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July 28, 2002
Bob Geary
Our Dinner
with Fidel Castro
July 27, 2002
Ian Daoust
The New
Mahler, Seattle Style
Gavin Keeney
Zizek
and Lenin
Ralph Nader
Citigroup
Heal Thyself
M. Shahid Alam
American
Presidents (Poem)
Mokhiber / Weissman
Push Back: Women Take
on the Corporate Beasts
July 26, 2002
Jerre Skog
American
Dictatorship:
It Couldn't Happen...Could It?
Philip Farruggio
Lie,
Rob and Steal
Rep. Ron Paul
Monitor
Thy Neighbor
Ron Jacobs
Thinking
About the
Weather (Underground)
Walt Brasch
Ashcroft's War on Bookstores
July 25, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Paul
Krugman's Howl:
Populism, War and
the Melting Economy
Gavin Keeney
Van Morrison: In September
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
War
on Terrorism or
Police State?
July 24, 2002
Gary Leupp
An Islam Primer
July 23, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Battle
for Zuni Salt Lake
Ansar Ahmed
Am I with You, George?
Bill Christison
The
Disastrous Foreign Policies of the US: Oppression Abroad Means
Repression at Home
July 22, 2002
Rick Giombetti
Glaxo Raises White Flag
in Paxil Case
Wayne Madsen
Forbidden
Truth
The Press, Bush, Oil
and the Taliban
July 21. 2002
Francis A. Boyle
The Rogue Elephant
Jennifer Harbury
Why are
the FBI & CIA Targeting Me?
Joan Claybrook
Time
for a Special Prosceutor
for Thomas White
Gloria Bergen
The Struggle
of Workers
in Palestine
Dave Marsh
Mr. Big Stuff:
Alan Lomax, Great White Fraud
James T. Phillips
"I'll
Tell You No Lies"
The Human Rubble of War
July 20, 2002
Gavin Keeney
The Grave
New Urbanism
World Trade Center Burlesque
Jacob Levich
"I
Was Schooled in Hate"
Confessions of a
Summer Camp Terror Tot
Thomas Croft
Augusta,
GA
Growing Up in the Deep South
Alexander Cockburn
The
Market Hogwallow:
Popgun Populism Isn't Enough
July 19, 2002
Abe Bonowitz / SueZann
Bosler
A Discussion
with Jeb Bush on the Death Penalty
Jonathan Power
No Need
for War Against Iraq
Rick Giombetti
Qwest
Death Watch
Kurt Nimmo
Of Mice,
Bullets & Bombs
M. Shahid Alam
Through
Racist Eyes:
Is Eurocentrism Unique?
July 18, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
Business
As Usual
Jerre Skog
I Spy: Now
Let's be Fair,
the USA Ain't East Germany
Ralph Nader
The CEO
Crimewave:
Corporate Socialism
Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
The Rising Tensions
Between Spain and Morocco
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel
and Squawk:
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save the White House?
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The Memphis Blues Again:
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The New Intifada:
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Weekend
Edition
July 28, 2002
Rebel Angel:
a Memoir
Chapter Two
A Blind Mule (and a Box of Medals)
by David Vest
My father, Staff Sargeant Wilburn Vest, a noted
marksman who, down to his last rifle shot at the age of 12 had
killed two rabbits for supper with it, earning himself the nickname
"Codger," somehow survived Omaha Beach and its seventy-five
percent casualty rate on the morning of June 6, 1944.
Three days later, after clambering through
some hedgerows, catching a glimpse of a man he believed to be
Patton, earning a handful of Bronze Stars, getting lost and being
buried under rubble by Allied artillery fire in the chaos, he
was captured and used as a human shield by retreating Germans.
In Paris they put him in a boxcar heading east.
Meanwhile, his younger brother, Connie
Carl, known as "Shack," was fighting his way across
the Pacific, all the way to Japan. At one of the islands his
landing craft was used as a  diversion
in rough seas. He and his fellow decoys, seasick to the last
soldier, had to bail the vomit out of the vessel with their helmets
to keep it from sinking.
My mother, Mildred, was informed that
Wilburn was "missing in action, presumed dead." Desperate
for better news, she called the office of Wilburn's older cousin
John Sparkman, who told her not to give up hope.
Sparkman pulled every string he could
get his hands on for information from the Pentagon. He had known
Wilburn from boyhood and used to go fox hunting at night with
Connie Ester Vest (usually bribing Maudie Vest with bananas,
an exotic treat, to let him go).
At one point Sparkman, Vest & Co.
determined that the fox population of Morgan County had dwindled
to one, so they hunted the same fox every couple of weeks and
let it go. Alas, "new people," unaware of the unwritten
rules, moved into the area and formed their own hunting parties.
"Well, what the hell are we supposed
to hunt if these ignorant bastards kill the last fox?" Sparkman
asked one night. Connie Ester Vest probably just shook his head
in wonder at the stupidity of some people. From then on, "hunting"
consisted of putting themselves between the fox and the new hunters,
and making sure the creature got safely back to its lair. On
one occasion they rode on mules and horses through downtown Hartselle,
"knocking these old yard dogs in the head" to keep
them off the fox. Anyone who slept through the uproar woke to
find gardens trampled, laundry scattered and chickens nervous.
Lady, Jack and Old Wimpy, Connie Ester's
hunting dogs, would of course be sleeping the sleep of the innocent
under a shade tree in the yard if anyone came by to inquire.
Connie E. and sons would be down at the
Flint River, fishing. One day Wilburn accompanied his father
and a townsman down to the river. The fish weren't biting, but
the snakes were. The visitor got bit just above the knee by a
deadly cottonmouth.
Connie Ester Vest cut open the man's
pants, took a quick look at the swelling, and said, "Son,
run up yonder to the house and tell Maudie to give you two chickens."
Wilburn, maybe 7 or 8 years old, ran
to the house wondering why they were fixing to eat with a man
dying rapidly in front of them.
Maudie, understanding immediately, grabbed
two hens and put one under each of his arms and told him to hurry.
By the time Wilburn got back to the river,
the snake-bit man was unconscious. Connie Ester Vest, in one
smooth motion, took one of the chickens, ripped it open, and
placed it over the blackening wound. A few moments later he did
the same with the other chicken.
By the time the doctor arrived, the man
was alert and thankful.
"Do you know what your daddy did?"
said the doctor.
"No, sir, I reckon not," said
Wilburn.
"He saved that man's life. Your
daddy knows a chicken's body temperature is higher than a man's.
It drawed the poison out of his leg and into the chickens."
Apart from the three dogs and some chickens,
the family had only a blind mule, which had evidently memorized
its way around the farm and could be sent up and down the lane
with a load of kindling and find its own way home.
Maudie Vest, with her amazing green thumb,
kept them in vegetables. Hunting and fishing provided most of
the protein in their diet. During the Depression years Maudie
would sometimes take blocks of government oleomargarine, apply
a little coloring, and sell them in Decatur to unsuspecting townspeople
as "good country butter."
What meager wealth of farm-boy smarts
and savvy Wilburn Vest drew upon to keep himself alive in war
time, only he would ever know. He was pistol-whipped and put
before mock firing squads in the Stalag. When he was finally
liberated, he cried when the guard who had given him his crust
of bread every morning was shot. A strapping youth who stood
6'1" tall, he returned from Europe weighing 92 pounds.
Like most men and women who have actually
experienced intense combat, Wilburn Vest never wanted to talk
about it very much. He was proud of his POW medal when the country
finally issued it, and observed that it was not an award for
getting captured but an acknowledgement of "honorable service
while a prisoner of war."
His honorable service involved two escape
attempts. On one of them, he made it into France, where a family
hid him in the barn. The German army found him there and made
him watch while they executed the entire family who had helped
him. He never forgot their kindness and the two or three words
they taught him, like "bread," "water" and
"thank you."
After his discharge, he never owned or
fired another gun or, to my knowledge, killed another animal
of any kind.
The messages he had written in pencil
on Red Cross postcards from the Stalag hadn't reached Mildred.
Unschooled in geography (he had only finished the sixth grade
in the one-room country school), he had addressed them simply
to "Huntsville" without specifying the state. They
sat in Texas, undeliverable, until the war was almost over.
The gaunt soldier who returned from Europe
found a wife who hadn't been sure he was still alive, her still-grieving
parents (who had lost their son to heart failure the month I
was born) and a nearly two-year-old child with whom he had never
"bonded," as they call it nowadays. There is a photograph
of him holding me as though he didn't know quite what to make
of the burden.
In the 1952 election he said, "I
Like Ike, too, but I'm voting for John Sparkman."
THE BLIND MULE
THAT MEMORIZED MORGAN COUNTY
According to my father,
We had this mule one time
and it was blind
but it had Morgan County
memorized.
Well sir,
it knew which way town was
and who you was,
and where to take a load
of kindling wood.
One time it loped up
across the yard
where people stood,
having a picnic lunch
and pitching horseshoes,
and it kindly stopped.
And stood real still.
And Hubert Whitlow set
his ice tea down
and took about two steps
backwards before
he lit out toward the fence
which when ho got there
furnished him a post
to cling to
because that mule caught up,
clamped him on the knee
locked his jaws
and laid down
sideways like a dead
jay bird
except its legs was trembling.
"Godamighty, hep me"
Hubert said.
Directly someone hollered,
"Get an ax."
The mule held on
and Hubert suffered while
they found an ax.
They had to take
the mule's head off,
to get its jaws unhinged
from Hubert's knee.
They made us take the head
and wrap it in a box
and mail it to Montgomery
where they run some tests?
and come to find,
that mule was crazy.
David Vest writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch.
He is a poet and piano-player for the Pacific Northwest's hottest
blues band, The Cannonballs.
He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com
Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.com
Click here
to read I'll Never Get Out of this Band Alive, Chapter One in
David Vest's online memoir Rebel Angel.
Weekend Features
Bob Geary
Our Dinner
with Fidel Castro
Ian Daoust
The New
Mahler, Seattle Style
Gavin Keeney
Zizek
and Lenin
Ralph Nader
Citigroup
Heal Thyself
M. Shahid Alam
American
Presidents (Poem)
Mokhiber / Weissman
Push Back: Women Take
on the Corporate Beasts
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