“The strangers came and tried to teach us their way. They scorned us just for being what we are, but they’d might as well go chasing after moonbeams or light a penny candle from a star.”
Those words from the old Irish ballad always leave me a little sad.
The cries of an oppressed culture powerless against a stronger invader and yet denying this vulnerability in song.
Sort of like whistling in the dark to build up courage against unknown forces against which there is no control.
Our women have lost all housekeeping skills.
We in St. Mary’s County are being overrun by a stronger force from outside. True, they have not battered down our walls and put us to the sword as invaders have been known to do, but just as surely our culture is being eradicated.
Economic opportunists are coming in sporting weekly paychecks that exceed the annual income of our farmers, watermen and tradespeople.
They expect us to bow to their demands, they scorn us just for being what we are but, they don’t have to leave chasing rainbows or lighting penny candles. They have economic clout and have seized control of our print and electronic media while we have been whistling in the dark.
Xenophobic old bastard!
Not so!
I will admit that over the years that many outsiders have discovered this fair county and found it to their liking. They have been of all races, religions, and economic class and mainly they want to be a part of this rare culture. Not to control it, but to belong, to assimilate.
They took the time to learn to understand the local dialect, develop a taste for stuffed ham and fried oysters, and after a while, some of them even learned to begin each sentence with a “By Gawd” and end it with “thurly”.
They became “county”.
This last wave of economic opportunists find nothing likeable about its people, it’s politics, it’s architecture (or lack thereof).
They carp about our roads, our schools, the lack of recreational amenities (which they claim they are used to in their previous life).
They want the buggies and combines to stay out of their glutted traffic, they want more cops, more street lights, more crossing guards.
On and on they carp about this detestable place they have been forced to migrate to in pursuit of the almighty dollar.
All of this whining and pouting by the yahoos doesn’t really bother the true sons of St. Mary’s. We are a stoic breed. Generations bent over the tobacco hoe and oyster tongs have made us tough. We are slow to complain, but the last demand is unbearable.
Burn down our unsightly old homes and barns, lest their genteel senses be offended?
Spare them the dilapidation of our poverty when they gaze out from palatial new homes and sleek (though illegal) yachts.
If this fair county with its callous encrusted farmers and their old housing offends them so, by all means, let them go.
Planning an exit route from this fair county is not all that difficult. There are only two roads. Route 5 and Route 234.
Can’t decide?
Flip a frigging coin!
It is past time for the natives to revolt.
We can’t have a fox chase without winding up in some townhouse complex.
Try soft crabbing along the shore and some yahoo will swamp you with a skidoo.
Our women have lost all housekeeping skills. With a fast food joint at every intersection, none of the younger women have learned to scrape hogheads and pick kale.
Where would you find a young woman willing to sit over a hot tub of hog guts to clean a mess of chitlins?
I’ve had the thought to perhaps once more try marriage while I still have my own teeth and a fair amount of Virility, but I despair of that ever happening.
I know at my age I would not have enough time left to teach the poor thing to cook.
Yes,Yahoos, you have rendered this fair county unbearable by your presence.
I exhort you with the words of an old English statesman when confronted by a parliament that would not act and would not adjourn, “you have stayed far too long for any good that you have done, please go, I say to you in the name of God, please go!”
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