Burning Down The House

Burning Down The House

    It seems that some school districts in Missouri have made the decision to train and allow teachers to carry concealed weapons in classrooms. Sandy Hook was a benchmark in that the ages of the victims  were so horrific. Hopped up teens shooting other teens up in Colorado is one thing, but attacking Shirley Temple with an AR-15 is a whole other spectrum of violence. To be honest with you that even rattled me, and I’m about as cold blooded as they come. To this day I simply cannot get my mind around a little girl taking a bullet like that. 

    Way back when there was a little red school house in Killeen. It’s still there, as a matter of fact, but it’s city hall now, anyway I digress. You can still see in the stone above opposing doors on each side of the building the word, “Girls” on one side, and “Boys” on the other.  That’s right. Girls and boys had to walk in through different doors no matter where their classrooms were. The school sat on a rise so everywhere in town it could be seen, ‘cause that was the school house. The measure of a good car was if it could back up Avenue D to the school without dying. There was a principle, and teachers, and a couple old ladies who cooked whatever in the lunch room, which was really not needed because most of the kids brought lunch with them. 

    There was never any violence in the school. And brothers and sisters this is old time Texas. Guns were EVERYWHERE! Most boys carried a pocket knife. That was just common sense. A boy needed a pocket knife. A Barlow! But, you see, people were a little bit more sane back then. If you had a weird kid like Adam Lanza the whole town knew about it. We had one when I was in school, Johnny.  Johnny was in special ed, Johnny liked to look at little girls, Johnny was just plain weird! Now I know all you liberals out there are already down on me for what I just said, but let me add. Nobody beat Johnny up. We just knew him for what he was. He couldn’t help it, and we knew that. But nobody let Johnny take a seven year old girl fishing down on Nolan creek either. We knew Johnny for what he was. 

    When I was in high school we had a group of boys in the “FFA,” Future Farmers of America. They wore these little black cowboy hats. They ran cows in a corral, they wore boots and they ALL had guns in their pick up trucks, every last ONE of them. I want you to get an image in your mind here. It’s 1968, and Adam Lanza marches across the parking lot of the Killeen High School with a rifle in his hand and a back pack on. Five or six FFA boys are sitting around their pickups taking a last chew of tobacco and see him about to go into the school, rifle at the ready.  How far do you think Adam would have gotten? Don’t speculate, I KNOW how far he would have gotten. He would have been dead! Right then, do not pass “go,” do not collect two hundred! 

    The fact is nobody ever dreamed of doing anything like that back in ‘68. The world has changed. Respect for authority has been eroded, teachers are no longer viewed as someone to be looked up to, so many rules are in place that it is impossible to  discipline an unruly child even if you wanted to. Paul Simon wrote years ago, “When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school it’s a wonder I can think at all,” and that’s just about where we are today, people. The only think I learned in twelve years of public schooling that served me well down through the years is how to type. We all sat in a row in front of old manual typewriters and Mr. Hartman marched up and down behind us with a yard stick saying, “One, two, three, TYPE,” over and over again, and the reason he had a yard stick was to hit us in the back of the head if we didn’t type! Mr. Hartman was the authority, and if you couldn’t accept that Mr. Patterson was right across the hall in the principle’s office and he had a bigger stick for bigger problems. OH HORROR! All the liberals are now puking in their little brown bags, I can assure you. 

    Sadly, these days are gone forever. Civilization as we knew it has crumbled. When Mr. and Mrs. America look over their fence in the morning they see the forests falling. Time was they could see a dust cloud in the distance, but it didn’t matter much because that was “over there,” in New York, or LA, or Ohio, places like that. Well, it’s right next door now. Respect for order has come to such a low state that you can’t teach kids to type anymore. You can’t even demand they sit in their seat, and if you try Adam Lanza with come back from the dead and straighten you out! 

    That smoke Mr. and Mrs. America saw was the nation on fire. We are burning down the house. The rules have changed. Back when I was in school all Miss (that’s right MISS) Hornbuckle had to do was LOOK at us and we sat and kept our mouths SHUT. And Miss Hornbuckle was a skinny, dried up old maid Texas school ma’arm! But she had authority because the society she lived in GAVE her that authority. It is right that teachers should have guns in the classroom, no! Is it necessary, YES! 

    America is falling apart. Ask yourself, what do they do when they decide to blow up a building to build something else? Well, first they move all the furniture out.  All the valuables. So when they bring the building down it’s just a shell. Now just why are American corporations scampering overseas? Why are a lot of them moving to Texas. It’s because someone has made the decision to burn down America’s house and they’re moving all the furniture first.  Then, open the borders and let the demolition crew in. It’s as simple as that! 

    If you are sixty or so you remember the schools I described here.  The kids these days don’t have that. All they have is Adam Lanza, and a society so hypocritical it is beyond belief. But this is the new “normal,” our kids have to accept, so when a teacher has a gun under her sweater, to them, that’s just one more log on the fire, and they accept it. In all the descriptions I’ve given you in this article did I ever tell you a teacher, or principle carried a gun? They didn’t because they didn’t have to! Society has changed. Now they HAVE to. 

    The entire concept of public school is a farce. Home schooling is becoming the fashion and not because it is sub standard, because it WORKS! These standardized tests, rules and regulations, and now guns are all by products of an idea that never worked in the first place. It has grown out of control and if there is any justice in the world that justice is that the monster that the educators have created is turning on THEM now! And the kids are hip to it.  Why get an education? You can’t get a job anyway. You can’t go to a doctor. You’re not safe in your home anymore. Why worry about it, and why worry about that teacher who is the product of this whole sick scenerio, and is telling you that this is all kosher and we just need more of it. Well, now she has to have a gun to get to work! Are the lambs still screaming, Clairese?

    I was blessed with a bunch of teachers who had their cowboy hats on straight. We were told that most of us would not go to college. We accepted that. We went to work. Even Johnny went to work. This will all run its course. The pendullum swings to and fro. Public education as gotten as insane as it possible could, and now we’re putting guns in the class rooms. Eventually the yardsticks may come back. America will burn down, of course. That’s a given. As I’ve told you TEXAS will NOT burn down. To my more liberal friends out there I say we may look redneck. We may talk funny, and you may not agree with our ways, but our ways WORK! I wish it were not that way. I wish we all had jobs.  I wish Dr. Fowler still had his office back downtown and a ten dollar bill would always get you seen. I wish rain were beer, but it’s not, and it will never be again in the America YOU helped create.  Do I think we need guns in school? Again I say, “Yes!” Do I miss Mr. Hartman. . . YES! I’m still here, Mr. Hartman. One, two, three, TYPE!