Remembering a Friend

Karen, C. Martin Croker, Ricky Patrick – Six Flags Over Georgia Airbrush Studio, 1979

I remember one important day in a February long ago like it was yesterday. It was the day I began training and then screening all the new airbrush artist applicants for the 1979 season. On that day I didn’t just pick the best artists from the room, but I ended up picking quite a number of lifelong friends. I remember each and every individual encounter with that motley cast of some of the most interesting kids who would ever put on a uniform at Six Flags Over Georgia. Although this was the third year of the airbrush operation out at the park it was the first year when everything came together to make it into a highly successful business model using a larger staff of artists than the previous years.

That’s the afternoon I met Ricky Patrick, who at that time was introducing himself to everyone as Richard Patrick. Most of the folks who attended this event were inexperienced, young high school artists who had never actually held an airbrush until that day. There were a few there that had a bit of background like Mark Perkins who was 5 years older than me, and Clay Croker who managed to get hired late in the previous year by the former lease holder of the operation, Tourist Arts, a subsidiary company of Pate Productions out of St. Louis. I was the head of their airbrush operation the year before, but when I saw what a disaster they were I knew they would be fired, so I resigned and waited for the next season. With some convincing from his friend, Jeff Gazaway, Clay came onboard shortly after I left.

Like Clay and Mark, Ricky had already been working on his airbrush skills prior to showing up. He had not worked professionally yet, but had been pretty busy with lots of projects and was chomping at the bit to take it to the next level. I can say with certainty nobody had more exuberance for the craft than Ricky did that day. You could already tell he had a sense of destiny with what he was entering into. 

Now when you get a young group of mostly high school seniors together who are all “art kids” you are going to have a pretty kooky collection of individuals, and this group was top shelf when it came to kookiness, and I loved every one of them for it! Ricky was definitely no exception. All you had to do was look outside in the parking lot at his red hatchback that had a giant bubble on top! He had cut a giant hole in the roof of his car and put a big round skylight dome over it to make his car look like a space ship. I am not kidding!

We were barely into the first day in the park when Rick earned his nickname, Spiny. Without going into too much detail Clay Croker was walking behind him on the first day and was trying to call to him, but couldn’t remember his name, so in a bizarre Clay-like decision yelled, “Hey Spiny!” When Rick turned around it was all over. “Spiny” he would now forever be among all his artist friends.

Ricky worked probably harder than any other artist at the park that season, and pretty much every season after that. He simulated my work to a nearly uncanny degree. For a brief time he even copied my signature on some of his paintings since we were both going by Ricky around that time.  Although I appreciated that with imitation comes flattery I asked him to please come up with a different signature! It was no big deal.

After a few years Ricky partnered up with Gary Hooks, the old merchandising department head that I once worked with in the early part of the 1978 season before the park sold the lease to Pate Productions. I really liked working with Gary and that had a lot to do with me resigning later that year before Clay came on board.

Ricky and Gary took over the operation for a period of time, but it was around that time that I had wandered away with my new career as an advertising art director. For the next few years I mostly lost touch with Rick, but I did keep up with him a bit through friends and occasionally coming across his articles in Airbrush Digest magazine. Rick had made something of a celebrity of himself and even began doing Airbrush Digest workshops on a cruise ship*. It really seemed Rick had found his way to his dream at that point.

We never lost touch, but unfortunately only checked in with each other from time to time. Lives get busy and universes expand. Then we forget some of the things that made our lives grand. Ricky will be sorely missed. His exuberance that I never thought would fade. His laugh. His humble sense of humor, because honestly there were days when my friends and I gave Ricky more shit than he deserved. Rick was good. He wanted to make a dent in the art world. I think just maybe he only wanted some of us to be proud of him. Well, Spiny, you did very well my friend. I’m so very sorry things got so hard for you in the end. You made great art. You made us laugh. You shared lasting friendships with all of us kooky guys that came together on a cold February day in 1979. Godspeed my friend. Paint those beautiful sunsets out there for us now. We’ll be watching.

*not certain if the cruise ship event ever took place, but it was definitely advertised in Airbrush Digest Magazine.

The Deer Camp

Shooting with my father in the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge

Being raised as my father’s only son I received membership to a certain world my sisters tended to have less access to. Although folks like me from the Deep South don’t particularly like the stereotypes the outside world tends to use when portraying us in entertainment media there are definitely traditions and practices unique to our culture that I suppose feeds the imagination of fancy pants northerners and Hollywood types. I was born in Atlanta in the late 1950s into a world that very nearly doesn’t exist today. I was a very typical southern boy with an even more typical southern father. My dad was the Great Outdoorsman. He was the Southeastern Champion of the National Field Archers Association, president of the Georgia Wildlife Federation, founder of the Georgia Bowhunters Association, a national field representative for Ben Pearson Archery, as well as Zebco fishing equipment, Bagley Bait Company, Mann’s Bait Company, and a few other fishing products. He was personal friends with big named sportsmen like Bill Dance, Rowland Martin, Tom Mann, Orlando Wilson, Howard Hill, Owen Jeffery, and Dan Quillian, just to name a few. All of whom I had the pleasure to meet.

My father was bigger than life to me throughout my childhood. I walked in his shadow everywhere he went. I mimicked his every action. From the time I was two or three years old I would stand out in the yard with him when he was shooting his bow, standing next to him shooting my imaginary bow. Then walking with him to the target and pulling each of my imaginary arrows out one at a time. I finally got my first Browning recurve bow when I was four years old. Before the end of the year I was shooting in an exhibition at the Atlanta Boat Show, popping balloons from 20 paces for the crowd.

Little by little I became more involved in my dad’s universe. I began fishing with him at Brown’s Lakes in South Fulton County when I was three years old way before he found his way into the spotlight as a professional bass fisherman. By the time I was eight or nine years old he gave me a Daisy BB gun. By the time I was twelve I was shooting his 35-caliber deer rifle. You see, when you were a boy in the Deep South in the sixties and seventies guns were as natural to your existence as your blue jeans and your pocketknife.

As I grew up my archery skills grew too. We were members of the Tomochichi Archery Club in Griffin, Georgia and I began to compete. My dad handed me over to Lt. Col. Milan Elott, who ran the Archery College in College Park, Georgia. With the Colonel’s help I eventually won the silver medal in the NFAA Georgia State Freestyle Championship. However, the biggest advance for me in my dad’s universe is when I started going to the deer hunting camps with him.

For years our regular camp was always at the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge in Jasper County. Then there was the big hunt that happened once a year at Clarks Hill in McDuffie County. We also hunted in Green County and on some land in Polk County, and for a brief time at a hunting camp called Kapow somewhere south of Henry County. But the big camps where my best memories come from were Piedmont and Clarks Hill, which frankly we all called Clark Hill.

Although I had met many of my dad’s friends when they would come over to our house, or on an occasional visit to theirs, it wasn’t until we all gathered at the hunting camps that I really got to know them. I forgot to mention my dad was also a very skilled taxidermist. Our basement was like a mad scientist’s lab, which for me was the coolest thing in the world, but my mother hated it, and my sisters could not handle the dead animals and skulls, and snake skins, and pelts, and glass eyeballs. It was freaking awesome! Anyway, as I was saying this is what would bring my dad’s hunting buddies to our house on occasion. I grew into adulthood around these guys between the ages of 12 and 20. They had wonderful, colorful nicknames. There was Groucho (Lewis), Shorty (Lamar), Smitty (Eugene), Boney Maroney (Buddy), Punkin (my uncle Lamar), and those without nicknames like my dad, Richard, my other uncle, Paul, and Tim, who was Smitty’s best friend. There were others, but these guys were the ones I saw as the core group.

These were hilariously funny and vulgar men. Mostly men of the Korean War. They had jobs that spread the gamut from auto mechanic to CEO of a power company. They were good men. They were brothers, and they all stayed friends until the end. Today, Punkin and Tim are the last ones who remain living. Tim’s daughter is the nurse practitioner with my primary care physician and she has told me how lonely her father feels today, especially after the loss of Smitty. I can still remember how upset my dad was when Groucho, who was the first to go, passed away.

We would sit around the campfire at night and my dad and I would listen to their crazy stories. I would laugh until my sides hurt. My dad was always quiet and was more into listening to the other guys’ stories. He would occasionally remind one of them of something to get them started, but he himself wasn’t really one of the story tellers. He sure loved those guys though, and he would laugh as hard as me on those nights. My dad’s reputation with the gang was really interesting. They all knew he was the best marksman in the group, but he was also the true Boy Scout in their pack as well. My dad was the good kid who loved hanging out with his rascal friends. Dad was a known authority when it came to the ethics of hunting. He was vehemently opposed to poachers and campaigned heavily against them when he was president of the Georgia Wildlife Federation. He played by the rules and the rules mattered.

I helped my dad drag a fair share of deer out of the woods, and I became very good at tracking them. In fact, I loved tracking. Truth be told, I loved everything about hunting but hunting. This is where I should point out that I have never killed a deer. However, before you think I’m a goody two shoes you should know I killed my share of squirrels, birds, and rabbits in my earlier days. I should also say I wanted very badly to kill a deer during most of those years and twice shot and missed. Which is strange for a person who is as good a shot as me. It wasn’t buck fever that caused me to miss either. If anything, it might have been apathy. Some years after my last bow hunt down on Herman Talmadge’s property, when I missed an eight-point buck from a wide-open broadside position only 20 yards out, I began to reflect on that day. That was my last hunt, now 40 years ago. I know my dad would have been so proud if I had taken that deer. I really wanted that for him. And that’s when it truly hit me. I never wanted to kill a deer. I didn’t even want to kill those poor squirrels before that. What I wanted more than anything was to be the kid I thought my dad wanted me to be.

The beauty of my father was in the end it didn’t matter to him. It was me putting the pressure on myself, not him. My dad’s unconditional love did not need a sacrifice at the altar of his ego. This realization was a massive liberator for me. Consequently, I have never questioned my father’s love for me, and he was proud of me for damn near anything I ever did. My dad was far from a perfect man, he might not have even been a perfect father, but his love was authentic, and in that respect nearly as perfect as any love I have known.

Only a few years prior to his death, when the early effects of Alzheimer’s were only beginning to show, we were having dinner at a barbeque house nearby. We were there with some other family members, but my dad was sitting closest to me that night. Somehow the subject of hunting came up. When it did my dad looked at me and said, “I can’t do that anymore.” I smiled and said, “Well, I suppose you finally made your count and it was a good run.” He quickly interrupted me and grabbed my arm. He looked me squarely in the eyes. I’ll never forget looking into his watery cerulean blue eyes that night as he said, “You don’t understand. I can’t take a life. I can’t ever take a life again.” I was dumbfounded and completely without words. I just put my hand on his and nodded.

My dad loved animals his entire life. Even when he hunted, he treated the event as something sacred. Years ago, we were having dinner and I talked about a dove hunt I had just come back from. I made the mistake of joking that shooting from a blind out in the field was like shooting anti-aircraft weapons. He became livid with me and shook me down pretty hard for making a mockery of the hunting tradition in such a way. It really mattered to him that in all aspects of the hunt respect for the animal was imperative. It was to be treated as an almost sacred right. I’ve never forgotten that, and even though I don’t hunt any longer I still know how to advocate for a proper hunt thanks to my father.

From left to right: Uncle Punkin, Tim, Smitty, Groucho, Uncle Paul, and my dad, Richard Sr.

Untethered

So, yesterday I went to Kroger to pick up my meds and some milk. As I pulled away from the house I realized I left my mobile. At that instant every stoplight became pregnant with disaster just waiting to happen. What if I had a crash? Every little thing I passed on the road was full of foreboding drama. What if I was abducted by aliens? How could I warn Pam and leave some clue to help her and the search team find my body once the aliens were done with it? What if I got to Kroger and needed to ask Pam where the salsa was located?

It was like spacewalking without a tether and no way to contact ground control. I was helpless. I was a mess. What in the absolute hell has happened to me? What has happened to us? How in god’s name did I leave the house when I was a teenager only to disappear from my parents’ life for hours at a time? How did I go to work or on vacation all those years with no way to instantly call somebody, anybody? Oh the humanity. Technology has made me a frightful little wimp.

I made it back home. Pam and I embraced and cried as we held each other tight. I’m still not fully over the trauma, but I’ll get better. I have to survive. This is my message of hope.

Ash to Ashes

As of this writing I am 10 weeks and two days into my recovery from open heart surgery. Needless to say this has been a rough road both physically and mentally. Fortunately I’m far enough along to where I’m feeling pretty close to normal, physically at least. The mental game seems to be much more complicated.

The first mental hurdle is trying to get your head around what just happened, along with the general sense of vulnerability that comes with realizing how fragile your own life can be. I’m not going to kid around, depression is a very real monster in the shadow of recovery, but I’m a pretty resilient person and I feel like I can find my way to the light eventually. Even if I’m not quite there just yet.

I’m still learning what my limitations are, and that can be hard for a person like me. You see, I’ve managed to live a pretty long and seemingly healthy life without any need for medication and assistance right up until only six months ago. I’ve always fancied myself as a survivor. The kind of person that can survive on his own in the wilderness with only his wits and a pointy stick. I’ve always been certain I would survive the zombie apocalypse should it ever come to pass.

But as time passes we get older and things break. Eventually your kids take the car keys from you and things get weird. I’d like to think I’m a long way from those kind of events, but I’m having to adjust to some harsh realities that I really didn’t expect to come so soon.

In fact, this reminds me of a time a few years back at an agency where I worked. A group of my friends in the creative department were goofing around and decided in the event of a zombie apocalypse we should start picking roles for each other. Naturally I imagined myself as a pretty self-sufficient warrior. Even in real life I’m trained and highly skilled in multiple weapons, so sure, no brainer for me I thought.

Before I could say what my role would be it was already assigned to me by the guy who started the whole idea. I would be the bagpiper. Yes, I happen to be an actual bagpiper in real life, but that’s beside the point. I’m a badass I thought. I can do more than that. In fact, you’re going to be pretty damn glad you had this bagpiper along when the real zombies come calling! But I digress.

Even then there was something I was not taking into account. Although it didn’t feel this way to me at the time I happened to be considerably older than the rest of the group. Some of them are only five or so years older than my son after all. No matter how badass I imagined myself to be, my role in this zombie apocalypse was destined to be Herschel Greene from the Walking Dead, and somehow I was going to have to figure out how to accept that. Not only that, this was all over 10 years ago, so now I’m even older still.

I’ve never pictured myself as the injured person in some storyline slowing down the others in a group who end up having to drag me along to survive. Now I have a pacemaker. A freaking pacemaker! That is definitely something only weaker old people have in every imagined plot line in my universe. And now it’s me. Not only that, I just learned two days ago that I cannot use a chainsaw anymore. I seriously just bought a new chainsaw a year ago and I still have things that need cutting on my property. Apparently chainsaws can emit a radio frequency that can interfere with your pacemaker and make you dizzy or even faint. Good grief.

So now, back in my dystopian universe of survival, I can’t be Ash Williams from Evil Dead. It would literally make me dizzy and faint if I stuck a chainsaw on my arm where my severed hand used to be. I know it sounds crazy, but that really bothers me. I want options. I want to survive. Now in some dystopian future I’m the guy that has to take 6 different pills twice a day and will faint if I crank up a chainsaw! Seriously. I need to come up with a new plan. Now, in my own made up action movie I’m the bothersome dude who needs to take his medicine and keep his distance from power tools!

Honestly, I don’t really know how this story ends yet y’all. I guess I’ll check in later and let you all know how it’s going. But for right now I still have my wits, my ability to draw, and a bunch of guns, knives, and bows and arrows!

Now it’s time for me to get back on Amazon and buy that seven day pill organizer I’ve been looking at.

[Image: Copyright: © 2015 Starz Entertainment, LLC]

Working Towards a More Perfect Union

Here on this day when we celebrate the life and works of Dr. King I thought I would share this message. My current health condition along with the pandemic prevents me from going out and actively doing something today physically to honor Dr. King’s legacy, so the best I can do is to share this with you from my heart:

Here in Atlanta we are very fortunate to not only live in the birthplace of Dr. King, but we are surrounded by great opportunities to actively live into the Dream. I commend to you the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing, located right next to the Morehouse campus. If I may, I would like to borrow from the words of Dr. Catherine Meeks, whom I consider a giant and hero in the mission of racial healing.

In an group conversation I attended with Dr. Meeks recently she brought to my attention that it is not reconciliation we are looking for, because reconciliation requires that there was once, somewhere in the past, a good or healthy relationship that was had between two parties. So, when you look at the long history of racial issues in America you will unfortunately find there is nothing to actually reconcile. From the day the first African person of color stepped foot on American soil in 1607 they did so as an enslaved group of people. It would not be until my own lifetime that they would even be recognized as full members of our society and afforded all the rights every white man has enjoyed since the founding of the American colonies. Even if many people and institutions still quietly seek to withhold those rights from them to this day.

So, no, it is not reconciliation we are looking for, it is healing. And this healing is not only for the black members of our society, it is especially important that white members of our society recognize the need for our own healing in these matters as well. It is only through the eyes of love and humility that we can come to terms with the steps we must take to heal this nation. So on this day lets take a moment to think about those friends or family members you know who stand out as beacons in your own life who have set examples on how we can move forward.

I would like to raise up two friends I have known over the years whom I admire dearly. The first I’d like to mention is Sam Crenshaw. You may know him as a sports reporter and sports anchor here in the Atlanta area. When I showed up at my high school Sam was a grade ahead of me. Sam was one of only four black students at my high school at that time in 1973. Sam was then, and has always been a class act, and friend to everyone. A person everyone who went to Headland High School in East Point, Georgia looks up to to this day. It would be decades before I finally had the presence of mind to contemplate how different Sam’s world was from mine during our years in high school together. To this day when we have reunions Sam lights up the room when he arrives, and if I know Sam he might even say our worlds weren’t so different back then because he is humble that way. But with all I’ve seen in this world over the last 45 years I know our roads were very different. Sam’s hills were steeper, his track was longer, his weight was heavier, and all just to be in the same place as people like me.

Likewise, the second man I’d like to mention is Vern Edwards. When I was in art school Vern was the only black student. Not only was Vern a black student in a very white program he was studying to go into an industry that was overwhelmingly populated by white men. Vern’s talent was off the charts. I related to Vern early on because he and I had one particular skill in common. We were the only two guys in the art director’s program who knew how to draw and paint at the same level as the illustration students, and that set us both apart from our peers. Frankly, I will tell you that I always thought Vern was much better than me as well. In the same way it took me too long to think about what Sam accomplished it also took me too long to realize what kind of road Vern had to travel going along in my same career path. The longer, steeper, bumpier road, bearing weights of society white guys like me can be terminally blind to.

When I talk about healing, that blindness is one of the first things to deal with, but it’s not all. I am thankful that I am still friends with Sam and Vern, even if we hardly ever see each other thanks to this damn pandemic!

So, on this MLK Day I lift up two men whom I admire greatly. Two men that inspire me to make the right choices and to keep me focused on a mission of healing in our great nation. In our incredibly imperfect nation that with God’s will can continue to evolve into that more perfect union it sought out to become 234 years ago. May we never rest in our desire to be a great nation and always use humility and love to move this great experiment forward day-by-day.

A blessed MLK Day to you all.

“The establishment of our new Government seemed to be the last great experiment for promoting human happiness.”
—George Washington, January 9, 1790

https://www.centerforracialhealing.org/

My Heart is Broken

My heart is broken. I’m not sure when it really started, but this year has been heart breaking in so many ways. However, my heart was breaking long before COVID-19. Watching how horrible we treat each other on social media has frankly been rather devastating to me, and I’ve seen it leak into real life in the last few months as well.

Things really took a dark turn only a few weeks ago. On the morning of October 22nd a high school friend of mine suddenly died of heart failure after a morning run. At that exact same time I was meeting with my cardiologist who was breaking the news to me that I have a dilated aorta and a prolapsed aortic valve. After a few more procedures it was also revealed that I was born with a bicuspid aortic valve. Two weeks after my high school friend passed away another good friend died suddenly at home from heart failure. As I write this I have a cousin in a hospital in North Carolina who is fighting for his life with necrotizing pneumonia. Last week while I was in the hospital having a heart catheterization procedure my 27 year old nephew unexpectedly died in his sleep from complications of diabetes. I would not find out until that evening when I returned from the hospital. Now, this morning I learned the 28 year old husband of a newly married work colleague suddenly passed away. She is the sweetest most gentle person in the world and always brings a ray of sunshine to everyone she meets. I hate knowing how crushed she is right now. My sister is crushed right now. My mother is crushed right now. Both of my friends’ wives and children are crushed right now. I am crushed right now. My heart is literally broken, both physically and emotionally.

I’ve been trying to think about what to write once I decided to tell everyone I would be going in for open heart surgery on December 11th to have my heart valve replaced. I have been thinking for a long time about how to address all you friends in my little social media universe about some of the things that are breaking my heart — even before the last two months turned so dark. We seriously need to step back and look at ourselves. Listen to ourselves. We cannot sustain the level of bitterness I see flying all around me.

I just got off the phone with my priest a few minutes ago, and we discussed these things. In our discussion one phrase became very clear, not just for me and my fears and anxiety, but for us all: Kyrie Eleison. Christe Eleison. Kyrie Eleison. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

I am begging all of my friends who may read this on both sides of the issues we currently face in our society to have mercy. To seek mercy. But most of all be willing to give mercy. And if we can give mercy Christ will surely show us the mercy we all so desperately need. It’s just too much y’all. Many of my friends may not share the same faith as me and that is completely okay. We ALL need mercy right now. We ALL need to give mercy right now. I need your mercy and I hope to God I can somehow show mercy in my life and work for you.

Let’s learn to talk to each other without robbing those we disagree with of their humanity. Let’s please show respect for the dignity of every human being when we communicate with them. I will not pretend I have been perfect at this, but I will commit to struggling to get this part right if it’s the last thing I do.

My heart is broken. Kyrie Eleison.

Dixie’s Golden Calf

First, I want to start out by addressing the main thing we hear constantly when issues on the Confederate battle flag or Confederate monuments come up, and that is the call for preserving history, or rather the accusation that somehow those who want to get rid of that flag or those monuments are trying to “erase history,” as they say.

So, if that is the argument let’s talk about actual history and focus on the real culprits who have tried to erase it. I’ll open by simply saying we all know the real history, which is the South lost that horrible war, and that any objective observer can see plainly that the South was on the wrong side of history. Period. End of story.

This essay is not the old, tired argument of whether the war was about slavery or not. Although any educated person knows the war was absolutely and undeniably about slavery. One doesn’t have to look far for real historical evidence on that. See the Cornerstone Speech or the The Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction issued by Lincoln in 1863, but I won’t go into that here, because for me at least, that’s a closed case.

Aside from the founding of the First Ku Klux Klan in 1865, the next earliest attempts to skew the real history of the war and what it truly represented began a few decades later. In 1894 the United Daughters of the Confederacy was formed. The founding of the UDC was inextricably tied the Lost Cause movement. If you aren’t familiar with Lost Cause it is a pseudo-historical negationist ideology. Think of it as something like “gaslighting” on a mass scale. Most every born and raised white southerner over the age of 40 has been raised in the shadow of the Lost Cause effect, many without really even knowing it.

The primary directive of the Lost Cause movement was to repaint a picture of southern antebellum life as well as the Confederacy itself as a noble cause. More importantly it was designed to glorify and protect the “white cause” as a superior endeavor. So what we are talking about here is the first real effort to bend real history in the favor of the defeated South. Thus, we are talking about the first authentic movement to “erase history” and replace it with a mythology to pass down to generations of white children, one of whom was me.

My great grandmother was a member of the UDC. I actually have copies of her dues receipts. She was a beautiful and kind person, but that is just how normalized this kind of thing was, or even still is in the Deep South. My great grandfather on my dad’s side surrendered to Sherman’s troops in Atlanta on the second day of the Battle of Atlanta. My 3x great grandfather on my mother’s side was Colonel of the Fayetteville Rifle Grays, and his brother was awarded for his service at Gettysburg. Although my father’s family had no great wealth and therefore no slaves, my mother’s side of the family owned one of the largest plantations in Georgia and owned many slaves. So, please understand, I know what being a white southerner in a family that has a strong and proud heritage is like. I grew up with a lot of pride in my heritage, but as a young boy during the Civil Rights Movement I stepped back and took stock in everything that surrounded me. I thank God my mother raised me to reject racism, but that didn’t stop me from being ashamed of being a white southerner for the first 20 years of my adult life.

The main mission of the UDC was to construct monuments to the Confederacy, and positioning those monuments in critical places such as town squares or in front of municipal offices helped to promote their revisionist plan of holding on to the southern ideals Alexander Stephens put forth in his Cornerstone Speech back in 1861. Consequently, probably 99 percent of all the Confederate monuments in existence today were built and funded by them and the Ku Klux Klan. Yes, make no mistake about it, the UDC were closely tied to the KKK. Not casually as some Lost Cause apologists might try to defend.

Let’s look at the history behind the development of the Stone Mountain carving to get a clearer idea on how things worked. The Stone Mountain carving is a troubling issue for me as an artist and a native Atlantan. I grew up watching them actually work on the carving. I can still remember the scaffolding and watching granite fall from the torches as the sculptors cut away on the finishing touches. I was 12 years old when they finally finished and was amazed when the scaffolding came off and I first saw the finished piece.

That makes what I have to write next that much harder to digest. Most of us know bits and pieces of the history and who some of the sculptors were, but let me shine more light on the entire story.

Many of us may already know that the first sculptor was the famous Gutzon Borglum, the man famous for Mount Rushmore. Borglum was also a well known nativist. Something that seems to have made a bit of a comeback today. In the wake of the film “Birth of a Nation” a new surge of racism was born bringing the second wave of the KKK into existence. Amidst that clamor a Mrs. C. Helen Plane, who was a charter member of the UDC approached Borglum to begin talking about a sculpture they wanted on Stone Mountain. In a letter to Borglum Mrs. Pane wrote:

“I feel it is due to the KKK that saved us from Negro domination and carpetbag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain. Why not represent a small group of them in their nightly uniform approaching in the distance?”

Mrs. Pane then met with Sam Venable, a noted Klansman who also owned Stone Mountain. Thus the work began. However, a few years later Borglum ended his efforts after a dispute with the KKK in March of 1922.

Henry Augustus Lukeman took over, but shortly afterwards the Great Depression stalled the project for a second time. In 1941 Governor Eugene Talmadge formed the Stone Mountain Memorial Association (SMMA) with the intentions of finishing the sculpture, but once again the project was halted by the second World War. Today most of us are aware that Talmadge was a staunch segregationist.

Finally, in 1958 Governor Marvin Griffin urged the Georgia legislature to approve a measure to purchase Stone Mountain and complete the carving. This came as a response to Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, as well as the Civil Rights movement itself, which also led the Georgia legislature to add the Confederate battle flag to the state flag in 1956. Finally, in 1972 Walker Hancock completed the carving that we see today.

As of this writing I am personally aware of at least 84 monuments that were built and financed by the UDC. I’m certain there are more, but that’s plenty. In case you have any doubt about their intentions as I mentioned at the beginning of this essay allow me to place here the inscription found on the Confederate memorial in Eastman, Georgia that still stands to this day:

Erected by the Fannie Gordon Chapter United Daughters of the Confederacy, April 1910

No nation rose so pure and WHITE, none ever so spotless. To our Confederate soldiers 1861 – 1865 “The principles for which they fought and lived to those who fought and died.” This stone is erected to keep fresh the memory the noble deeds of these devoted sons. No braver soldiers, no truer patriots ever adorned the history of any nation, they have won their title to immortality of love and reverence. “Nor shall your glory be forgot, while fame her record keeps.”

*Emphasis mine

This is all highly troubling to me. Both because of the lasting impact these efforts had on a mostly unwitting southern society. Perhaps many not as unwitting as I feel, given the rancor and wrath I see flying around in social media today. It’s also troubling because of what I’ve learned about the history of the Stone Mountain carving. I can never look at it the same again since my research on this topic began.

I see many folks posting Confederate flags who are angry at the latest decision by NASCAR to disallow the display of the battle flag at their events. For me that was some of the best news I’ve heard on that subject in a long time. This post I see people sharing has a list of things “explaining” the symbols of the battle flag, using words like the “Blood of Christ” and citing the use of the St. Andrews Cross, among other things. News flash: We actually have real historical records of what the flag designer, William Porcher Miles, actually meant and it has nothing to do with that silly meme. All I have to say to that is give me a break. Anyone can go back and write niceties about any vile symbol after-the-fact. I could take the Nazi flag of the Third Reich and write some prose right now that could make that flag seem like the most Christian and peaceful symbol on earth, so give me a damn break. Of course, revisionist and denialist history seems to be part of their jam, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.

One last thing: BLACK LIVES MATTER

I am no longer ashamed to be who I am today, even if I am stuck in the skin suit of a middle-aged white southern man, and therefore a member of the most privileged class in the most powerful country on earth. Which is why my duty now is to channel my privilege and influence by standing up with my black brothers and sisters, not to lead, but to listen and follow. It is time to stand up and place ourselves on the right side of history. It is time to wipe away the stains that have acted as an illusion to generations of people and go back to trying to form that “More Perfect Union” no matter how imperfect we are. Removing these statues is not erasing history, it is cleaning off the vulgar graffiti that has defaced our country for over a century.

Thank you for your time,
Rick

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SOURCES:

• PHOTO: Granite carving of Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Stone Mountain, Ga. ©Getty Images
• Smith, Rex Allen (1985). The Carving of Mount Rushmore. New York: Abbeville Press. p. 62
• Michael J. Hyde (2004). “The Ethos of Rhetoric”. p. 161. University of South Carolina Press
• McKinney, Debra (Spring 2018). “Stone Mountain. A Monumental Dilemma”. Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report. No. 164. pp. 18–22.
• “The Carving of Stone Mountain”. American Experience TV. Retrieved March 10, 2016
• Stone Mountain collection, 1915-1977. Manuscript Collection No. 95. Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library. Emory University. emory.edu. Retrieved 2017-08-25.
• Stewart, Bruce E. (2004). “Stone Mountain”
• McKinney, Debra (Spring 2018). “Stone Mountain. A Monumental Dilemma”
• Freeman, David B. (1997). Carved in Stone : The History of Stone Mountain. Mercer University Press
• Coski, John. The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0674017221.
• Segal, Corinne. “What the Confederate Flag’s Design Says About Its Legacy.” PBS Newshour.   10 July 2015.

Why Rap Matters

Why Rap Matters
(and why rap culture doesn’t care what you think)

As a middle aged white guy, it probably comes as no shock that I don’t listen to a lot of rap. To be sure, there is bad rap out there, but for you folks that insist all rap is bad I have news for you: first, you’re wrong, and second, nobody cares what you think. If that last comment didn’t run you off, let me break it down for you.

Let’s pretend you’re not simply a racist and the real reason you hate rap is because it is a predominantly black culture thing. Because, frankly, if that’s why you don’t like rap then you have no real credibility anyway. Before you say, “No man, it’s not about race, it’s just crappy music” let me also point out that rap is not only about music. Let’s back up a bit.

Remember the Beat Generation? You know, that pre-hippie period that gave us beatniks, bongos, goatees, and free sex? Before the music world got inspired by that movement you had dudes like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and William S. Burroughs, just to name a few. These guys mixed together words into what sometimes sounded like nonsensical poems. They were words that reflected society as they saw it and challenged the cultural norms of their day. They chose to speak in a language that was uniquely tuned into their generation.

They were the young voice challenging the status quo of their generation and they were reviled for it. My dad hated beatniks. I loved my dad, but he and all his friends hated everything the beat generation stood for. Meanwhile, as I grew older I became fascinated with the world the Beat Poets set into order. By the time I came of age beatniks transitioned into hippies and certain icons began to inspire my world. “Then Came Bronson” was on TV and “Easy Rider” made my mind explode. Even the Beatles took their name from the Beat Generation. They were all hated. The bands and musicians were hated, the people who followed them were hated, the very clothes they wore were hated, and they were all hated for essentially the same reasons people hate Rap Culture today.

You don’t have to like rap music, or hip hop any more than you should have to like broccoli. But whether you like it or not history will frame the Rap Generation the same way it has framed the Beat Generation. The Rap Generation not only doesn’t care if you don’t like it, they expected you not to and draw energy from that hatred in the same way Bob Dylan didn’t expect to make any friends when he wrote his lyrics. I may not listen to much rap, but I’m fascinated by it. Like every genre there is the good and the bad, but rap has made its dent in the timeline of humanity, and whether you like it or not the world is a better place for it.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at
dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient
heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the
machinery of night . . .

—Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”

[photo: Allen Ginsberg, Royal Albert Hall, London, 1965]

The Crucible

There is a whole lot going on right now much larger than anyone’s theory on whether or not our reactions to this pandemic are an overreaction or even an under-reaction. We have entered a crucible, and the outcome won’t have anything to do with politics or religion.

Most of us have probably experienced on some level the impact  hard times, or even desperate times have on the people around you. Whether at work, home, or church the character of people is revealed to us when fear or unprecedented challenges take place. I’ve seen people change into someone I never thought possible in situations like that.

I don’t know how this will end, but I do know we will all be changed forever. Unfortunately, one of those irreversible changes will come from what is revealed by our behavior in a situation like this. I will be the first to admit I am utterly sick of this entire thing. I’m an extrovert and this is killing me. I hate having to wear a mask and I hate being so separated from all my friends, and I really miss going to my favorite pub!

But here’s the thing. As hard as it is for me to admit, this isn’t just about me. Doing the right thing right now isn’t even about whether or not I think this is all some concocted plot by some dark illuminati working to overthrow our system. Doing the right thing right now means considering the wellbeing of those around me. It means understanding what it means to be an integral part of the whole.

I sing in a choir. One thing you learn when singing in a choir is how to listen to everyone around you and how to blend. If every member of a choir treated it as if they were a soloist there would be a cacophony of noise, and no matter how beautiful any single member’s voice is on its own the choir itself would sound like a disaster. Society, whether you like it or not, works this way.

I wear a mask out in public places, not because I’m afraid I will catch the virus. I wear it because it is one of the primary things I can do to be a part of the solution, regardless of my, or your opinion on whether or not it is necessary. It means I would rather err towards safety than impose through my own arrogance that I somehow know what is right. None of us can pretend we have all the answers right now, so I would rather be thought of as a fool for wearing my mask than to take even the most remote risk that I could endanger a loved one, or even a stranger.

I really don’t care if when this is all over we find out masks did us no good at all. What I do care about are the people who care enough to use compassion as their guide. When this is over we will know the difference between those who only think of themselves and those who care for those around them. Those humble enough to be inconvenienced for the greater good.

In the end it won’t matter who the President of the United States is, and it won’t matter whether Brexit was a success or not, but we will know a lot about the character of those around us. We have entered a crucible, and we will all be transformed. Who will you be on the other side?

What is Heaven?

Sometimes, when I think about Heaven, I imagine a place where I can find the Pamster at the same age as me from back when we were innocent kids. I have often pondered the reality that once upon a time, when I was young and full of innocence, playing out in the street or sitting in my room playing with my GI Joes, at that very same time over in Florence, Alabama, there was a little girl full of wonder and innocence playing with her Barbie dolls, or chasing a puppy, or going on a hike with her Aunt Pearlene on Natchez Trace.

Two little kids full of hope and wonder, not yet aware of the hardships that would eventually come between them and their place in destiny where they would finally meet.

I love to sit back and imagine that at the exact same moment back in the 1960s Pam and I were both sitting down watching Jonny Quest with each other with just a bit of distance between East Point, Georgia and Florence, Alabama. Somehow I imagine our living rooms being connected on Christmas morning when we were both excited and sitting there looking through the gifts that were waiting on us. I think about the times Pam suffered hurt from mean kids and wish I could have been there to be her friend during that time.

I was a small-framed little kid and not much of a threat to bigger kids. I was bullied some, but fortunately I was resilient due to my positive attitude and a mother who always stood up for me. Not sure I could have done much to defend Pam in those days, but I could have been there to be her friend. I like to think perhaps I could have made her feel special enough to heal more quickly from those attacks at least.

I fell in love with Pam the very afternoon Les Parker introduced her to me at Tucker Wayne Advertising back in 1985. The years have only made our love deeper and with that I feel more connected to that little girl from the 1960s. It would be heaven for me if we found each other in the next life as those two children where we could spend all of our days playing in creeks and catching crawdads, or riding bicycles with playing cards clattering in the spokes of our wheels.

Yeah, that’s enough for me. No golden walls studded with gemstones. No mansions with many rooms. Just two little kids playing in a creek on the Natchez Trace. That’s heaven.

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