Okay, Why A Paladin?
When one lives on what is essentially the frozen tundra, surrounded all around by mounds of snow, there’s not much impetus to venture outside where sub-freezing temperatures reduce the human anatomy into acquiescent numbification. So, I spend a lot of time in front of the televiewscreen. Since weaning myself off the massteria* (fear and loathing heaped upon our psyches disguised as “news” by the 24-hour non-news newschannels), I’ve found hours and hours of fun stuff to watch.
When one lives on what is essentially the frozen tundra, surrounded all around by mounds of snow, there’s not much impetus to venture outside where sub-freezing temperatures reduce the human anatomy into acquiescent numbification.
So, I spend a lot of time in front of the televiewscreen. Since weaning myself off the massteria* (fear and loathing heaped upon our psyches disguised as “news” by the 24-hour non-news newschannels), I’ve found hours and hours of fun stuff to watch.
For instance, on HGTV, there’s “Holmes on Homes,” okay, where a Toronto-based ubercontractor brings his expertise around to put right disastrous aftermaths after charlatan contractors have wreaked havoc on good Canadians’ houses, eh. Mike Holmes makes Bob Vila look like nothing more than a shill for Sears… oh, right, he is.
HGTV also offers several “house flipping” shows, which detail the travails of money-grubbing Americans – possessed of far too much disposable cash and a scarcity of real ambition — who attempt to achieve big payoffs, with minimal time and effort, as they are screwed by money-grubbing contractors – whose goals are also big payoffs with minimal time and effort.
As the houses, typically refurbished way beyond original budgets, remain unsold for months on end, these series serve as video testimony to explain one of the root causes behind the banking meltdown.
Over on BBC America, for several hours each day one can learn the value of antiquities and collectibles (“Cash in the Attic”; “Antiques Roadshow”), or pick up housecleaning tips from Kim Woodburn and Aggie MacKenzie as they scour their way through the nastiest homes across Great Britain on “How Clean Is Your House?”
Then, there are the histrionics and hysteria of chef extraordinaire Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares,” replete with dialogue so blunt it probably keeps an entire team of censors employed full time.
Science and true-life reality series make for interesting time-fillers that provide knowledge as well as entertainment.
Up and down the channel selector there are any number of movies and television series reruns, some old (“Gene Autry”) and others quite recent (“Criminal Minds”), some great (“All in the Family”) and others putrid (“Three’s Company”). What was once a vast wasteland has become a veritable smorgasbord of intellectual victuals.
Too bad so many people skip the fun or thought-provoking fare and keep their tuners locked down on FOXAnythingButNews all day, every day.
Lately, I’ve been revisiting an old friend from San Francisco, one Mr. Paladin (“Have Gun-Will Travel”). Whether that was his first name or last name, no one really knew; nevertheless, he was one exceptionally well-rounded guy with a true sense of what’s properly just, not to mention how to live well.
It doesn’t hurt that he is lightning fast on the draw, with an aim that would have put Annie Oakley to shame.
Most of the adventures Paladin (Richard Boone) involve aiding the downtrodden, or forging a solution by getting people to look inside themselves and act with civility toward one another. He uses his gun only after all erstwhile tactful avenues have been explored, and an adversary forces his hand.
For hiring his talents, whether to right an injustice or stop a festering range war, Paladin is paid quite handsomely; his regular fee is $2,000.00.
Usually concerned with the human condition, “HGWT” boasted a cornucopia of television’s more erudite writers, including Gene Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon, who went on to fame as creator and producer/writer (respectively) of “Star Trek.” Before the end credits roll, the savvy viewer can literally taste either man’s deft wordplay, and recognize the germination of science fiction’s greatest manifestation.
One episode of “HGWT” in particular struck me as uncannily contemporary:
While passing through a town after completing an assignment up the road apiece, our intrepid hero discovered that parents have been frightened into keeping their children away from the local school. Of 18 students, only four still attended classes.
The reason the children were being kept at home was because the biggest rancher (Coley) had decided he didn’t like certain aspects of the curriculum; he had issued the schoolmarm an ultimatum to leave town or he’d subject her to physical harm and burn down the schoolhouse.
Being the mid-1870s, Civil War wounds, physical as well as emotional, remained open and sore for many folks.
A former Confederate officer, Coley took offense that the teacher described Quantrill’s Raiders as thieves and murderers who used the war as an excuse to terrorize innocent folks. It didn’t matter that she had also painted Union Gen. Sherman’s slash-and-burn campaign as an outrage, and described war itself as horrific.
Despite apparently having neither a wife nor children, Coley was determined to eliminate any inconvenient truth, and force his own personal historical “facts” down the throats of impressionable youngsters. Having enough money to assemble his own mishmash of gunslingers and reprobates, he was able to intimidate most of the community in the manner of his hero, William Clarke Quantrill.
While his private army ganged up on Paladin, outnumbered five-to-one, Coley assaulted the schoolmarm and a young girl. He was finally brought to his knees by the least likely of people – the girl’s father (a storekeeper), and one boy’s father and brothers. The latter were scratch farmers, proud Confederate soldiers who had suffered various disabilities in battles against the North.
It’s extremely disappointing to be an American in the 21st Century, to know that this type of insidious mindset was recognized as problematic – and portrayed in a teleplay — as long ago as 1958, yet, we continue to be bullied by self-righteous, unthinking clods, not necessarily parents, who would dismiss truth in lieu of ramming conjecture down the throats of our youth.
Creationism.
Intelligent design.
“Global warming is a hoax.”
Teabaggers.
The negro president ain’t even an American citizen – he’s a socialist Nazi Muslim.
Fanatical religious fundamentalists.
Five Right-wing activist justices controlling every decision that emanates from the Supreme Court.
Whatever happened to that “knight without armor in a savage land?”
Severe winters aside, Canada keeps looking more and more like paradise to me.
Shalom.
For anyone who was paying attention… Last week I referred to a double play involving a right fielder, shortstop and catcher as 7-6-2. Well, it’s mid-Winter and I’m in need of my own Spring Training. I should have described it as 9-6-2. Oops. Pitchers and catchers report this week!
*Coined in the song “Trouble,” from Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man”
(Jerry Tenuto is an erstwhile Philosopher and sometime Educator. A veteran with seven years of service in the U.S. Army, he holds a BS and MA in Communications from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Depending upon your taste in political stew, you can either blame or thank Jerry for his weekly “Out Of The Blue” feature in The Lone Star Iconoclast. Visit his blog Blue State View at illinoiscentral.blogspot.com)
Spanish Flu Takes Terrible Toll On Texas
Just when Texans dared to think the Spanish Flu had finally run its course, on Feb. 4, 1920 the State Health Department reported 2,514 new cases in the past 24 hours. The incredibly deadly strain of influenza that resulted in the Great Pandemic or worldwide epidemic at the end of the First World War was called the Spanish Flu because the outbreak that killed eight million in that country in May 1918 received the most media coverage. As a noncombatant, Spain had no wartime censorship. Interestingly enough, the Spaniards themselves named the scourge “the French Flu.”
Just when Texans dared to think the Spanish Flu had finally run its course, on Feb. 4, 1920 the State Health Department reported 2,514 new cases in the past 24 hours.
The incredibly deadly strain of influenza that resulted in the Great Pandemic or worldwide epidemic at the end of the First World War was called the Spanish Flu because the outbreak that killed eight million in that country in May 1918 received the most media coverage. As a noncombatant, Spain had no wartime censorship. Interestingly enough, the Spaniards themselves named the scourge “the French Flu.”
The Great Pandemic was genuinely global in scope. The only place on the planet that escaped the calamity was a small island deep in the Amazon jungle. No one really knows how many lives were lost, but estimates of the worldwide death toll ranged from 40 to 100 million making the twentieth-century pandemic the deadliest in human history.
The Spanish Flu struck healthy individuals, usually the young rather than the old, without warning. In a matter of hours, victims were too weak to walk and had to take to bed. Of those that died, the end often came the very next day, and victims rarely lingered longer than three days after infection.
The symptoms were ghastly. As the lungs failed, victims turned black or blue from lack of oxygen and bled from the nose, ears and eyes. And, as one historian wrote, “Patients would writhe from agonizing pain in their joints.”
Although victims were advised to send for a doctor as soon as they came down with Spanish Flu, there was little a physician could do when he arrived. Penicillin would not be discovered until 1928, it was 1943 before an influenza vaccine was available.
The first documented case in the United States occurred on March 11, 1918 at Fort Riley, Kansas, when army cook showed up at sick call with a temperature of 103. Forty-eight hours later, 522 soldiers were flat on their backs.
Later that summer, a more virulent form of the Spanish Flu, undoubtedly carried by returning doughboys, hit Boston. The sickness spread like wildfire through the crowded cities on the East Coast, killing 800 a day in New York City, before heading west.
In the absence of a scientific explanation for the cause and with no cure, hysteria and ignorance filled the void. One popular theory was that the Spanish Flu was part of a germ-warfare attack by the Germans, while others blamed cat hair and coal dust. The long list of useless home remedies included everything from onions and garlic to goose grease.
The Surgeon General’s antidote for such nonsense was four basic precautions: 1) “Keep out of crowds.” 2) “Cover up each cough and sneeze.” 3) “Do not spit on the floor or sidewalk.” 4) “Shun the common drinking cup and the roller towel in public places.”
Texans could only wait and hope for the best. Maybe by some sort of miracle the Spanish Flu would skip the Lone Star State. It didn’t.
The suspense ended on Sept. 23, 1918 with the first confirmed sightings of the sickness in Williamson, Kaufman and Bosque counties. Eleven days later, 35 counties were under siege, and a week after that the number had grown to 77.
Towns throughout Texas moved quickly to protect the public over the objections of local merchants and skeptics, who pooh-poohed the danger. On Oct. 9 alone the following communities closed schools, theaters and other gathering places: Lewisville, Plano, Marshall, McKinney, Bonham, Wills Point, Clarksville, Cleburne, Temple, Wichita Falls, Waxahachie, Houston and Corsicana.
By late October, the Spanish Flu had reached the Panhandle, where the president of Wayland Baptist College in Plainview died on the 28th, and El Paso, where the number of cases neared 5,000 by the 23rd. On the 29th, the State Health Department reported 106,978 cases and 2,181 deaths and that was just in the cities.
Galveston’s response to the worst public health crisis since the yellow fever epidemics of the 1800’s was typical of most towns. City officials and the daily newspaper saw panic as the greatest enemy and in their efforts to keep everybody calm often painted too rosy a picture of a truly grave situation.
Any decline in the daily death toll was hailed by politicians and The Daily News as a sign that the worst was over. Carried away by encouraging numbers in early November, the health commissioner lifted the ban on public places and reopened the schools.
But this unfounded optimism ignored the fact that the Spanish Flu came in waves and would hang on in Texas well into 1920. When the disease returned with a vengeance killing 65 Galvestonians between Nov. 15 and Dec. 15, the commissioner had to shut the city down again.
The final figures for the United States, nothing more than educated guesses, had one out of every four Americans stricken by the Spanish Flu and at least half a million fatalities in a population of 105 million. As for the four and half million Texans, 30 to 40 percent contracted the disease and five to ten percent of the afflicted perished. That’s 70,000 dead on the low side and upwards of 175,000.
“Secession & Civil War” – latest “Best of This Week in Texas History” collection available for $10.95 plus $3.25 postage and handling from Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549 or order on-line at twith.com.
