Ok, so some things in the golden era were not too cool...

[Harp]

In 1986 I took a trip to the south and in Louisiana I saw the name "coonass" for the first time. When I got back I asked him what a coonass was, he gave me a look and said I hope you didn't call anybody that. I said I don't even know what it means. He never did explain it and I'm still puzzled.

I took basic at Ft Polk, Louisiana and while on KP peeling spuds outside the mess hall noticed that the mess sergeant's pickup truck
bore a Proud Coonassbumper sticker. As the owner was the meanest sonuvabitch wielding a butcher knife, I never inquired...

 

[Stanley Doble]

Recently I have been reading up on the development of an electronic device for curing drug addiction, alcoholism and other mental issues. The inventor tested it out with the cooperation of some doctors at a veteran's hospital. He was surprised to find that cigarette or tobacco addiction is the hardest one to break, and experts consider tobacco 4 times as addictive as cocaine.

 

[itsbruce]

Where to chose. My great grandfather, on my mother's side, was a City of Westminster policeman. Back then (either side of the beginning of the 20th century), they had a reputation for being particularly thick, because their minimum height requirement was 6 foot, at a time when people were a little shorter. His sons were a) mostly smarter than him and b) mostly dock workers. Apart from my grandfather, who was both significantly smarter than him and a Metropolictn Police officer who eventually rose through the ranks of the Met CID (Criminal Investigation Department) to a senior rank.

During WWII, my grandfather was a sergeant who dealt with the significant crime problems which arose durig a war where most people had to retreat underground during emergencies. After the war, he was a senior detective who lead his team - as he proudly told me - in beating the **** out of any afro-carribean who happened to be in a nightclub into which a white Englishwoman had also wandered.

Ironically, most of my white compatriots don't want to acknowlege either of those realities; the WWII crime reality, or the post-war really nasty racism of the police reality. This is more than ironic.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

I took basic at Ft Polk, Louisiana and while on KP peeling spuds outside the mess hall noticed that the mess sergeant's pickup truck
bore a Proud Coonassbumper sticker. As the owner was the meanest sonuvabitch wielding a butcher knife, I never inquired...

I was a Drill Sargent on North Fort (TigerLand) in '71. I think I knew that sonuvabitch..or maybe it was his Father..
HD

 

[Harp]

I was a Drill Sargent on North Fort (TigerLand) in '71. I think I knew that sonuvabitch..
HD

11Bravo Tigerland and I hated Polk so much I put in for Vietnam.

 

[WH1]

11Bravo Tigerland and I hated Polk so much I put in for Vietnam.

Back in 2007 my Marine unit was sent to Polk for Pre-Deployment work ups called Cajun Viper. It was August, humid and nasty
we got done with the deployment and I was talking to some of my Marines including wounded and they all agreed the worst part of the deployment was the month in Polk. at least when they got hit in Iraq they knew if they lived they would get a beer in Landstuhl.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

11Bravo Tigerland and I hated Polk so much I put in for Vietnam.

When I trained troops there..you didn't have to put in for Nam..you were already on your way.
HD

 

[Harp]

In '73 Nam was offered though not set, and the prospect of permanent party Polk duty was anathema.
I went airborne and had my ass kicked all over the world-to no regret, I extended, and finished in the 12th Special Forces.
Of all the places the Army sent me, Polk was the one place I particularly disdained.[angel]

 

[T Jones]

It was always WOMEN doing this. Your move.

...and then there was this woman...

I'm sorry, but I don't think she would leave someone with very many options.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Chuck Norris had a grandmother?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm a big fan of Carry A. Nation. She was busting up drinking establishments that existed in violation of Kansas state law and were protected from legal prosecution by a trail of graft and corruption leading all the way to the Kansas State House. She wasn't a killjoy, she was a revolutionary.

 

[T Jones]

I'm a big fan of Carry A. Nation. She was busting up drinking establishments that existed in violation of Kansas state law and were protected from legal prosecution by a trail of graft and corruption leading all the way to the Kansas State House. She wasn't a killjoy, she was a revolutionary.

I don't know about her being a revolutionary of sorts. She was a Christian woman of strong religious convictions who was against alcohol and drunkeness. She, along with others, like the Reverend Billy Sunday who came a little after her, were influential in the temperance movement....one can't help but to admire her courage and energy though.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I consider her a revolutionary in that she took the only course open to her in a world where women were denied the vote. If people weren't going to listen to her words, she made sure they listened to her actions.

What a lot of people don't know about her was that she was a militant supporter of womens' suffrage and womens' rights even before she began her crusade against liquor. After she became famous for her saloon-smashing crusade she used the money she made from her speeches and stage appearances to open "Hatchet Hall" -- a safehouse for abused and battered women, which was one of the first institutions of its type in the country.

 

[T Jones]

I consider her a revolutionary in that she took the only course open to her in a world where women were denied the vote. If people weren't going to listen to her words, she made sure they listened to her actions.

What a lot of people don't know about her was that she was a militant supporter of womens' suffrage and womens' rights even before she began her crusade against liquor. After she became famous for her saloon-smashing crusade she used the money she made from her speeches and stage appearances to open "Hatchet Hall" -- a safehouse for abused and battered women, which was one of the first institutions of its type in the country.

Yes, she did advocate women's right to vote, but that was pretty common among people in the Temperance movement. People like the Reverend Billy Sunday thought they could get prohibiton legislation if women had the right to vote. But it was her Christian faith and the Temperance Movement that were Carrie Nation's passion. She believed that she was called of God to oppose the liquor trade. Here's a little more on Carrie Nation that pretty much describes her passion and religious motivation...

Carry Moore as a child experienced poverty, her mother’s mental instability, and frequent bouts of ill health. Although she held a teaching certificate from a state normal school, her education was intermittent. In 1867 she married a young physician, Charles Gloyd, whom she left after a few months because of his alcoholism. In 1877 she married David Nation, a lawyer, journalist, and minister, who divorced her in 1901 on the grounds of desertion.

Carry Nation entered the temperance movement in 1890, when a U.S. Supreme Court decision in favour of the importation and sale of liquor in “original packages” from other states weakened the prohibition laws of Kansas, where she was living. In her view, the illegality of the saloons flourishing in that state meant that anyone could destroy them with impunity. A formidable woman, nearly 6 feet tall and weighing 175 pounds, she dressed in stark black-and-white clothing. Alone or accompanied by hymn-singing women, she would march into a saloon and proceed to sing, pray, hurl biblical-sounding vituperations, and smash the bar fixtures and stock with a hatchet. At one point, her fervour led her to invade the governor’s chambers at Topeka. Jailed many times, she paid her fines from lecture tour fees and sales of souvenir hatchets, at times earning as much as $300 per week. She herself survived numerous physical assaults.

Nation published a few short-lived newsletters—called variously The Smasher’s Mail, The Hatchet, and the Home Defender—and her autobiography, The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation, in 1904 (rev. ed., 2006). Her “hatchetation” period was brief but brought her national notoriety. She was for a time much in demand as a temperance lecturer; she also railed against fraternal orders, tobacco, foreign foods, corsets, skirts of improper length, and mildly pornographic art of the sort found in some barrooms of the time.

 

[itsbruce]

Looks like Edward G. Robinson in a dress.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yes, she did advocate women's right to vote, but that was pretty common among people in the Temperance movement. People like the Reverend Billy Sunday thought they could get prohibiton legislation if women had the right to vote. But it was her Christian faith and the Temperance Movement that were Carrie Nation's passion. She believed that she was called of God to oppose the liquor trade. Here's a little more on Carrie Nation that pretty much describes her passion and religious motivation...

What's most interesting about her religious views is that she didn't belong to any one church. She was born into the Disciples of Christ -- the so-called "Campbellites" -- but left that movement as a young woman and remained "non-denominational" from then on. She was probably most influenced by the "Free Methodists," but she refused to publicly affliate herself with any particular sect. Instead, she absorbed a variety of views from a variety of denominational influences -- not unlike the many notable female religious leaders of the time. That, in itself, was something of a revolutionary approach in an era which frequently denied women any position of leadership in the mainstream churches: those who thought for themselves were often forced to strike out on their own.

The temperance movement was inextricably linked to the development of feminism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Abolition of the liquor trade was seen as the best strategy for abolishing the impact that rampant drunkenness had on families of the time, an era, again, when women had few legal options in their lives once married. Women used the temperance movement, arm in arm with women's suffrage, as a way of making their voices emphatically heard in a period where men commonly assumed that they had nothing worthwhile to say.

 

[itsbruce]

The temperance movement was inextricably linked to the development of feminism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Abolition of the liquor trade was seen as the best strategy for abolishing the impact that rampant drunkenness had on families of the time, an era, again, when women had few legal options in their lives once married. Women used the temperance movement, arm in arm with women's suffrage, as a way of making their voices emphatically heard in a period where men commonly assumed that they had nothing worthwhile to say.

The interesting thing about this is the way drinking was also seen as a particularly unforgivable fault in proletarian women. Consider Hogarth's Gin Lane print, where a mother is shown as being so drunk that she allows her baby to fall to its death. That is a deeply misogynist image and one with which temperance campaigners like Carrie were actually collaborating.

Carrie and those like her were missing the point. Yes, alcohol abuse could lead men to abuse women, but even drinking responsibly could, at that time, cause women to be demonised - something the actions of Carrie and her ilk only reinforced. The problem was society's tolerance of male abuse of women, not alcohol. There were plenty of sober men who also abused their women. Women were property with no financial/legal rights of their own - that was the problem, not booze. Carries strength of personality and will certainly provided a corretive example, but the way she applied it was not constructive.


That said, the idea of a woman who was prepared to wander 19th century Kansas expressing her opinion with a hatchet is very impressive. Can't deny it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Having seen what drunken mothers are capable of, I don't think that's particularly misogynist at all. I saw some horrible sights when I was a reporter, and nine times out of ten, liquor (and to a lesser extent recreational drugs) was at the back of it. It's even worse today than when I was covering those stories twenty years ago. I don't care if you're a man or a woman, if you're a drunk, the first thing you need is to have the bottle knocked out of your hand. (Full disclosure: I was raised a grape-juice Methodist, and there was no place for alcohol in our home. It simply wasn't part of my world, and for all intents and purposes, it still isn't. I just don't see the point of it.)

The temperance movement firmly believed in the evils of alcohol, but they were just as firm in their belief that women needed to have a role in the world beyond that of mother/wife/mistress. Many of them were consciously using the temperance movement as the thin end of what they expected to be a very powerful wedge of women's influence in the political sector -- it was a female-dominated movement from top to bottom, and its influence was extremely powerful within the greater context of turn-of-the-century Progressivism.

 

[itsbruce]

Having seen what drunken mothers are capable of, I don't think that's particularly misogynist at all.

The way Hogarth was using it, it is. A bit like G. K. Chesterton's comment about nationalism: "'My country, right or wrong,' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.' ". Chesterton says that because the idea of a woman being drunk was seen as uniquely repellent; he would never have used "My father, drunk or sober". Hogarth was exploiting the same prejudice. There is no image in his work showing a man as such a bad father. Drunks, yes, but betrayers of children no. That's misogyny.

Chesterton's quote is particularly frustrating. On the one hand, he was in many ways a bigoted "Little Englander", but on the other hand he made this intelligent statement, which might be effective in debate with any unthinkingly flag-waving idiot. Only the choice of image is so misogynist - and so dated - that it is no longer useful.

 

[T Jones]

What's most interesting about her religious views is that she didn't belong to any one church. She was born into the Disciples of Christ -- the so-called "Campbellites" -- but left that movement as a young woman and remained "non-denominational" from then on. She was probably most influenced by the "Free Methodists," but she refused to publicly affliate herself with any particular sect. Instead, she absorbed a variety of views from a variety of denominational influences -- not unlike the many notable female religious leaders of the time. That, in itself, was something of a revolutionary approach in an era which frequently denied women any position of leadership in the mainstream churches: those who thought for themselves were often forced to strike out on their own.

The temperance movement was inextricably linked to the development of feminism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Abolition of the liquor trade was seen as the best strategy for abolishing the impact that rampant drunkenness had on families of the time, an era, again, when women had few legal options in their lives once married. Women used the temperance movement, arm in arm with women's suffrage, as a way of making their voices emphatically heard in a period where men commonly assumed that they had nothing worthwhile to say.

To be non-denominational was not uncommon or revolutionary at all. Many Christians, preachers, and Evangelists from that time and even into today consider themselves non-denominational, not affiliating with any particular Christian sect. Though many denominations differ in church doctrine their fundemental Christian beliefs are the same.


Some factions of the Temperance Movement like the "Womens Christian Temperance Movement" may have had an alliance with Womens Sufferage for the sake of opposing alcohol, but prohibition has its roots in the Protestant churches going back to the very early colonial times.

Quote from a PBS special about Prohibition...

The Temperance Movement

The country's first serious anti-alcohol movement grew out of a fervor for reform that swept the nation in the 1830s and 1840s. Many abolitionists fighting to rid the country of slavery came to see drink as an equally great evil to be eradicated – if America were ever to be fully cleansed of sin. The temperance movement, rooted in America's Protestant churches, first urged moderation, then encouraged drinkers to help each other to resist temptation, and ultimately demanded that local, state, and national governments prohibit alcohol outright.