September 28, 2012
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Mitt’s toast… but so am I
My washer broke, and the only ones I can find for sale here say ‘Coloreds’ or ‘Whites’ Right on the front. What’s the deal with that? I’d thought we were past this ignoble phase.
The sales boy wasn’t much help:
“You don’t have any, like ‘integrated’ machines?” I asked him, in a hushed tone.
“Sure don’t, sir, not in this aisle.” he looked pensively across the store floor at the over-and-under appliances section, where they put you only after the ‘Trainee’ badge wears out, or something. Pensive, but not from man’s inhumanity to man, I surmised.
“But I can put coloreds and whites in the same load, can’t I… if nobody’s watching?” I pressed him.
“Wouldn’t advise it.” was all he said.
“Why not?” I was determined to get to the root causes of racism here.
“They bleed.” he informed me.
“Who bleeds?”
“The coloureds. And they run. You’ll have a mess. But hey, it’s your life.”
All this made me think of those laws, what the hell were they called, in the South, from shortly after the Civil War until Brown vs Board of Education and the Johnson era Equal Rights Laws. Damn, what was the name? It’s like, a guy’s name, and short. Like ‘Jack Buck’ or something. Don’t tell me, It’ll come to me in the shower. In a week or so. Why do these memory gaps happen so often? First it was the bass-player from the Jefferson Airplane I couldn’t come up with, and now this ‘John Blow’ or whoever he was. I’d do lousy in a Presidential debate, is all I’m thinking. I’d be up there, all noble and statuesque, and start a sentence like “Efforts by the Republican party to deny Americans the right to vote are beginning to sound like…um…like those…you know… Damn! ‘Chopped Liver Laws’?? I give up.”Anyway, do your part folks. Don’t buy a washer from James Krowe Ltd. Together we can make a difference.
Comments (28)
I don’t even buy Jim Beam because the name is reminiscent of those, uh, Johnny Walker? Old Crow? whatever laws. Jack Daniel’s it wasn’t, thank your favorite gaseous vertebrate for that. On my behalf if for no other reason.
I’m'a haff t’ speak with the old woman to find out if I married me a segregationist. Thanks for the ‘minder.
Huh, just five minutes ago I reread my one post about Mr. Grackle or whatever his name was. Here we go: http://roadkill-spatula.xanga.com/718098931/jim-crow-at-petras/
Jack Buck? Joe Buck? Buck Jones? Buck Bacaw? There was that big game hunter who was famous in the 1940s or 1950s with a name like that. Oh, yeah, Frank Buck, and it was the 1930s. We had a comic book about him when I was a kid.
This is bad news indeed. Voter suppression might leave us eating crow à la sauce Alfredo and bleeding into our integrated washing machines. Thanks for the alert.
@HappierHeathen - Thinking I’ll go with the Reconstructo ‘Divided-drum’ model. Supposedly the wash is ‘separate but equal’ but dayum, if I keep losing sock-pairings I may have to go back to hand-soaking.
Thanks for confirming my thesis ‘What’s in a name? A: Lots
@Roadkill_Spatula - Thanks, I’ll be sure to read that, now that I know what I’m reading. Your comment did echo the fifteen minutes I spent trying to come up with the name. Embarrassing, but at least not on National TV
@we_deny_everything - Wow, kinda all hangs together, don’t it. Or hangs separately.
I may watch the debates from here, if the Valu-Pak tranquilizers I ordered arrive in time. ‘Vallia’, or ‘Villiam’, or whatever they call ‘em. ‘Valhalla’?
It’s the really dark ones that bleed the most, and really if a white ever spins through a single cycle with the blacks, they’re grey forever and no amount of bleach will ever fix them.
@blonde_apocalypse - I’ve never separated wash, feeling, I guess, that the chore would mark me as a dandy or something. Thus everything I own is one of 50 shades of grey. I understand there’s a book about this problem out.
Ha, really, all the language used to describe this is both laundry-ese and racial musings… which may be the little point of the post’s first half.
The second is fears of dementia. Just googled it, and I have two more years to be considered early-onset. Better get cooking.
I never noticed how reds comes to life in the word coloreds before I read this.
James Krowe Ltd… when you want your laundry separate but equal
eh, mix ‘em all up. Put the coloreds in with the whites. @doahsdeer - hahahaha
It is late but I’m trying not to laugh so loudly that I wake the Mr. We are a “purple” couple. That’s what happens when ‘red’ and ‘bleeding heart blue’ tumble together… Yep. We have one of those mixed marriages. hehe! (My mother refers to it as ‘sleeping with the enemy’)
@sleekpunk - Yes, red is almost ‘loco’. May need to see the-rapist.
@ordinarybutloud - Somehow I’m sure the other moms here in Podville ‘sort’. It’s just me. (And I thought about your recent pulse concerning a word that just ‘didn’t look right’, while I was agonizing over JC. That’s Crow. James Crow.
@doahsdeer - Ha, they’re back to unashamedly advertising ‘white water rafting’ these days. Me, I say it ain’t right to Kill a Maytag…Magpie… whatever
@murisopsis - Ha, new meaning to ‘split ticket’. I’m just hoping that after this vote goes through the wringer, remembering who was the challenger quickly becomes simply a trivia question.
Jack Buck? Seriously? L0L .
Jim Crow you must mean.
And love your colorful yet slightly racist description of washing coloreds with whites. But it truly is the whites that run =)
@Want2FitIn2Fat2Fit - Yes, Jim Crow, but why did it take 15 minutes of head-scratching to recall the name? I got a couple years till 65.
And yes, urban flight: the whites run to the suburbs… some of ‘em. Thanks as usual for your visit.
I have to air all my gray laundry out in public since I have no dryer, imagine that? I have no shame!
@seedsower - Ha. I’ll well past shame myself. But at least I have no real neighbors. If I did they could count socks and scratch their heads. No two alike. Like the Pep Boys.
Jack Casady is also the bass player in Hot Tuna. To my knowledge, he has never dealt in racially-tinged home appliances.
Don’t feel bad, Yoni; I have had trouble recalling names and places for years. However, I passed a milestone 2 years ago, during the mayoral election in New Orleans, a friend asked me how the white guy in the race could possibly win in a majority-black city. I started explaining that the guy’s family “had a history of supporting…supporting,…that thing “black people like” my brain would not provide me with the term ‘civil rights’. So I can add ‘concepts’ to names and places as things I have trouble recalling.
@MelFamy - Dang. I accidentally read that as “However, I passed a millstone 2 years ago…” and thought, “That poor, poor man. Now he knows what childbirth feels like.”
You think you have problems? Well lemme tell ya, i laundered my tie-dye dresses, now all my clothes have 50 shades of gay. Happy that is.
@an_OM_aly - Oy. You keep coming up with killer/zinger phrases. I smile to read your wit.
@MelFamy - Greg, the mnemonic for that is simple, and has been working for me. Simply tattoo ‘Sybil Writes’ (the name of the tell-all hit from that infamous multi-personna poster girl) on your arm, and glance at it as needed in conversation. Use a small font, since other black holes may crop up.
Seriously, both you and I relish and enjoy trying, at least, to have an encyclopediac memory of wide-ranging subjects. (A few lines of your fiction and one is a believer)
And so the holes do stand out, as time goes by.
A tear is just a tear/ It rhymes with here or there/
But f*ck me if I, um, know which…
This small,witty post has spawned some of the cleverest comments ever. Well done. All the best puns are already taken! To speak now would be like a Jay Ravin’ at the wind and hamperin’ the press for a permanent, albeit, soapy solution to the heavy load spinning the bleached iron hearts of the folk, cycling in gyres, who may tag the lonely search for a day when a black machine will be washing-tons of laundry on the mountain of … change … for a dollar mister? The man in the coonskin hat says my canadian quarters may make a good enough tax shelter for the wage-slaves up north but I can only slide a decent U.S. coin into the slot of an American Dryer. Keep the Appliances Pure!!!(X)
@gnostic1 - ‘All the best puns taken’, huh? I’d love to live inside your mind for a while. Until I go out of it, you know.
Your prose gives me the same goose-bumps as Terry Pratchet (sp?); you just know an active playful mind is back there hiding behind it, watching them as they read, hoping ‘they’ll get it’.
This blog is something to crow about. It’s a jim-dandy entry.