De-Skunkification

So there we were the other morning, me negotiating with Nanners to stay on her end of the couch so I could focus on designing a simple fast Fourier transform (FFT) user interface with a little more spiff than the one that came with an instrument we recently purchased while she argued her right to ear scratching is absolute, taking precedence over all else, when an aroma wafted through the house that elicited memories of a similar morning several years ago. On that particular day, before we busted Nanners out of jail and brought her home with us, The Gang were outside as on this recent morning… except it was much warmer and I’d left the door open so they could come and go as they pleased.

All of a sudden Ms. Sophie came ripping inside, jumped up on the couch beside me, stuck her head on my shoulder, cold nose in the crook of my neck, and had one of those looks on her face… a look that made me imagine her saying “Please make me not stink.” With eyes watering, both from laughing at Ms. Sophie and the skunk fumes slapping my olfactory receptors like they were a boxer’s speed bag, I headed back to collect the ingredients for a de-skunkification tonic I’d found that’s a little better'n ‘mater juice, presuming we’re willing to have a bleached blonde looking dog if it has dark fur, while being thankful for having the foresight to cover all the furniture with at least three layers of cheap blankets.

The SparkMeister’s getting to be an old cowboy now, so he knew better than to sign on for this most recent rodeo. Elvis and Chewbacca appeared to have borne the brunt of the skunk’s defense… and oh mercy, did they stink. Scout, Ranger, and Bitsy, the brand spanky new puppies dumped on the front porch a while back, so young they’d try suckling on my fingers and looking for those hangie down thingies like their mom’s, which didn’t exactly thrill Sparkie and Elvis and Chewbacca much, were probably just collateral damage. They stunk. Chewbacca and Elvis were enough to gag a maggot.

While slathering tonic on the heatherns I reflected back on some incidents that’ve occurred over the years, incidents reminiscent of more recent situations. We can afford to do such things when we live out in the country, 27.2 miles or so from the nearest McD’s, where life runs at a greatly reduced pace than in the city. That’s one of the perks of living in this, the greatest nation ever to grace the face of Plant Terra, these United States of America, isn’t it… being able to live where we want, and earn our own way.

Lawyers have a canon; When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When the law is on your side, argue the law. When you have neither, pound the table and holler.

A corollary to this, for politicians, may rightly be; When the facts are on your side, cite the facts. When the facts are against you, minimize the opponent. If the facts are against you and minimizing fails... play the victim, inject family and religion into the debate while claiming to “take the high road.”

When the latter of these begins the first thought that comes to mind is “Would you like cheese with that whine?”.

Victim-hood… I remember walking to a meeting one day several years ago when my phone rang. Looking at the number it was a hot, I mean really hot, blonde so I figured it might be a good idea to take the call and see what was happening. I mean, like, she might have been calling to accept my standing invitation to dinner or something. I should be so lucky. She was laughing so hard she could hardly speak. “Were you listening to the radio this morning?” She went on to explain Kevin West and Jeff Styles had been carrying on all morning about a RedBankian commissioner having accused me of threatening her the night before, reported it to the newspaper, and they were raving that nobody in their right, or even left, mind could ever believe Roy Burrage would threaten a woman. “I was laughing so hard the way they were carrying on I couldn’t put my makeup on and was almost late for work. Everybody knows what a teddy-bear you are. Apparently Wally and JR kept it up on their Village Idiots show afterward too.” Teddy-bear? Oh, the indignity…

In her zeal to be perceived a victim the lady’s ploy backfired, and she mad me the victim. For months, years even, hot chicks called me “teddy-bear.” Well, there was that little issue with the citizens of Red Bank having to submit to metal detectors when attending public meetings afterward. They were victims too. I suppose that little Red Bank cop, to whom a bad day was described if he ever appeared on a citizen’s doorstep with neither a warrant nor an order from a judge attempting to intimidate someone again, was also a victim. He deserved his dressing down.

Politicians… their perceived power and influence… the great lengths to which they’ll go to keep the riffraff, the great unwashed, the interlopers, out of their perceived domain. Oh, they spout a good line about wanting a “Big Tent” and welcome all comers but in the end, as my favorite TreeHugger is wont to say, they want our money and our votes, then we’re supposed to sit down and shut-up.

Several years ago I was invited to participate in Hamilton County GOP activities. I suspect Bobby later regretted extending the invitation but it was really fun for a few years, especially when that chairlady tried to fire me from an elected position. Anyway, I began attending weekly meetings of, and later joined, the Chattanooga Pachyderm Club… at least that’s the name their bylaws state, more about that below. It didn’t take long to understand, by listening to the prattle every week, that if there was ever to be a true expansion of association, of truly forming that Big Tent everyone talked about, meetings were going to have to be more convenient for working schlubs who couldn’t be away from work for lunch every Monday. Now, for independently wealthy small business owners such as myself (Just kidding Granny! I remember what you always told us about going to the hot place for lying.), executives and government officials who worked in downtown Chattanooga, it wasn’t a big hairy deal to frequent a luncheon meeting. It isn’t so easy for working people, folks with real jobs, and I commented about that from time to time, that an evening meeting might make it easier for others to participate, meet folks of like mind, meet and discuss issues with politicos as well. The idea was always pooh-poohed.

So we scroll forward a few years to 2010. The TEA Party was in full swing both nationally and locally, and noises were again being made about that Big Tent again… and I was still advocating for expanding ChattyPacky with an evening group to facilitate working folks participating in activities not available to them during the day. Again the idea kept getting shot down, so a couple of us went to the ChattyPacky treasurer, who was also a member of the governing board at Packy National, and asked her to bring this idea up before the local board. Her response was to ask why we just didn’t start another Pachyderm Club, and handed over an application form.

So we did.

We contacted Packy National for the requisite paperwork and everything else we could get from them… sample bylaws, recommended startup process, membership requirements, secret oath, handshake instructions and decoder rings. Belay that. Those last three were for the He-Man Woman Hater’s Club.

Half a dozen of us got together to form an organizing committee. One of our recruits’ family owned a restaurant so we had space to spread out and… free food.  Then we formed a steering committee to select interim officers, bylaws, name, a governing board and all the attendant minutiae. These we held at HCGOP headquarters on Saturday mornings. I went to the lady I suspected to enjoy cooking most of the bunch and asked if I should bring doughnuts or something and was told very quickly, and quite bluntly, to let her handle that detail… at which point she went to the other ladies and we had a breakfast feast like none other every meeting with all the cooks trying to out-do one another. I always offered to bring a bag of doughnuts or Hardee’s biscuits and was told not to bother.

Leave it to a single man to schmooze his way out of cooking and into wonderful chow… we're usually forced to take home any leftovers too.

About the time we began holding steering committee meetings, after the November elections that year, someone at ChattyPacky asked Marty, Haynes, not Party, about another Pachyderm club being formed in the area. Party Marty was off doing something and had left his Vice President, Mr. Haynes, in charge in his absence. Mr. Haynes’ response was “Yeah, I’ve heard a rumor about that.”

At that moment I felt a dozen or so pairs of eyeballs glaring at me, no less than seven of which belonged to members of our steering committee. You see, they knew what had transpired up to that point and I guess they expected me to jump up and say something. I looked over at Doc Scott, he looked back with that knowing grin of his, and we both had a big laugh afterward.

All of us knew nothing had been conducted in secret, the HCGOP “elders” had been invited to sit in on our steering committee meetings, that in fact the HCGOP Chairlady at the time sat in on every one of our meetings. They all knew each step we’d taken along the way, and that we hadn’t requested permission of the local party elders to form another Pachyderm club. Shame on us.

They also knew the gentleman, Mr. Haynes, standing less than 25 feet from me at that moment claiming to “have heard a rumor” about another Pachyderm club had been completely briefed, even invited to be a member of the steering committee, when he and I had coffee specifically for that purpose at the Waffle House on Highway 153 near Staples and Lowe’s less than six weeks previously. Our intent, you see, was to be an extension of and not a detriment to the more established ChattyPacky.

They obviously didn’t see it that way.

I also believe that if someone insists upon digging a hole, we should allow them.

Oh my goodness it was a fun time. The Nightside Packy gang was accused of trying to poach members from ChattyPacky. They were accused of trying to be a platform for a particular congressional candidate, to subvert the efforts of ChattyPacky, and other rumor-ish accusations that aren’t worth mentioning further. All to no avail and despite the negativity toward interlopers Dawn Patton, Laura Solyom, Callie LeCompte, Ed LeCompte, Savas Kyriakidis, J. Pat Williams, Tommy Crangle, Rita Lawrence, John Shackleford, Delores Gross Vinson, Laura Vinson, Gregg Juster, Tom Tomisek, and others too numerous to mention organized quite a group… and Nightside Packy chartered as the 3rd largest Pachyderm club in the nation.

And not one of the local Republican establishment ever attempted to avail themselves of the invitations extended.

Now comes Mr. Haynes who, in his most recent campaign ad, states his team “worships” in the county. If it was me, I’d be sticking my nose back in The Book and studying those 10 sentences harder, especially the one that reads “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

I’ve known Mr. Haynes for just about 25 years and until 10 years ago when he decided he needed to become part of the local political establishment, thought highly of him. It’s unfortunate when a person decides membership in a group is more important than integrity and yes, honor. He’s complained about accusations of favoritism concerning, among others, the tax valuation of a golf course, that he lowered one to be more in line with another close by. Why lower one instead of raising the other? And, as always, regular working schlubs are the ones who must pick up the slack… just like we do when those we elect to wield the power bribe businesses with tax abatements to come to a community.

I no longer vote in Hamilton County but have financial interests there, with a few decades of history, so local politics is a concern. Love him or hate him, President Trump’s administration has shown us there is an established bureaucracy more concerned with their own interests than those of their constituents, the ones who pay their salaries… more interested in keeping their nests uncluttered by interlopers, commoners, the great unwashed… by We The Peeps. He’s exposed the stinky, skunkified inner workings of the political machine, every political machine from homeowners' associations all the way up to the Big House hasn't he.

A little peroxide, a box of baking soda, a squirt of baby shampoo to act as a surfactant, maybe some frufru girlie stinkum for Bitsy, and the critters are de-skunkified, at least bearable until they shed their stinky fur. But how do we correct a skunkified political environment? We go to the polls and leave them standing at the curb saying:

Very funny Scotty. Now beam down my clothes!

You know, except for Mom making my chemistry set disappear after I cleared out the house that time... in February... in Michigan... nobody ever discouraged me from learning about algebra and science. If not for algebra I'd never have been able to learn some of those cool things about math and science, much less what a Fourier series is and how to use it for determining bearing wear, balancing tires... or motor armatures... or turbines, setting the reverb on a guitar amplifier, measuring the spectral purity of a radio signal, or any other cool stuff.

But what does a working schlub like me know...


Royce Burrage, Jr.