Friday, March 13, 2015
Refining Brotherhood
When the candidate professed that "The Supreme Triumph
in Life is knowing one's place in it!" Val paid no attention.
He was an old man running against an old woman.
Well, the old man won, and what the newspapers now called
the New Royalists were ecstatic.
"Good luck with all of that Class Baloney! Val told Mahan.
Let's see them try to enforce that crip-crap in a nation
with a tradition of equality--well, not always, but you know
what I mean.”
Well, they knew what they meant also. But Val and Gretchen and
the gang that hung around Kippy’s Kool Kup ignored these old
ones the same way they would have the old ones who lost.
The newest couple watching the football games there was Gritz
and Nelly-Belly. She being pregnant. Gritz worked in the foundry
and had a mouth you couldn't believe! His wife matched it! Hal often got them to cool it, especially when families with young children dropped in for a snack.
But Gretchen became infatuated with them since their friends were
so Steady-Eddie boring. And life itself had reached such a stuffy,
boring level!
“All our friends are so CAREFUL all the time! Those two make
me laugh!”
So, she started inviting them to family events--where they mostly behaved.
But, enough slipped up that his Uncle Ducks noted them.
One thing and another, he asked them to cut the vulgar couple loose. “They'd be much happier with their own kind.” etc.
Hal wouldn't do it, and, of course, Gretchen backed him up.
The next request came from up higher--Ducks being just
an alderman. And this time he had to insist. The policy had
come down from Washington.
Her girlfriends quickly got to her, too, and so she didn't
object anymore.
It fell to Val to tell them, and he did. Both cried.
It was so embarrassing!
Val and Gretchen still see them at the Kool Kup, and they're often
laughing with a rougher bunch, so it may be true we're happiest
staying in our place.
Labels: Conservative, football, keeping your place, knowing your place, peer pressure, social stratification
