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| Andree and Dublin, Chattanooga |
My wife Andrée and I are back in Connecticut following a ten day vacation in the postmodern backwoods of Tennessee.
She had arranged a stay at a horse farm off the main track
where, as in Connecticut during the 50s and 60s, farms sprouted out of nowhere
every few miles and people, always industriously minding their own business, went happily
about arranging their destinies without constant pricks and prods from a
faltering, debt prone, cloying, busybody government.
However, I am forbidden by Andrée from discussing politics
with anyone in Tennessee, except by the usual amorphous nods and winks. This
political famine would change radically on the plane ride home.
The horse farm, accessible by meandering roads, the way to
the farm studded every few miles by cows contentedly lounging in the grass, a
bull separated from the herd standing alone as a watchful sentinel, turned out
to be a joyful success.
Dublin – Andrée’s guide dog, always introduced to strangers
as an extremely rare silver-point Irish German Shepherd – stayed in our
temporary home during the horseback ride, irritatingly pacing back and forth at
the window of the farmhouse, anxiously waiting for the return of Andrée, her
mount, and Crystal a perfect name for the superintendent of
the farm, a young lady, the mother of young children,
who with her husband keeps the farm in working order and, unlike tremulous
politicians in Connecticut – one thinks of its two U.S. Senators – does not
fear gun-toting citizens.
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| Andrée, Crystal and her horses |
“Don’t be surprised if you hear guns going off in the morning” she tells us. “The men around here like to hunt and shoot.”
Sure enough, the guns went off about the same time the
roosters went off one Sunday morning, sending Andrée to the window in a rush
of excitement. She well recalls her father, active in four branches of the
service, and her recently passed brother, a Fairfield, Connecticut policeman
who served in the Navy on the Enterprise, firing away at a target in the basement of their
house; this at a time when politicians in the state showed great regard for the
Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, now a blank page to be inked in by
make-the-world-over-anew Connecticut progressives.
Davy Crockett – “king of the wild frontier” – is a celebrated son of Tennessee. Crockett honed his oratorical skills while stumping for a seat in the state legislature. He made use of his position in supporting settlers and farmers. Later, he ran for a seat in in the U.S. House. A frontiersman, Crockett was always more comfortable hunting game than Creek Indians, In Congress, he repeatedly opposed President Andrew Jackson’s Indian resettlement efforts. Losing election in 1835, he set off for Texas and managed to get himself executed by Santa Anna's military at the Alamo.
When then Senator John Kennedy was running for president, he
visited the Alamo and there gave a brief speech. Finding himself running late,
he asked a tourist guide to direct him to the back door so that he might leave
quickly without generating undo attention.
The woman guide said to him, “Senator Kennedy, there are no back
doors to the Alamo – only heroes.”
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| Tennessee Don |
States, as well as people, have memories. Tennessee’s
memories, which power its people, are, like those of Connecticut, large and
live.
On the way home from Chattanooga, boarding a large American
Airline jet, both of us were worried, as usual, that Dublin might disturb the
passenger occupying the third seat in our bulkhead row. But the passenger,
Waterbury Mayor Neil O’Leary, told us the guide dog would be no bother. He sent
a picture of Dublin – along with a note that the dog was Irish – to his wife.
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