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Curious what a bun thinks (BLM, protests, ETC.)?)
5 years ago
Before we begin, I want to say that I'm a little hesitant to speak. I don't really think this is the time or place to offer up my take, other than to give a cry of solidarity and support for the protestors. If you're in no mood to hear a 'Bama bun babble, please feel free to skip past my absurd text and instead click on the link where the extremely funny and talented Amber Ruffin shares her experiences. I'd much rather you listened to her right now. But if you must skim through my meanderings, feel free to read on...
As some of you know, I'm the son of a preacher man.
If you're familiar with the south, you'll know that the church is where people gather, often over a plethora of casseroles, fried meats, and a half dozen banana pudding recipes, all vying for the PK's (preacher's kid) approval. On Wednesdays, there's choir practice, wherein flustered choir directors battle desperately against malfunctioning sound systems, wincing as their heavenly host, and that one youth pastor with his own guitar and acoustic set up, stumble through whatever modern Christian jam is the flavor of the month. Gotta keep the youths interested once they've grown out of popsicle-stick crafts and modified summer camp songs.
I still find myself humming "Fried Ham, Fried Ham" when my mind wanders too far afield.
There's also bible study, often with the aid of a handy, dandy evangelical guide to make sure the right lessons sink in and nobody takes that Jesus guy too seriously when he inadvertently mutters something vaguely socialist. This is usually where the older men of the church gather, a chance to reaffirm their beliefs and air any grievances they may have with the community. Sometimes they'll even have a men's breakfast, having chosen a local eatery to share grits, cheese omelettes, and "Christian" values. And yes, fried ham.
Being the pastor's son, I was expected to attend each and every function. I warbled through my share of modernized hymns, shared my confusing puberty with concerned, hip youth pastors that "just so happened to have a song about that," and ate omelette du fromage with a side order of fried ham and an extra helping of mac and cheese, because grits are an abomination. My presence was required though not my input, which is why I probably remember the pot luck dinners most fondly. That's where a chubby PK wields the most power, actively changing next month's menu with every second or third helping.
But sometimes, usually at night, the men would come to fetch my father for a special meeting. I'd recognize all the same faces I had shared fried ham and bible stories with, men who had smiled at me, men who were part of the local police, ran the local businesses, and tended to the local government. They never smiled at night, though a few had the decency to look a little lost and embarrassed. Most of them, especially the older, richer, never smiling White men, did not.
Sometimes I'd catch snippets before I was hurried off. The first time I ever hear the "N-word" expressed with passionate, gleeful bile, came from a night like that. Sometimes I'd lie awake in bed, listening to harsh, hateful sounds with yet more N-words scattered about. The older, richer, never smiling White men rarely spat that particular slur. They preferred to let their subordinates, their accumulated good ole' boys, spit it out along with a chunk of tobacco-laden vile, into half-empty soda bottles.
I'll never really know what came of those meetings, what the officers in attendance did once they left our house. I'll never know how involved my father actually was, though truth be told, he was a mad monster in his own right and hardly needed a racist community to let his demons loose, especially on his own family.
What I do know is that, years later, my father remarried. By that point, we had long since cut ties and for all the madness and abuse, it was oddly comforting to know he had someone to look after him. Then we heard that his new wife had been called in to testify about things she had overheard years before I was born, things involving her first husband, long before she had met my father. It involved another church, some angry White men, and a bomb.
This year my sisters took the kids to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr day. Eventually they got to the area devoted to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, the horror it inflicted on the Black community (and anyone else with a shred of humanity,) and the four young Black girls whose lives were stolen from them by angry White men. In the text they found references to those men and also to a certain wife called in to testify against her first husband.
You can guess just how familiar her name was to my family.
I could try and end all of this on a pithy note. I could do a "fried ham" call back, paying off an obscure reference that nobody will ever get beyond me and a few Vacation Bible School survivors. I could do that, I could attempt to release the tension that comes from reading (and writing) all of this. But as Amber Ruffin will express far more eloquently than I ever could, maybe it's time to get a little uncomfortable. Maybe this tension is a good thing, if it's turned into action.
There are more people in this world than old, rich, never smiling White men. Far more of us than them, in fact. It is long past time we make them keenly aware of that fact.
Some of you may have been hoping I'd say something specific about the police, express my own fears and anger. As much as I'd love to vent some of that frustration, I think I'll let someone far more personally affected speak her mind and share her experiences...
And if you're looking for a way to contribute, and maybe snag some sweet indie games in the process...
https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-ra.....e-and-equality
...Quick little aside since I think I may have given the wrong impression. My father wasn't involved in the bombing. He just happened to marry the ex-wife of one of the bombers. How that odd twist of fate came to be, I haven't the foggiest. And near as I can tell, my father was never officially involved with the clan. Pretty sure if you asked him, he would say he wasn't a racist, for as much as those words mean. But being a southern pastor in a small, rural community puts you into a certain position. I'll never know how he dealt with that, just how involved or if he ever stood up to the biggest donors in the community. Our relationship was complicated enough already.
As some of you know, I'm the son of a preacher man.
If you're familiar with the south, you'll know that the church is where people gather, often over a plethora of casseroles, fried meats, and a half dozen banana pudding recipes, all vying for the PK's (preacher's kid) approval. On Wednesdays, there's choir practice, wherein flustered choir directors battle desperately against malfunctioning sound systems, wincing as their heavenly host, and that one youth pastor with his own guitar and acoustic set up, stumble through whatever modern Christian jam is the flavor of the month. Gotta keep the youths interested once they've grown out of popsicle-stick crafts and modified summer camp songs.
I still find myself humming "Fried Ham, Fried Ham" when my mind wanders too far afield.
There's also bible study, often with the aid of a handy, dandy evangelical guide to make sure the right lessons sink in and nobody takes that Jesus guy too seriously when he inadvertently mutters something vaguely socialist. This is usually where the older men of the church gather, a chance to reaffirm their beliefs and air any grievances they may have with the community. Sometimes they'll even have a men's breakfast, having chosen a local eatery to share grits, cheese omelettes, and "Christian" values. And yes, fried ham.
Being the pastor's son, I was expected to attend each and every function. I warbled through my share of modernized hymns, shared my confusing puberty with concerned, hip youth pastors that "just so happened to have a song about that," and ate omelette du fromage with a side order of fried ham and an extra helping of mac and cheese, because grits are an abomination. My presence was required though not my input, which is why I probably remember the pot luck dinners most fondly. That's where a chubby PK wields the most power, actively changing next month's menu with every second or third helping.
But sometimes, usually at night, the men would come to fetch my father for a special meeting. I'd recognize all the same faces I had shared fried ham and bible stories with, men who had smiled at me, men who were part of the local police, ran the local businesses, and tended to the local government. They never smiled at night, though a few had the decency to look a little lost and embarrassed. Most of them, especially the older, richer, never smiling White men, did not.
Sometimes I'd catch snippets before I was hurried off. The first time I ever hear the "N-word" expressed with passionate, gleeful bile, came from a night like that. Sometimes I'd lie awake in bed, listening to harsh, hateful sounds with yet more N-words scattered about. The older, richer, never smiling White men rarely spat that particular slur. They preferred to let their subordinates, their accumulated good ole' boys, spit it out along with a chunk of tobacco-laden vile, into half-empty soda bottles.
I'll never really know what came of those meetings, what the officers in attendance did once they left our house. I'll never know how involved my father actually was, though truth be told, he was a mad monster in his own right and hardly needed a racist community to let his demons loose, especially on his own family.
What I do know is that, years later, my father remarried. By that point, we had long since cut ties and for all the madness and abuse, it was oddly comforting to know he had someone to look after him. Then we heard that his new wife had been called in to testify about things she had overheard years before I was born, things involving her first husband, long before she had met my father. It involved another church, some angry White men, and a bomb.
This year my sisters took the kids to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr day. Eventually they got to the area devoted to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, the horror it inflicted on the Black community (and anyone else with a shred of humanity,) and the four young Black girls whose lives were stolen from them by angry White men. In the text they found references to those men and also to a certain wife called in to testify against her first husband.
You can guess just how familiar her name was to my family.
I could try and end all of this on a pithy note. I could do a "fried ham" call back, paying off an obscure reference that nobody will ever get beyond me and a few Vacation Bible School survivors. I could do that, I could attempt to release the tension that comes from reading (and writing) all of this. But as Amber Ruffin will express far more eloquently than I ever could, maybe it's time to get a little uncomfortable. Maybe this tension is a good thing, if it's turned into action.
There are more people in this world than old, rich, never smiling White men. Far more of us than them, in fact. It is long past time we make them keenly aware of that fact.
Some of you may have been hoping I'd say something specific about the police, express my own fears and anger. As much as I'd love to vent some of that frustration, I think I'll let someone far more personally affected speak her mind and share her experiences...
And if you're looking for a way to contribute, and maybe snag some sweet indie games in the process...
https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-ra.....e-and-equality
...Quick little aside since I think I may have given the wrong impression. My father wasn't involved in the bombing. He just happened to marry the ex-wife of one of the bombers. How that odd twist of fate came to be, I haven't the foggiest. And near as I can tell, my father was never officially involved with the clan. Pretty sure if you asked him, he would say he wasn't a racist, for as much as those words mean. But being a southern pastor in a small, rural community puts you into a certain position. I'll never know how he dealt with that, just how involved or if he ever stood up to the biggest donors in the community. Our relationship was complicated enough already.
Thanks for sharing your experience, hun. I'm happy such a good egg can still grow from such (half of a) bad nest. Gives a bit of hope.
And thank you for being there for a bun bun who probably has more of his father inside of him than he should -_-;;
Thank you for the support, though please take a moment to watch the vid as well. Whatever suffering I might have endured, it pales in comparison to the nightmares others have dealt with and are still dealing with to this very day.
This is more a feature of being a southern pastor in a small community. It's how you appeal to your biggest donors and make sure the collection plate stays full. Was he one of them? When he felt he needed to be. He was always very good at that, becoming what he needed to be as easily as slipping into a new skin. Does that make him better or worse? Hard to say.
I could dig into it further, but again, I don't want to take the focus away from where it should be.
And I don't really want to argue the point, because again, I don't want the focus to be on me. If you somehow still disagree, let it lie there and move along. You'll have already made your feelings known. Take it to PMs if you must, but I've also already made my feelings known, so we can be satisfied with that.
Feel free to poke a bun on Discord sometime. I'd still love to chat Anime or throw down some numbered polyhedrons, once life quits tossing us seemingly endless curveballs. ^^;;
Secondly, growing up in the church as well, I fully can relate to the...well cheese of a lot of the things you said. It may have been an all black church, but we did pretty much the same thing. I got roped into being a Youth Leader early on because my family was practically royalty in the church. So yeah, I know some of what you speak of.
Thirdly, I don't take kindly to any slander of grits. Grits are the best and I will fight for them and die on this hill. Granted, I am from Georgia, but still, Grits for life!!!
Still, their mac and cheese game was on point. Say what you want about a southern church, when it comes time to lay out a spread, they're all in.
And I'm sorry the grits have taken you as their own. I don't know how they do it, how they get into your system or warp your reality. I'm afraid you are lost to us now. At least we can agree on south-eastern BBQ and banana pudding. ^^
And as far as living through it, I'm just glad I made it out the other side, with my sisters and mother in tow. If nothing else, we're survivors and somehow managed to do so with our sense of humor relatively intact (if a little on the dark side.)
So much easier to convey in RL, though I suppose in RL we might ruin the moment with both of us quickly reaching for the hand sanitizer due to covid concerns. ^^;;