Mack Hall
The AP reports that in rural Turkey last Sunday a wedding went off with a bang when the groom shot his father and two of his aunts. Besides taking out Dad and some aunties the groom wounded eight other merry-makers when he discharged his automatic rifle in a moment of giddy happiness at having married such a wonderful girl.
Actually, that reminds me of some of the stories I’ve heard about my ancestors.
Shotgun weddings are so last week; the fashion now is automatic-weapons weddings.
And what a lark when the happy little children, led by the ring-bearer and the flower girl, scrambled merrily for the spent shell casings!
Grooms in most other nations would be happy with a slice of cake and a glass of champagne, but in Turkey the wedding reception is apparently a happy Kalashnikov moment.
This must have been a challenge for the wedding photographer: “Okay, beautiful bride, just hold up your new father-in-law’s severed head; I’ll photoshop the rest of him in later…now smile…”
Maybe that was after the happy bride and groom cut the cake with the bayonet that great-grandpa used on unarmed Greek and British prisoners in 1918.
Imagine the challenges for the wedding planner in a Turkish wedding: groom’s men relatives’ side, groom’s women relatives’ side, bride’s men relatives’ side, bride’s women relatives’ side.
And just what firearms do the groomsmen carry -- the traditional musket, the elegant and understated Walthers PPK, or the manly .44 magnum?
It must be a poignant moment for all when imam or mullah says: “I pronounce you man and wife. Husband, you may now beat the snot out of your new bride.”
Older women reminisce with their husbands about the past with joy: “Suleiman, remember the first time punched me on that moonlit night, and how you whispered to me that you would despise me forever?”
And then the gifts: for the groom, three goats, a box of ammunition, and a blank fatwah for killing any one person the groom doesn’t like. For the bride, a new mop, bucket, broom, and scrub brushes. A touching fashion this year was the presentation of certificates of donations, in the name of the groom (the bride doesn’t count), for the coming triumphal mosque at the site of the 9.11 victory over the infidels in New York City. Moreover, the certificates were printed in soy ink on recycled paper.
Late in the evening the bride tossed her hand grenade to her friends.
But all good things must come to an end, and as the bride meekly followed her husband through a double line of his friends, not hers, his car, not theirs, was decorated with the customary nuptial signs: “Death to Greece and Israel,” “Nuke the Great Satan Amerika,” and “Now Go Make New Little Martyrs.”
Sniff. It just makes one want to cry.
-30-
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
BRAVEHEART and TITANIC -- Joyful Comedies
Anyone who can watch Braveheart and Titanic, especially the endings, without tears of laughter streaming down his cheeks has no soul.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Notes from the Okay American Road Trip
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Folks’ vacation narratives are almost always boring, so the Gentle Reader may wish to skip this and go on to something more Snooki and Chelsea.
Roswell, New Mexico
Little Green Men – these aliens come from China. Whoever started the rumors about flying bread-and-butter plates was a marketing mad-man genius, and Roswell’s main runway is a merry we-have-come-in-peace-gauntlet of shops selling toys space ships and tees featuring LGM, and storefront, oh, museums advertising The Truth about UFOs. It’s all good fun. But why are there never any Little Green Women?
Lincoln, New Mexico
All of the little town of Lincoln is a historic site and features many buildings, including Tunstall’s Store, Murphy’s Store (which was also a courthouse, jail, and Masonic Lodge), and San Juan Bautista Church. A ten-dollar ticket gets you into the public buildings and sites, but of course walking around a looking is free. The one-day ticket is also good for other New Mexico State Monuments at Jemez, Coronado, Bosque Redondo, Fort Sumner, Fort Selden, and the El Camino Real International Heritage Center.
The current governor of New Mexico, angling for re-election, is considering pardoning that lethal little freak Billy the Kid because long-ago territorial governor Lew Wallace, who wrote Ben-Hur, had agreed to give the Kid a pardon for ratting out his homies. However, B the K continued to murder people and steal their stuff, so any pardon would have been irrelevant since the nasty little dude well deserved The Long Drop for his post-state’s-evidence murders.
As for Tunstall, Murphy, and McSween, they were turf warriors toting fire arms instead of cell ‘phones, and hiring hit-men to murder each other. The Lincoln County War was a gang squabble over government contracts and monopolies, and all the participants were killed or died broke and broken. The one fellow who came out of it looking pretty good was Sheriff Pat Garrett, a stand-up man who put an end to a pathological weirdo. History has been unfair to him.
Magdalena, New Mexico
Magdalena was a large mining and cowtown on the Santa Fe, which long ago pulled up tracks and trucked out of town. The old depot remains as a little museum and library. My father was in the CCC in nearby Horse Springs, which no longer exists as even a name on the map. Also nearby is the VLA – Very Large Array – of very large parabolic receivers trying to receive messages from Captain Kirk or from Little Green Men.
Springerville, Arizona – the morning temperature was 64 degrees.
Fort Apache is a curious place, situated in the middle of the White Mountain community. The first Apache I saw was hitchhiking absent-mindedly while talking on his cell ‘phone and listening to his ear-bud-box-noise-thingie. He wore knee pants and a ball cap.
The Army left Fort Apache in 1922, and the fort is now home to the Theodore Roosevelt School in some handsome buildings. Some of the military buildings, especially the officers’ quarters, are still in use, and there is a nice little visitors’ center / museum headed by a University of Texas graduate. Inside there is the now almost-requisite faux First Nations dwelling reconstruction and a video of a medicine man relating a creation story, but the overlaid drum and flute seemed stagey and the Harley-Davidson cap – well, I dunno.
A few miles away up a dirt track and past the beer cans the red-rock ruins and re-ruins of an ancient pueblo called Kinishba repose silently on a mesa. A 1930s attempt at reconstruction, imaginative at best, is collapsing back into the ages, but the high walls and wreckage and isolation give one pause. Who will be meditating upon our ruined buildings a thousand years from now?
Winslow – there not much to see here except rail lines and blowing dust and small-town streets and that famous corner, which the city parents have nicely fitted out with a mural, a bronze statue of a hitchhiker, and a cherry-red 1950s Ford flatbed in primo condition. Yes, I had my picture taken, but it’s all a tribute to an event which never happened made as a song by musicians who perhaps have never even seen Winslow. No Little Green Men.
Kingman sells itself for maintaining more authentic Route 66 road than any other community, and does a good job of it. The usual souvenir stores obtain, and in the old town area the Power House visitors’ center and Route 66 Museum (and it really was an electrical generation plant) is a very nice stop. Across the road is a little part with a really big Santa Fe steam locomotive and folks selling some nice arts and crafts and some awful Chinese knives. You’ll see lots of beautifully maintained 1950s wheels.
Kingman is the home of Andy Devine, and if you are under sixty you probably wonder what new fusion band that is.
Oatman is a former mining town along the old Route 66 from Kingman to Needles, California. The drive from Kingman is eleven slow miles of I’wonder-if-I’m-going-to-fall-screaming-to-my-death-today terror; from Kingman to Needles isn’t bad at all.
The town was prosperous until 1942 when the federal government whimsically banned mining for gold, collapsing the local economy and impoverishing individuals, families, and companies. Oh, yeah, that helped the war effort. The very narrow main street, about four blocks long, is gauntletted with tourist shops and features the usual middle-aged-guys-shooting-blanks gunfight at noon, but the best part is that the descendants of the miners’ burros wander around town begging for handouts (bring carrots) and doing naughty things in the street.
Clark Gable and Carole Lombard honeymooned in the hotel. Gable often took some quiet-time in Oatman, probably the only place in the world where he didn’t have to be CLARK GABLE in all caps.
The thermometer outside the hotel stood at 120. After Oatman the laptop computer was never again able to send or receive email (maybe the Little Green Men…), but the burros didn’t seem to mind.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Folks’ vacation narratives are almost always boring, so the Gentle Reader may wish to skip this and go on to something more Snooki and Chelsea.
Roswell, New Mexico
Little Green Men – these aliens come from China. Whoever started the rumors about flying bread-and-butter plates was a marketing mad-man genius, and Roswell’s main runway is a merry we-have-come-in-peace-gauntlet of shops selling toys space ships and tees featuring LGM, and storefront, oh, museums advertising The Truth about UFOs. It’s all good fun. But why are there never any Little Green Women?
Lincoln, New Mexico
All of the little town of Lincoln is a historic site and features many buildings, including Tunstall’s Store, Murphy’s Store (which was also a courthouse, jail, and Masonic Lodge), and San Juan Bautista Church. A ten-dollar ticket gets you into the public buildings and sites, but of course walking around a looking is free. The one-day ticket is also good for other New Mexico State Monuments at Jemez, Coronado, Bosque Redondo, Fort Sumner, Fort Selden, and the El Camino Real International Heritage Center.
The current governor of New Mexico, angling for re-election, is considering pardoning that lethal little freak Billy the Kid because long-ago territorial governor Lew Wallace, who wrote Ben-Hur, had agreed to give the Kid a pardon for ratting out his homies. However, B the K continued to murder people and steal their stuff, so any pardon would have been irrelevant since the nasty little dude well deserved The Long Drop for his post-state’s-evidence murders.
As for Tunstall, Murphy, and McSween, they were turf warriors toting fire arms instead of cell ‘phones, and hiring hit-men to murder each other. The Lincoln County War was a gang squabble over government contracts and monopolies, and all the participants were killed or died broke and broken. The one fellow who came out of it looking pretty good was Sheriff Pat Garrett, a stand-up man who put an end to a pathological weirdo. History has been unfair to him.
Magdalena, New Mexico
Magdalena was a large mining and cowtown on the Santa Fe, which long ago pulled up tracks and trucked out of town. The old depot remains as a little museum and library. My father was in the CCC in nearby Horse Springs, which no longer exists as even a name on the map. Also nearby is the VLA – Very Large Array – of very large parabolic receivers trying to receive messages from Captain Kirk or from Little Green Men.
Springerville, Arizona – the morning temperature was 64 degrees.
Fort Apache is a curious place, situated in the middle of the White Mountain community. The first Apache I saw was hitchhiking absent-mindedly while talking on his cell ‘phone and listening to his ear-bud-box-noise-thingie. He wore knee pants and a ball cap.
The Army left Fort Apache in 1922, and the fort is now home to the Theodore Roosevelt School in some handsome buildings. Some of the military buildings, especially the officers’ quarters, are still in use, and there is a nice little visitors’ center / museum headed by a University of Texas graduate. Inside there is the now almost-requisite faux First Nations dwelling reconstruction and a video of a medicine man relating a creation story, but the overlaid drum and flute seemed stagey and the Harley-Davidson cap – well, I dunno.
A few miles away up a dirt track and past the beer cans the red-rock ruins and re-ruins of an ancient pueblo called Kinishba repose silently on a mesa. A 1930s attempt at reconstruction, imaginative at best, is collapsing back into the ages, but the high walls and wreckage and isolation give one pause. Who will be meditating upon our ruined buildings a thousand years from now?
Winslow – there not much to see here except rail lines and blowing dust and small-town streets and that famous corner, which the city parents have nicely fitted out with a mural, a bronze statue of a hitchhiker, and a cherry-red 1950s Ford flatbed in primo condition. Yes, I had my picture taken, but it’s all a tribute to an event which never happened made as a song by musicians who perhaps have never even seen Winslow. No Little Green Men.
Kingman sells itself for maintaining more authentic Route 66 road than any other community, and does a good job of it. The usual souvenir stores obtain, and in the old town area the Power House visitors’ center and Route 66 Museum (and it really was an electrical generation plant) is a very nice stop. Across the road is a little part with a really big Santa Fe steam locomotive and folks selling some nice arts and crafts and some awful Chinese knives. You’ll see lots of beautifully maintained 1950s wheels.
Kingman is the home of Andy Devine, and if you are under sixty you probably wonder what new fusion band that is.
Oatman is a former mining town along the old Route 66 from Kingman to Needles, California. The drive from Kingman is eleven slow miles of I’wonder-if-I’m-going-to-fall-screaming-to-my-death-today terror; from Kingman to Needles isn’t bad at all.
The town was prosperous until 1942 when the federal government whimsically banned mining for gold, collapsing the local economy and impoverishing individuals, families, and companies. Oh, yeah, that helped the war effort. The very narrow main street, about four blocks long, is gauntletted with tourist shops and features the usual middle-aged-guys-shooting-blanks gunfight at noon, but the best part is that the descendants of the miners’ burros wander around town begging for handouts (bring carrots) and doing naughty things in the street.
Clark Gable and Carole Lombard honeymooned in the hotel. Gable often took some quiet-time in Oatman, probably the only place in the world where he didn’t have to be CLARK GABLE in all caps.
The thermometer outside the hotel stood at 120. After Oatman the laptop computer was never again able to send or receive email (maybe the Little Green Men…), but the burros didn’t seem to mind.
-30-
Thursday, July 29, 2010
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