« How did we let it get this bad? | Main | Just got my Diploma today! »

May 17, 2007

I will no longer say an unkind word about Jerry Falwell.

Not merely because he is dead. I wish this had been brought to my attention sooner:
(from Mr. Falwell's autobiography)

There were times that Dad's pranks bordered on cruelty. One of his oil-company workers, a one-legged man he nicknamed "Crip" Smith, complained about everything. Dad and Crip's co-workers got tired of the old man's bellyaching and decided to take revenge. One morning Crip called in sick and Dad volunteered to send by lunch to his grateful but suspicious employee. Dad and his chums caught Crip's old black tomcat, killed it, skinned it, and cooked it in the kitchen of one of Dad's little restaurants. They called it squirrel meat and delivered it to Crip on a linen-covered tray. When Crip returned to work the next morning, Dad and his co-conspirators asked him how he liked his meal. They knew he would complain even about a free home-cooked lunch, and when Crip called it "the toughest squirrel meat" he had ever eaten, they were glad to tell him why.

This enters into Titus Andronicus territory. Yet Falwell's upbringing was so stunted that he saw it only as "bordering on cruelty". I find it impossible to hate such a man. Indeed, I can only thank the gods that I was awoken from my path before it became his...

Posted by Andrew at May 17, 2007 10:33 PM

Comments

It's not quite as bad as it sounds to modern ears.

Falwell grew up in a small rural farming community during the depression. In that environment, very few people would have viewed cats as beloved family members. People kept cats around less as pets and more just because they were useful for pest control. And because they reproduced almost as fast as rabbits, generally cats weren't much valued.

Also, in such a setting it would be common for people to kill and butcher their own meat, including wild and semi-wild game, things like possums and rabbits and, yes, the occasional cat or horse.

And you can see something of the roughness of the times with the fact that it was common to call people names like "Crip" and have it simply accepted.

It's a matter of understanding different cultures and sub-cultures, really. What would be a genuine story of psychotic viciousness today was not that far outside of normal back in the rural south in the 1930s.

Posted by: Dean Esmay [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 18, 2007 02:43 PM

Where did you get the idea that people in the time of the depression did not care for their pets? I don't mean "barn cats". Firstly, the entire duration of the depression was only about 9 years and did not cause a complete change in people's personal morality. More to the point, though, Falwell's father was a wealthy oil baron and businessman. (The quote itself refers to his restaurants). Therefore, the players in question were gainfully employed. Either you have missed all this information, or you for some unknown reason are minimizing the horror of this account. That people may have eaten stray cats, etc., at this time is not the issue here. It is again back to the point that this was a personal pet and having eaten it would cause poor "Crip" much anguish.

Posted by: Carole Seaton [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 20, 2007 03:15 PM