George, Washington 1972

Back in late August 1972 my college friend Ptrov Sinski and I hitchhiked west from Seattle. A rancher left us off at exit 149, serving George, Washington, a small farming community surrounded by endless fields of ripening wheat. The two of us ignored the sign forbidding hitchhiking, but within ten minutes a Highway Patrol car halted on the shoulder. The officer wasn't that much older than us, but he had an old head. A cracker's head.

"You boys can't read." The buzz-cut cop pointed to the sign at the bottom of the onramp after checking our IDs.

"We can read, officer." I played polite.

It was a waste of time. We hadn't bathed in days. To him we were dirty hippies. It wasn't easy to bathe on the the road. Not for hippies or any travelers.

"Then go back to read that sign again." This was an order and the trim trooper stared hard at Ptrov. His hair was longer than mine and his name was foreign. "If I find you anywhere near the highway, I'll give you a ticket. Do anything else and I'll arrest you."

"Yes, officer."

"You boys think I'm being a hardass, but a week ago an officer was struck dead by a passing vehicle and the order has come down to enforce the laws." Cops were very protective of their own, especially those fallen in duty.

The uniformed officer drove off in his high-powered Plymouth Grand Fury. We obeyed his edict and held up a sign saying EAST to the cars passing on I90.

For several hours local teenagers gave us the finger and shouted garbled insults. Their hatred of hippies was not a fad. We wanted to get out of there, but we were trapped off the Interstate.

A little before sunset a Chevy van stopped on the shoulder and we ran up the highway.

Before we reached our ride van, the trooper showed up with light flashing.

"What I tell you boys?"

"We weren't hitchhiking on the highway."

"But a car stopped for you on the highway. Same thing.

He asked for our IDs. We received $50 tickets for hitchhiking and the driver was fined $20 for illegally stopping for hitchhikers.

"But we weren't on the highway," Ptrov protested in earnest outrage.

"You saying I don't know my job?"

"No, officer, we're not saying that. We just want to get home."

"Then get in that van and don't come back through here again."

We entered the van and the driver pulled away from the exit at less than the legal speed limit.

"Cocksucker." He looked in the rearview mirror, then tore his ticket into pieces.

"What are you doing?" I had put mine in my wallet.

"I'm from Ohio. I ain't ever paying that ticket." The driver pulled out a joint and lit it with the lighter. He introducing himself as Jackson.

"You going to Ohio?" Ptrov asked with high expectations. His girlfriend lived in Milwaukee. It was on the way to Ohio.

"Just as far as the Coeur d'Alene in Idaho. I'm working on the highway building rest stops." Jackson passed the joint to my disappointed friend. "We can crash there. Don't look so sad. At least you're out of George, Washington."

He was right and the two of us tore up the tickets like anti-war protestors ripping up draft cards at the Pentagon. I threw the shreds out the window. It was good to be free again.

True Lack Of Color

George Washington has been revered as the Father of this Country since its birth. The Virginian planter and his wife owned 318 slaves. Life of the plantation masters had always been painted full-white, however the Southern climate had been deadly to white women and slave owners exercised droit seigneur over the chattel women and girls.

The races mixed in blood.

Families were not pure.

Not everyone white was white.

And Washington well could have had black as might have Robert E. Lee.

Many of the early presidents possessed African blood, except in paintings.

Even the Father of the Nation.

Washington's Birthday - 2015

Today America celebrates President's Day to honor past presidents, but especially George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. New York only recognizes George Washington on his birthday of February 22, 1732 almost three hundred years ago. Gilbert Stuart painted the Father of the Nation as a white man as had countless other artists, however historically many English male colonists sired children with female Africans, because white women couldn't survive the climate or the summer fevers. Not all of the forefathers were white. They were only painted white. Was George Washington white?

The Virginian owned 123 slaves.

His views on slavery changed through the years.

"Here is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for this abolition of slavery but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by Legislative authority."

-GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1786

According to mountvernon.com Washington also explored ways to reduce the number of enslaved people at Mount Vernon without selling them. Most ideas involved renting or selling land to finance an emancipation. He was unable to execute any of these plans during his lifetime.

Were it not then, that I am principled against selling negroes, as you would do cattle in the market, I would not, in twelve months from this date, be possessed of one, as a slave.

-GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1794

Only the year before he had a slave woman whipped for refusing to work.

Her name was Charlotte.

There was no good in slavery.

No good in owning slaves.

Washington freed them all at his death in 1799.

Slavery remained the GM of the South until 1865 and thereafter with the Jim Crow laws subjected Africans to enslavement of another kid.

Father of a Nation.

No slave owner can claim that title.

Us against them.

George Washington In London

In the Spring of 2014 I was waiting for Brock Dundee in Trafalgar Square in London. Tourists mounted the four lions at the foot of Lord Nelson's Column for photos and art lovers queued before the National Gallery to view the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition, while busy Londoners strode across the square for various rendezvouses in the capitol.

Brock showed up on time and I asked the avant-garde filmmaker, if he wanted to see the exhibition.

"With all those tourists?" He shook with revulsion. "Better I take you to the best pub in London. It's right around the corner."

"Sounds good to me." It was already past noon and we walked toward St. Martin in the Fields. I stopped in my tracks upon seeing a familiar personage posed in bronze on a thick plinth.

"There's the Father of your Nation."

"What's he doing here?" The writing on the plinth stated that the statue had been donated by the people of Virginia."

"Supposedly the soil underneath the statue had been imported from the USA." Brock had lived in New York for a number of years. He had almost married the most beautiful girl in the city. The Scot had even written a play for her. It had something to do with a revolt on a Caribbean island. She left him for Hollywood. We didn't talk about those days now.

"What for?"

"The Father Of Your Nation once said he would never step foot on British soil again."

"Washington had never been to England." I had minored in American History at university.

"You're forgetting that America was British soil before the Revolution." Brock hooked his arm with mine. "Let's get us some beer."

"In honor of George." I headed east with a parting nod.

"He was a man who never lied." Brock was an historian too.

"Just like my father." My old man came from the same stock, only we hailed from Maine.

There were no statues in London honoring anyone from the Pine Tree State.

I know, because I googled it.

E Pluribus Unum Forever

Last May sixty male attendees of of Baraboo, Wisconsin junior prom gathered on the steps of the Sauk County Courthouse and more than 50% of them gave the Nazi salute. No one said anything, until someone posted the photo online and people questioned the school administrators about the picture.

Lori Mueller, the Baraboo School District leader, wrote in a letter that the district was “not in a position to punish the students for their actions” because of their First Amendment rights.

The outrage centered on the boys, but also accused the photographer. The former local teacher and educator Peter Gust posed the photo, which he said was a wave goodbye. This coming from a longtime white supremacist.

The school district has refused to investigate the incident, despite rumors of racism within the 94% white high school, on the grounds that a Nazi salute is not forbidden under the 1st Amendment.

Ignorant commentators of RT.com have supported the the school district stance.

NJAB wrote, "You don't have to so far back in time. Walk into your nearest kindergarten and ask, "who wants a candy?" See how many "Nazi" salutes you get."

JEFF stated, "That's how it is in USA, there is free speech unless it happens to really offend you. Then the freedom is cut off."

And LINDA 60615 from Chicago believes, "Far left doesn't want free speech for everyone."

They claimed that the boys were giving a roman salute, however there is no statue or painting or fresco from the Imperial Roman Empire showing the salute.

Augustus of Prima Porta comes closest and it ain't close at all.

The salute first appeared in THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE EAGLE STANDARDS (1810) by Jacques-Louis David.

Also in Ave Caesar Morituri te Salutant, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1859), although 'we who are about to die, salute you' has been been attributed to a single Roman, slave, or gladiator.

The Bellamy salute was promoted by the Knights of Labor, although with the rise of nazism in Germany and America President Franklin Delano Roosevelt substitute the hand on the heart during the Pledge of Allegiance.

There was never a Roman Salute and the boys from Baraboo are the face of racism and hatred in America.

The Proud Boys under the Erich Roehm wannabee.

The dozens of Patriot Prayer ps fuck your Christian TV god.

And all the other race haters go fuck yourself.

The 1st amendment was not written for you.

Slavery perhaps.

Because in the end you're all racist and that is sad, because none of the Founding Fathers were white.

Why did George Washington wear a wig?

To hide the kink.

Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

That is the answer.

I don't care about your racist questions.

E pluribus unum or out of many one.

Always.

The Difference

I can tell the difference. The truth is easier to remember.