the guy eating the sirloin and polishing the furniture with his or her bespoke suits. Their plan is to keep their butts in those fabulous seats for as long as possible. Never mind what they mumble into the microphones.
So what is our plan? We can’t really go into this show with any plan because just like Mike Tyson said so eloquently, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
Instead of “business-as-usual politics,” we must be ready for debate. The biggest “Super Bowl of Debate” ever seen will be watched by millions of people all over the world when the states take back the power entitled to the people who own the property in those states.
These same people who believe in the rule of law and attend schools and churches in those states. It’s time to amend our Constitution via Article V.
It is beyond time. Our playbook is ready. Our coaches are ready. Our state legislators must be ready. I believe we will survive that first punch in the face.
