Our adventure into Disney World, for our second annual Grit family DW vacation, is completed. We’re all home safely, yet exhausted. Having fun is hard work. Especially when the Florida environment was 90+ degrees and 90+ percent humidity.

We arrived in Florida and DW late Saturday afternoon. The evening was pleasant.

Sunday started out hot and humid, and then poured down rain around noon. We had just ridden Kali River Rapids (in Animal Kingdom) — the warning signs say, “You will get wet. You may get soaked.” — so we were all already in various stages of watered. Cowgrit and we boys got in line for another run down the rapids when the storm clouds rolled in. The wait line is covered/inside, so we decided to just stay in the line. If the rain stops before we get to the ride, great; if it continues when we get to the ride, so what — we’re gonna get wet anyway.

We boarded the ride in a heavy downpour, so we were pretty much soaked to the skin by the time the first ride splash hit anyone. When we got off the river, we were all thoroughly and completely wet from rain and river. We had wisely stuffed our cell phones into plastic bags before the ride, but my wallet and our cash was dripping wet.

Although the rain slacked up a little while later, we all decided to go ahead and call the park done. It was time for Calfgrit4’s nap anyway, and we really needed to get out of our wet clothes. Our shoes squished when we walked, our clothes were heavy with water, and we were literally dripping as we walked. We were not the only ones in such a condition — easily half the other park visitors were equally drenched. Strangers were laughing at each other’s appearance. A prepared few families were covered in rain ponchos, but that’s not exciting.

That night, we checked the Weather Channel for the week’s forecast.

Not what you want to see for your week in Disney World. But as it turned out, that Sunday rain, while we were at Animal Kingdom, was the only rain to fall on us. The temp was a few degrees hotter, and the humidity was so high you nearly had to swim down the street. But we didn’t get rained on again.

Something that amazed me in some crowds: Standing there in the heat and humidity, I sweated. Other people around me sweated — you could see the beads of sweat on their foreheads and faces, you could see the wet, dark spots on their shirts. But there was always a person in the crowd who showed no signs of perspiration. A guy in a gray t-shirt with not so much as a spot under his arms. A girl with long, full black hair with not so much as a glisten on her cheek.

What kind of metabolism do these sweatless freaks of nature have that 90° heat and 90% humidity brings no cooling moisture from their pores? FREAKS!

Bullgrit

Hello. I’m sorry, but we’re not in right now. We’re out on vacation, to Disney World. We’ll be gone all week.

Maybe I’ll be updating my Twitter feed with our fun and activities. But maybe not.

See you back next Monday.

Bullgrit

I had an errand to run yesterday during my lunch hour. I hopped in my car and drove out on the beltline. Within 10 minutes, I noticed my gas gauge needle was pointing to E. The little orange light started glowing.

My gas gauge only points to E when I’m on a highway. It never shows my tank as near empty when I’m around home or in any area I’m familiar with. And I swear my needle goes from quarter-tank to E within 2.7 miles. And the warning light comes on .3 miles after that.

I took the next exit off the beltline, onto some road I’ve never been on, and started looking out for a gas station. Apparently, I took the exit that leads completely out of the city, and into the country. After driving several miles down the road with nothing but woods and neighborhoods, I almost expected the pavement to end. But then, looking at my gas gauge and the glowing orange warning light, I’d probably run out of fuel before reaching the end.

That feeling of panic when you know you’re running on fumes and you can’t find a gas station is very aggravating. I hate that feeling. It’s a feeling born not just of fear of getting stranded somewhere, but of knowing that I was incredibly inattentive and stupid.

I even had to sit in a line of cars waiting for a construction crew to finish digging some ditch. When the worker holding the stop sign flipped his pole around to say “Slow,” I about shouted. Eventually, I did manage to find a gas station before my engine started sputtering. I must have driven 10 miles down that unknown road. I think I was in another area code.

At the gas station, standing beside my car while the fuel pumped into my tank, I listened to a woman at the pump next to me rant into her cell phone about some crazy girl friend. She never spoke any full sentences, just fragments and phrases.

“I know!”

“Sho’ nuff!”

“Who she sayin’?”

“I’m tellin’ ya!”

I think she said, “Crazy-ass bitch!” at least a dozen times. I don’t know if the CAB was the person she was talking to or the person she was talking about.

Anyway, I filled up my gas tank. Actually, I stopped at 12 gallons — I didn’t know my car would hold 12 gallons — I think my tank was so empty it might have charged me an overdraft volume.

After my fill up, I drove back to work. It took so much of my time driving out to the boons and back that I just gave up on running my errand and went on back to work.

Bullgrit

I got into a discussion on a message board about how the Confederate flag is inextricably associated with racism in general, and the Ku Klux Klan specifically. In the discussion, I did some little research, and I felt it a shame to waste it on an ephemeral forum topic.

I’ve lived in the South my entire life (42 years). I lived in small towns for a sum total of about 23 years, a university town for about 6 years, and the state capital area for about 13 years. I’ve seen the Confederate flag flown here and there, and its image displayed in many places and worn by many people. But I’ve never met someone whom I knew was a member of any organized racist group, KKK or other.

Now, this is not to say I’ve never met a racist — I’ve known many through the years (and not just white folk). And I can’t say that someone I met or knew wasn’t a closet member of some organization. But I can say, self assured, that the KKK (or similar) was never a major factor in my personal culture.

I never saw anything “KKKish” in my world. I knew about the organization, just as I knew of the FBI and NASA, but the group had no place in my real life. We occasionally (once a decade or so) heard of a news report mentioning something the KKK did. Looking back at the historical record, now, I see there was a “massacre” (5 deaths) in my state back in 1979.

And I find it hard to believe that living through the 70s and 80s in my hometown with its Southern quota of rednecks, that I would completely miss the presence of a truly ubiquitous organization.

In the discussion I mentioned at the beginning of the post, a few people mentioned the KKK being active and “stronger than ever.” And since it is always assumed that the KKK is a Southern “tradition” I had to look into this — surely my lack of experience with the group through the years wasn’t because I wore blinders. Maybe my family especially worked to shield me from any such experience. But even if so, that shielding can only last so long. Eventually, a child grows up and learns the truth about the world.

In the 1920s, there were 4-5 million KKK members.
In the 2000s, there are 5-8 thousand.
Compare this to the US membership in Mensa: 50 thousand.

Hardly “stronger than ever.” Now, this suggests that the KKK has become more boogeymen legend than active real men. With the estimate that two-thirds of KKK members reside in the South, that’s 5,280 members (using 8,000 max-range total) out of a total Southern population of 109,083,752 — that’s 0.00004% (four hundred thousandths of one percent).

Since there are many other racist groups besides just the KKK, let’s multiply the numbers by ten. It’s still a very tiny relative number: at most 80,000 — less than the number of SAG members (139,000), school principals (~130,000), NAACP members (300,000), lawyers (~1.2 million), and NASCAR fans (~75 million).

Back to the original issue: that the Confederate flag got coopted as a racist symbol.

The Confederate flag should be an American historical icon, in the same category as the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag, the cavalry bugle call, and the girly nose art on WWII bombers. But when it was claimed by the KKK as a symbol for them, it became tainted. That’s a damn shame.

But since the KKK seems to have been dying out as a viable cultural force over the past few decades, I got to wondering if they still use the Confederate flag as a symbol. Just because everyone else still identifies that flag with that group doesn’t mean the group still uses it.

So I went to the KKK’s main web site to see what imagery they use there. (I’m not going to link to the site, but I’m sure you could easily find it if you wanted to look for yourself.) What I found surprised me. I was even surprised to be surprised. That site is pretty damn pathetic. It looks like something a teenager designed for a personal geocities web site in the 1990s. My local game store has a better, more professional looking web presence — and it’s just one store with maybe a couple hundred regular customers. You’d think a national bugaboo would have something more sinisterly impressive.

But I did find a Confederate flag at the top of their page. It was part of a collage of images including the American flag, the U.S. Capital building, and Mount Rushmore. So, damn, they do still show the Confederate flag.

But now that the racist organization seems to be dying a quiet and lonely death, how long will it take for the Confederate flag to air out the taint they’ve smeared on it? It would be nice to have it among the mostly-politically-neutral icons of American history. Something a Southern good ol’ boy could paint on top of his orange Dodge Charger as a fun and cool symbol of Southerness without getting branded a racist asshole.

Bullgrit