BARBARIANS AT THE GATE: A TALE OF TWO CITIES

My Prey That Got Away

Last Friday night, I was at a  rather new posh watering hole in town. I spotted a couple of jeune filles who I thought worthy of pursuing, handsome lasses they were, so I ambled up to them and engaged them in clever conversation. Strangers, perhaps they had not yet been warned by other local women to "stay away" from me, and I could beguile them with a few well placed yarns and feigned emotive concern which would illustrate "how sensitive and cuddly" I am. My gentlemanly manners were on full display. I even threw on a dollop of southern boy cordial charm, but alas, after unloading my full arsenal upon them, they thanked me  "for a lovely evening" and bid me adieu. Shucks. After several hours of earnestly working to ensnare my prey, I discovered that I was quite hungry. It was well past 10 o' clock, and I had a hankering for a good cheeseburger.

I Had A Hankering

I drove to an oft frequented French restaurant with a zinc bar that makes Deux Maggots look like a Waffle House. Surprisingly, they serve up a most excellent cheeseburger. I know all the bartenders, and I envisioned consuming the red meat that my body craved while yucking it up with my buds behind the bar.  From there, I would plan the rest of my evening. Unfortunately, the kitchen was closed; I was directed to another establishment within walking distance.


Despite the evening's setbacks, I was in a cheerful, even ebullient mood, until I walked into the other establishment. I sat at the bar......

Otis My Man

Now I am anything but a prude. I like to think that I get along well with all kinds of people from many different stations in life. When I was a young buck growing up in the Northern Neck of Virginia,  working in a sawmill in the summer, my black buddies would invite me to Vets Inn, an all black night club, known for  regular shootings and knifings. Do you mind if we dance with yo dates? When I would walk in, an underage 17 year old,  white bred honky, the music would literally stop and everyone would stare at me, then one of my sawmill buddies would put his arm around me and announce to the crowd "Smitty's alright! " Then, we would close the place down, and I would have 100 new friends.

The Last Chance

Similarly, I have spent time at the Last Chance, a redneck, stripper, biker bar in South Richmond, where the strippers would, every hour, on the hour, put their hands over their, uggh,..hearts, and boisterously lead all the patrons in a chorus of Dixie. Many a time, after a fancy black tie wedding at "the country club, " I would take out of town guests from Greenwich (and other such places) to the Last Chance. "Welcome to Richmond Skippy and Thurston!" as I'd slap them on the back and teach them the lyrics of our national song. God was that fun!


The point is, you can plop me down in the middle of a Jewish bar mitzvah or a Baptist tent revival, and I am high fiving everybody by the end of the night. I like people. Yet, at this other "establishment" I was referred to, I DID NOT like the people. I was disgusted by them, I loathed them. It was a white 30 something crowd, the guys were unattractive, slovenly and drunk. Their women were fat, unattractive, slovenly and drunk. Friday night in the big city, and my main protaganist ( the idiot I loathed the most) was dressed in nylon shorts, a wrinkled Budweiser T-Shirt and flip flops. He was a boorish rube and so were the other neanderthals he was with, staggering into people and loudly dropping the F- bomb between gutteral utterances and presumed attempts to speak English. The rest of the horde of Visogoths were "tatted up," pot bellied and equally repugnant. The whole scene reminded me of the Anna Karenina chapter where Levin got drunk with the peasants after taking in the harvest.

Daryll and Daryll

As I gandered around the room, I thought, had any of these miscreants ever been moved by a great poem? Had they read Shakespeare? Do they know anything about American exceptionalism? Had they ever sought truth or given any thought as to the existence of God or pondered any of the age old,  nagging philosohpical questions about man's existence and purpose? The answer clearly was No. These people were fools, specifically and perhaps purposefully bred by the government public school monopoly. ( If we manufacture uneducated idiots, give them a little rum and scraps of bread, we can control them). My intuition told me that these people were either all on the public dole or if they had jobs, they still were sycophants living off the rest of us. They might excel at video games, but my guess is each and everyone of them was a net "NEGATIVE"  to GNP. Several times, I gave the crowd the ole "Rob Is Right" icy glare over my horned rim reading glasses, a civilized way of saying shut the F up! But then I realized, these people were not civilized, they were not vested in society. My glare meant nothing to them.

Maggie Walker-Armstrong

On the way home, I called my friend Jan, a virtuous woman with a great deal of horse sense to ask her what it all meant? We discussed the old clippings of Yankee Stadium in the mid-60s when New Yorkers would get dressed up in coats and ties to go to a baseball game. Back in the days of segregation in Richmond, there was great football rivalry between two all black high schools, Maggie Walker  and Armstrong. There is a great program that comes on the local PBS station called "Richmond Remembers." The annual football game would be played at City Stadium, 35,000 people strong, all black and virtually all of the men would have on a coat and tie (and fedora). Upon watching the program, I was fascinated at how the black community had their own  social clubs, debutante parties, greek organizations and philanthropic foundations. Despite the disenfranchisement of the Jim Crow South, these people were self reliant and vested in their communities.


END OF PART I
(Part II is coming, keep your damn britches on)