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DawsonOpinion
WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 2019
This is a page of opinion — ours, yours and
others. Signed columns and cartoons are the
opinions of the writers and artists, and they
may not reflect our views.
Political wingnuts
having problems
distinguishing
friends from enemies
Politics keeps getting weirder by the day.
That must be frustrating to the wingnuts on
both extremes of the political spectrum who
think a middle ground doesn’t exist.
Witness Gov. Brian Kemp. He pushes
through the Heartbeat Bill, banishing abortions
after six weeks which thrills conservatives and
throws the pro-choice crowd into a frenzy. Then
he sets about making his appointments to gov
ernment agencies.
The governor appoints the first Hispanic to
serve as a constitutional officer and the first
black (and
female) as Cobb
County’s district
attorney. Of the
eight Superior
Court judges
Kemp has select
ed, five are
women and three
are black. Roughly 80 appointments he has
made since taking office are female and about a
fourth of those are minorities. At least three —
maybe more — are LGBTQ.
Even Democrats begrudgingly praise the
governor for his appointments thus far. I am
sure they will hyperventilate if he appoints a
white guy to anything.
While some conservatives scratch their heads
at Gov. Kemp appointing females, blacks,
Hispanics and gays to prominent roles in state
government, Weenie World has its own issues.
The bunch of wannabes running for the
Democratic nomination for president thought
they had found the perfect issue to rein in front
runner and former vice president, Joe Biden.
Biden says that as a senator he had worked well
with known segregationists like Sen. James
Eastland of Mississippi and Georgia’s Herman
Talmadge.
Just as the wannabes began their collective
wail of condemnation at Biden’s comments, up
steps Georgia Congressman John Lewis in his
defense. Whoops!
Lewis, whose leadership role in the civil
rights struggles of the ’60s is beyond question,
said, “During the height of the civil rights
movement, we worked with people and got to
know people that were members of the Klan,
people who opposed us, even people who beat
us, arrested us and jailed us. We never gave up
on our fellow human beings, and I will not give
up on any human being.”
A word about Sen. James Eastland, of
Mississippi. When I showed up in Washington
in the late ’70s as director of public affairs for
AT&T, I thought I was political expert. In fact, I
was a neophyte. I learned quickly that politics
— and politicians — do make strange bedfel
lows.
Mr. Eastland was one of the most powerful
and respected members of the U.S. Senate. He
was a go-to source for new senators of both par
ties on how that body worked and the arcane
ways in which it did.
In the evenings, the senator and a group of his
colleagues would gather in his hideaway office
in the bowels of the Senate for adult libations
and conversations. One of the senators he took
under his wing during that time was a promi
nent young liberal from the Northeast who con
sidered Eastland a mentor. I will leave it to you
to figure out the rest.
In the meantime, Junior E. Lee, the general
manager of the Yarbrough Worldwide Media
and Pest Control Company, located in Greater
Garfield, Georgia, and a pest control profes
sional, recently pondered in this space what
would be the role of candidate Pete Buttigieg’s
male partner should Buttigieg get himself elect
ed president. Would he be first husband? A fair
question, Junior thought, but one that engen
dered the predictable spate of sputtering. Junior
doesn’t handle sputtering well. Most pest con
trol professionals don’t.
Junior suggested his critics go waggle their
finger at the Rev. Rodric Reid, a black pastor in
Buttigieg’s home state of Indiana, who told the
Indianapolis Star that the South Bend mayor’s
marriage to another man “is going to be an
obstacle. That is really still a touchy subject,
specifically and especially in the African
American church.”
In fact, it was due in part to the strong objec
tions of the African churches that a recent effort
to approve gay ministers and gay marriages in
the Methodist Church failed.
So, here we have a conservative Republican
governor making a lot of non-traditional
appointments, a civil rights icon defending the
actions of a presidential candidate who worked
with segregationists and a black minister show
ing his political incorrectness by publicly ques
tioning the lifestyle of a gay candidate for presi
dent.
If you are a political wingnut, it seems to be
getting harder and harder to distinguish your
friends from your enemies these days. I men
tioned that fact to Junior E. Lee, who was
spraying for ticks at Arvel Ridley’s bam. He just
grunted. I have a feeling Junior doesn’t care
much for political wingnuts. I can’t say that I
blame him.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough atdick@dickyar-
brough.com; at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, GA
31139; online at dickyarbrough.com or on
Facebook at www.facebook.com/dickyarb.
DICKYARBROUGH
Columnist
"Our forefathers sure were smart to sign
the Declaration of Independence on a holiday!"
It ain’t hoarding if it’s worth something
I come from a long line of
hoarders.
It is in our DNA, our heri
tage, a family legacy of sorts.
Junk is passed down from
one generation to another.
And boy howdy, there’s
been some junk.
Granny, in particular, held
onto everything she ever got.
Fabric scraps, old pieces of
furniture, newspaper articles,
empty jars and every single
button that she could find.
All of it littered every spare
square inch of space in
Granny’s home.
It was a by product of the
Depression, holding on to
everything in case you one
day needed it. Granny rea
soned if she didn’t need it,
someone else might.
“Why do you wash out
these mayonnaise jars?” I
asked her once. “Why don’t
you just throw them away?”
“I can use 'em,” was her
reply.
She did. too. The empty
jars held her buttons and other
small items that otherwise
would get lost in a drawer or
on a shelf.
She never refused anything
given to her. either. Someone
offered her two huge boxes of
fabric once, all end pieces
from different bolts and she
eagerly accepted it.
“None of that is the same or
enough to do anything with.”
I commented as I looked
through it, hoping for a pretty
pattern for some curtains.
“It will do just fine,” she
said.
SUDIE CROUCH
Columnist
And it did, with Granny
making some lovely patch-
work quilts and cushions out
of it.
She still had some of the
fabric stashed back when she
passed away.
“I don’t think your grand
mother threw away anything,”
Mama said the other day.
“And I think your uncle is just
as bad.”
She was probably right on
both counts. Although. I will
have to say. my uncle has
started weeding out his stuff.
Little by little, he has been
giving some things to Cole
that he thinks his great-neph
ew will either want or that
will be worth something one
day.
His old guitars, I under
stand; they are cool and even
if they may not work any
more, they will still be nice to
have.
Old issues of US and
People magazine. I am not so
sure about.
“That one’s got Princess
Diana on the front,” he said.
“It may be worth something
one day.”
I doubted it - one of the
cats had chewed off all the
corners - but didn’t say a
word.
“He’s just like Mama in
that regard,” Mama said. “He
thinks all this junk is going to
be valuable one day. It’s not.
We need to throw probably
half of it away. Maybe all of
it.”
I agreed. A lot of it proba
bly did need to be thrown
away.
“You know when we
moved here 14 years ago,
Granny didn’t throw the first
thing away,” Mama contin
ued. “She could have got rid
of a ton of junk then but nope;
she was scared to part with
anything. It is all junk.”
Mama was probably fussing
because she has been cleaning
up around the same junk for
over 40 years. It was a pro
cess she was increasingly
frustrated with.
“Maybe not all of it is
junk,” Mama conceded, feel
ing guilty. “I shouldn’t say
that. We still have her old
sewing machine. She made
lots of things on that. And I
think it still works.”
Granny didn’t sew her
quilts on the machine; those
were sewn by hand. But she
used her machine for things
like curtains, aprons, and
hemming up a pair of pants.
“I bet the first piece of fur
niture she ever bought is still
here somewhere,” Mama
mused.
“It probably is,” I agreed.
Mama chuckled. “I bet it
isn’t worth even what she
paid for it then. Granny
loathed antiques, as you
know; yet, she would keep
everything for 100 years
thinking one day it would be
worth something.”
That was Granny’s reason
for hoarding everything - or
so she claimed.
“Maybe it’s not that she
thought it would be worth
something one day, but maybe
it meant a lot to her when she
got it?” I questioned.
Granny was never extrava
gant with her money; she
never had enough to be. She
was quite frugal and some
how managed to stretch out
her and Pop’s money to pay
everything and then save a lit
tle. When the old gal did
scrimp and save to get some
thing, she was quite proud
and took care of it.
Maybe that’s why she saved
it. It had meant a lot to her to
- small sacrifices, pinching
pennies, and getting the most
use out of everything so she
could those little extras.
To her, it was something
special, even if it was not that
big of a deal to someone else.
We had always joked Granny
thought her stuff was worth
something just because it was
hers.
Maybe it was. Maybe it was
worth the world to her and
now, that made it valuable to
me.r.
Sudie Crouch is an award
winning humor columnist and
author of the recently e-pub-
lished novel, "The Dahlman
Files: A Tony Dahlman
Paranormal Mystery."
