Welcome to our community

Be apart of something great, join today!

Register Log in

What to the Slave is The Fourth of July?: This Date in History

  • Thread starter Thread starter donbosco
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies: 843
  • Views: 31K
  • Off-Topic 
IMG_9629.jpeg

To/For Those Who Serve: #OTD in 2019 (July 1) a talentless, elitist, curmudgeon with a snappy accent as his only positive whose career has consisted of cowtowing to rich, talentless, elitists, broadcast the message above assuring that any and every mixed beverage he would imbibe for the rest of his life would be some high percentage of spit.

I tended bar (not bartended <— that word should not be a verb) for 25 years in a career that ran from 1985 to 2010. I kicked it all off at a brand new High Country version of a Piedmont institution - the Blowing Rock Tijuana Fats. I knew the operation from many hours spent in the Chapel Hill Rosemary Street flagship, most times while simultaneously attending shows at the next door down-the-alley Cat’s Cradle. Having relocated to Boone on a crazy educational mission that took myriad twists and turns, all ultimately fortuitous, there I was - more than ready to apply my hard-earned Blimpie Base hand/eye coordination and dinner rush management skills to behind the bar service in a fake Mexican eatery.

I managed to parlay that opening at Fats’ into a career that ranged from work in all range of magical places - from bright and shiny to dark and subterranean to white tablecloth to peanut shell floor cantina in civil war plagued Central America. To this day one of the most - THE Most? - comfortable places on earth for me remains a bar.

People who serve will always be my people. The lore and the legends of service make up my sacred texts. Adages like, “If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean” apply to life in Big Picture Ways while “Always Carry Something - Before You Go Somewhere Look To See What Else Needs To Go There And Take It With You” will make everyone’s life better. The Maya revere Matthew 20:28, “It is better to serve than to be served,” (paraphrased) and many years ago I added that to my workbook.

Also added to that workbook was a rule I learned while trodding the boards at #BonleeHardware. Imagine what a great relief it was when my Deddy pulled 11-year-old me aside after a particularly tiresome interchange with a know-it-all regular and said quite simply, “The customer is NOT always right.” Indeed, once after confiscating a bottle of brandy, smuggled into Henry’s Bistro during one of my shifts, and being passed around at a table of ‘Rock Stars” the simple but direct admonition, “Pay up and I won’t call the cops until you’re out the door” that youthful #DeepChatham spirit came to the fore with a vengeance. Other great entries in the workbook would include, “Look fella, I don’t come to your job and fuck with you,” and of course, “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!”

Ah yes - Piers Morgan - what a fool and a tool - but what a great representative for trumpism.
 
donbosco said:
Got no former servers 'round here?
Click to expand...
Right here, DB (et al). It's the job where I probably learned the most about people/human nature. Most physically and emotionally demanding job I've ever had too but still enjoyed it. I found that the worst tippers tended to be the ones who could afford to tip well. It's difficult to appreciate the effort involved and the shit you take off people unless you've done a job like that, and that's why save for the service being absolutely horrendous, I always tip well.

/rant
 
Waited tables at Aurora when it was in Carrboro and Crooks’ Corner. Both in the ‘80’s. Both were mostly fun jobs and relatively well-paying while in college. One rarely left Crooks on a Th, Fr, Sat, or Sunday without netting $120-130 after tipping out. Good people at both places.
 
Zoo_View said:
Waited tables at Aurora when it was in Carrboro and Crooks’ Corner. Both in the ‘80’s. Both were mostly fun jobs and relatively well-paying while in college. One rarely left Crooks on a Th, Fr, Sat, or Sunday without netting $120-130 after tipping out. Good people at both places.
Click to expand...
I miss Crooks.
 
Paine said:
I miss Crooks.
Click to expand...
Yes...I miss Crooks. While I worked at Tijuana Fats', The Hardback Cafe, The Dead Mule, Local 506, The Cave, The Orange County Social Club, and Henry's Bistro I still regret never having mixed a legit drink at both Pyewacket (tended a bit at a party there once) and Crooks.
 
#OTD (July 3) in 1981 Ervin Rouse died. (born in 1917 in Chowan County)-he was the composer of ‘Orange Blossom Special.’ A Wanderer from the age of 8, he passed away in FL. Bill Monroe made OBS a hit in ‘42 & Johnny Cash again in ‘65. Fiddle/harmonica dueled-echoing a NY to FL passenger train in The Bluegrass Anthem.

www.dncr.nc.gov

Look a-Yonder Comin’: “Orange Blossom Special” and Ervin Rouse

On July 3, 1981, Ervin Rouse, composer of “Orange Blossom Special,” the “unofficial anthem of bluegrass,” died. Plagued by alcoholism and mental illness, he was living on the edge of the Everglades and playing local taverns occasionally for tips.Born in 1917 in Craven County, Rouse left home at...
www.dncr.nc.gov www.dncr.nc.gov
 
30ish years ago my neice had her wedding recption in a covered area of the Courtyard-or whatever it was called where Pyewackets was . Her father was good buddies with Kitzmiller so we brought over Kegs and cases of beer from Hes Not Here .
It was the last time they rented out that space for a wedding reception..........
 
donbosco said:
IMG_9686.jpeg
Click to expand...
DB,
You have probably already opined on this topic many times before, but I am old, stupid, and forgetful. But in regard to the Spanish Conquest of Central and South America, there was a lot done that from my present-day perspective seems to be inconsistent with I was raised to believe was the message of Christ. And also, what I perceive to be widely exaggerated stories of Catholic priests accompanying the Conquistadors trying to ameliorate the hardness of Conquistadores seems to be largely false narratives of trying to put a bow on a pile of %$#^. But I admit that a lot of what we do know about pre-Columbian culture of Central and South America is due to Catholic Priests writing about it. And I readily admit that my ancestors were no better than the Conquistadores in how they treated the existing people occupying the land they want to farm. But I would be really interested if you have an opinion on or a reference to a work about the role of Catholic Priests in the Conquest of Central and South America and if these Priests had any real impact on what happened either good or bad for the native peoples.

Side note: In regard books like "The Columbian Exchange" and "1492" I also admit that the catastrophe that befell the Native American populations post-1492, i.e., a 95% reduction in numbers, was largely due to European diseases that Europeans mostly unknowingly spread and even if they had known, had no knowledge how to stop or ameliorate such spread. Further side note, I do not believe the stories about distribution of smallpox infected blankets. My understanding is that such blankets would have been as dangerous to the vast majority of European settlers as they were to Native Americans. The European diseases spreading into the immunologically naive Native Americans needed no help from Europeans beyond the mere presence of Europeans in the Americas.
 
Yeah...the blanket stuff is horseshit in the main.

There were clearly good priests...actual Men of God as part of the conquering and the settler-colonizing-- and there were some others who served as the first anthropologists and linguists (though that crew could also be pretty UnGodly as well). There were also a great many priests, if archival research that I've done into the colonial period in Central America is a true indication, for whom their frock was just a job and piety was too costly a thing to get in the way of collecting revenues for baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Those priests were also, in the outlands, the tax collector, taking up both The Pope's and the King's tithe twice a year. Often in places like Guatemala and Southern Mexico for example, they were the only representative of Spanish culture and government in the town and they took good advantage of that position (and the perks were set up as incentive to get them to take the post in nowheresville Central America too).

We've all heard of Bartolome de las Casas, the Defender of the Indians but Padre Montesinos was also a good one that put up a fight for the actual human rights of the indigenous people. Overall though, I'd say that the Church was very much engrained in the flexible, even organic system that permitted the Spanish to rule over such vast territories for so many centuries in that they played as many games of survival as they could with whomever seemed playable.

Reading A New Survey of the West Indies by the renegade British catholic priest turned protestant could be pretty instructive of the "way things were" in those times. Here is the Internet Archive copy of it: The English-American his travail by sea and land: or, A new survey of the West-India's [sic], : containing a journall of three thousand and three hundred miles within the main land of America. Wherin is set forth his voyage from Spain to St. Iohn de Ulhua; and from thence to Xalappa, to Tlaxcalla, the City of Angeles, and forward to Mexico; with the description of that great city, as it was in former times, and also at this present. Likewise his journey from Mexico through the provinces of Guaxaca, Chiapa, Guatemala, Vera Paz, Truxillo, Comayagua; with his abode twelve years about Guatemala, and especially in the Indian-towns of Mixco, Pinola, Petapa, Amatitlan. As also his strange and wonderfull conversion, and calling from those remote parts to his native countrey. With his return through the province of Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, to Nicoya, Panama, Portobelo, Cartagena, and Havana, with divers occurrents and dangers that did befal in the said journey. Also, a new and exact discovery of the Spanish navigation to those parts; and of their dominions, government, religion, forts, castles, ports, havens, commodities, fashions, behaviour of Spaniards, priests, and friers, blackmores, mulatto's, mestiso's, Indians; and of their feasts and solemnities. With a grammar, or some few rudiments of the Indian tongue, called, Poconchi, or Pocoman. : Gage, Thomas, 1603?-1656 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive .

Gage helped to provide a good deal of the details to "The Black Legend of The Spanish Conquest" but if you understand his bias you can learn a lot from the read.

Who was he? Here is Gage's wikipedia page...you'll see what I mean: Thomas Gage (priest) - Wikipedia

Sorry that title is so long for the Internet Archive Link but that's the way they rolled in them days.
 
donbosco said:
Yeah...the blanket stuff is horseshit in the main.

There were clearly good priests...actual Men of God as part of the conquering and the settler-colonizing-- and there were some others who served as the first anthropologists and linguists (though that crew could also be pretty UnGodly as well). There were also a great many priests, if archival research that I've done into the colonial period in Central America is a true indication, for whom their frock was just a job and piety was too costly a thing to get in the way of collecting revenues for baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Those priests were also, in the outlands, the tax collector, taking up both The Pope's and the King's tithe twice a year. Often in places like Guatemala and Southern Mexico for example, they were the only representative of Spanish culture and government in the town and they took good advantage of that position (and the perks were set up as incentive to get them to take the post in nowheresville Central America too).

We've all heard of Bartolome de las Casas, the Defender of the Indians but Padre Montesinos was also a good one that put up a fight for the actual human rights of the indigenous people. Overall though, I'd say that the Church was very much engrained in the flexible, even organic system that permitted the Spanish to rule over such vast territories for so many centuries in that they played as many games of survival as they could with whomever seemed playable.

Reading A New Survey of the West Indies by the renegade British catholic priest turned protestant could be pretty instructive of the "way things were" in those times. Here is the Internet Archive copy of it: The English-American his travail by sea and land: or, A new survey of the West-India's [sic], : containing a journall of three thousand and three hundred miles within the main land of America. Wherin is set forth his voyage from Spain to St. Iohn de Ulhua; and from thence to Xalappa, to Tlaxcalla, the City of Angeles, and forward to Mexico; with the description of that great city, as it was in former times, and also at this present. Likewise his journey from Mexico through the provinces of Guaxaca, Chiapa, Guatemala, Vera Paz, Truxillo, Comayagua; with his abode twelve years about Guatemala, and especially in the Indian-towns of Mixco, Pinola, Petapa, Amatitlan. As also his strange and wonderfull conversion, and calling from those remote parts to his native countrey. With his return through the province of Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, to Nicoya, Panama, Portobelo, Cartagena, and Havana, with divers occurrents and dangers that did befal in the said journey. Also, a new and exact discovery of the Spanish navigation to those parts; and of their dominions, government, religion, forts, castles, ports, havens, commodities, fashions, behaviour of Spaniards, priests, and friers, blackmores, mulatto's, mestiso's, Indians; and of their feasts and solemnities. With a grammar, or some few rudiments of the Indian tongue, called, Poconchi, or Pocoman. : Gage, Thomas, 1603?-1656 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive .

Gage helped to provide a good deal of the details to "The Black Legend of The Spanish Conquest" but if you understand his bias you can learn a lot from the read.

Who was he? Here is Gage's wikipedia page...you'll see what I mean: Thomas Gage (priest) - Wikipedia

Sorry that title is so long for the Internet Archive Link but that's the way they rolled in them days.
Click to expand...
THANK YOU! You must be a great teacher because out my confused, aimless ramblings, you recognized exactly what I was looking for and gave me the exact links I was looking for. That's sort of response I only got from my really GREAT teachers.
 
05C40 said:
THANK YOU! You must be a great teacher because out my confused, aimless ramblings, you recognized exactly what I was looking for and gave me the exact links I was looking for. That's sort of response I only got from my really GREAT teachers.
Click to expand...
You are mighty kind to ‘say’ that. I did sense what you were getting into.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top