Set 'em up Joe

Jack Deatherage

They got a vintage Victrola 1951
Full of my favorite records that I grew up on
They got ole Hank and Lefty and there's B24
Set 'em up Joe and play "Walking The Floor"
-Vern Gosdin

(2/2022) ‘Twas a place we called Indian Trails, a mostly log building decorated with deer and turkey mounts, up on the mountain west of Fairfield, out beyond Iron Springs, PA where me and cousins used to venture of a Friday evening. We'd swallow cold beer and attempt to play 8-ball while listening to the old jukebox full of country music records our dads would have enjoyed. As redneck a bar as one could hope to find. I suppose what drew us to the place was it's location, far from the drinking establishments we usually haunted near to Emmitsburg. Rarely did we have to share the bar with anyone else.

The bar owner, Lum, told us that in the '30s and '40s people used to come from Baltimore and DC to dance and drink the nights away. I'd look through the French doors that separated the bar area from the dining room/dance floor and imagine that space packed with gaily dressed city people dining on deer steaks, roasted wild turkey and snapping turtle soup- sipping moonshine while a band played on.

Times had definitely changed. Lum pointed out the splintered wooden doorframe where a bullet- .44 caliber - had lodged when he'd shot at a man trying to rob the place. He regretted not killing the fellow. Reaching under the bar he brought up the big revolver he'd used. Yep, it was that kinda place.

Another evening, me and Lum got to talking about hunting mushrooms. Lum, a lifelong 'shroom hunter who knew a great deal more than I did or do, apologized he didn't have one of his field guides handy to show me the species he regularly collected off the mountain. I "Ah ha"ed and went out to the cousin's truck and come back with a 'shroom guide I happened to have in my camera bag.

Guide on the bar between us, we put our heads together and talked 'shrooms. Where to find them, when their specific seasons were, how to eat them and most importantly- how to identify them.

"These you need to test the spore pattern." Lum pointed to one I wasn't familiar with. "This one you better have a microscope to look at the spore or you might end up sick enough to visit an ER."

Me, foolishly thinking I'm in a "hillbilly" bar asked where he'd find a microscope on that mountain. Lum smiled and reached under the bar. The microscope he placed before me was a better model than any I'd used in high school biology class. Certainly much better than the one I'd had as a kidlet.

I'd like to claim I learned a lesson in assumption that night, but I can't. Still, I'm generally aware that when I'm "assuming" I'm likely making an "ass" of "u" and "me". Mostly me.

Another small event at Indian Trails that wouldn't mean much to most people, but in light of the of the race hustling that keeps turning up in my news feeds it comes to mind. In the '50s, someone back from the Korean War gave Lum a Confederate battle flag that was still hanging near the bar thirty years later.

"There's never been a black man served here since that flag was hung." Lum told a brother in-law of mine. Which was likely true until the night two white boys and a man of color came in and ordered Buds. Lum looked at me and the cousin I was with then served the fellow, but charged him three times what we'd paid. The two white boys angrily poured their beers out on the bar and, cursing Lum, stormed out of the building. The man apologized for his friends, drank his beer and wished the cousin and me a good evening. We raised our bottles in mute saute.

Lum, wiping up the spilt beer remarked, "I think I liked the black guy better than his friends." Giving us a look he added, "I wouldn't have served him if anyone but you two had been here."

I shrugged. "People are people."

Small steps.

While Dad and Mom's generation of our clan didn't hate people of color, they had a definite prejudice toward them. Still, some of my uncles began to bend and give some actual thought as to why they didn't like "black" people. Some of them even began to change how they spoke of people of other races.

Small steps. But steps none the less.

When the offspring's squeeze asked me if I had a problem with my son dating a "darkie" I replied, "I don't care what color you are. But, did you have to be a New Yorker?" (Some prejudices die harder than others.)

When word from the Florida branch of the Deatherage clan reached me that I had a new grand niece I had hopes that she'd been born into a better world than I had. Her dad is the son of Haitian immigrants. If any in our clan had a problem with the newest member of the family being darker skinned than the rest of us they were smart enough to keep it to themselves, at least around me.

Small steps. But steps none the less.

As a teenager, from the mid 1960s to the early 1970s, I sat in front of the idiot box (television) and watched black people riot and burn their neighborhoods in protest of their mistreatment by local and state governments. By the time I was hanging out with some of this place's guys and gals of color- popping tops on cans of beer, swapping stories (some of them true) -I thought the worst of the racist crap was behind us.

Small steps to be sure.

Of late I realize there is a great deal of money to be made race hustling. Why else do news organs shovel coal into the furnace of hatred if not to gain viewers so they can sell advertising? Why do so-called minority community leaders promote race division if not for the money that flows into their coffers? Same questions apply to politicians at all levels of government, administrations of places of supposedly higher education, white Nationalists, Kluxers and White Supremacists. All these creatures have been running a scam on the rest of us for decades! They make a living from promoting hate and fear of other while the rest of us suffer for it.

Sadly, Lum, the jukebox and Indian Trails are long gone. Only a concrete slab remains to remind me of the small events I witnessed there. Too bad the racist hustlers aren't memories as well.

Maybe my ten-year-old grand niece- a smarter, better kid than I ever was -can start making the small steps again? Isn't that what the next generation is supposed to do- build on the foundation the previous generation laid down?

Set 'em up Joe and play "Walking The Floor".