Hillbilly Hotdogs & Molotov Limericks
Plus, recalling Kent State and a Forecast for Sunshine | may6.2020
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I TURNED 60-SOMETHING LAST WEEK: And needed to get out of Dodge. So, I left the house to my quarantine-mates. These include a dear wife who’s running an entire agency from our dining room table. An opinionated daughter who makes killer shelter-in-place chocolate-chip cookies. And a massively fuzzy, needy tuxedo cat. I went down to the river to share a Cuban cigar with Canadian geese and marsh frogs.
No Other Humans Allowed.
While on my way back from sheltering-in-Nature, I stumbled upon the title of a future essay collection. It will be about the serious weirdness—and occasional wonderfulness—of West Virginia: “PLEASE DON’T WRITE ON HOTDOG.” Those are the words at the base of a monument as big as a Winnebago, trumpeting Hillbilly Hotdogs along WV State Route 2. It’s a place you must visit should you ever be passing through.
Too late. People already have. | TheStoryIsTheThing.com photo
I’m happy to report this roadside joint has gourmet veggie dogs, along with the piggy kind. This makes Hillbilly Hotdogs a fine destination for vegetarians on walkabout. If, that is, we survive the cataclysmic social upheaval we’re going through.
Trumpublicanism, I mean.
It’s touch and go.
+ MORE PHOTOS of BUILDINGS and CIGARS HERE.
SPEAKING OF THAT GUY: My ‘Op-Ed Limerick’ collaboration with Limerick Empress Colleen Anderson recently added another un-indicted conspirator. Just like Colleen, Chet Lowther is an Appalachian Renaissance Person. He’s a teacher, an accomplished artist, gifted singer-songwriter, and fine human. I could say more about the pleasure of working with such pros in crafting Molotov limericks, which we then heave into the public squares of social media. You’ll get up to speed faster experiencing four in a row. Here are: “Folly,” “To Be Kind,” “Worthless Borders,” and (beware, if you’re suffering a bad case of Obama Separation Syndrome) “Mightily Glad.”
Four Op-Ed Limericks in three minutes. | TheStoryIsTheThing.com Video
PS: If you have Trump-centric artwork that might lend itself to an Op-Ed Limerick, contact me at douglasjohnmartin AT icloud.com.
+ MORE OP-ED LIMERICKS HERE
50 YEARS LATER: Monday, May 4, 2020, marked the 50th anniversary of the Kent State shootings, where Ohio National Guardsmen gunned down four unarmed students and wounded nine more. Seven years later, I was a student journalist at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. I traveled to Kent in 1977, to take the temperature of boiling protests over plans for a gym that would obliterate a spot where some of those students fell. I reprint that article at the link as it remains a solid portrait of how incendiary and chilling the Kent shootings were to generations of us. I’ve added commentary to introduce the piece, plus a postscript describing how the school has memorialized the shootings (pretty well, in fact).
Neil Young’s iconic song, “Ohio,” was the first protest song that got under my skin. It moved me, perhaps for the first time, to question who exactly was in charge and what they wanted. The song still riles. It’s marching music for heart-wounded rage against the machine. “Ohio” is a plaintive, angry fist raised in the air to warmongers and powerbrokers. To corrupt officeholders and their enablers. To every parent and student in America: “This summer I hear the drumming/ Four dead in Ohio …”
+ “WHAT IF YOU KNEW HER?”: The Protest 7 Years after the Kent State Massacre
BRING SUNSHINE: I’ve been performing my tune, “Bring Sunshine When You Come,” for a couple of years now. I’ve never gotten around to recording it. I still haven’t gotten around to recording it—professionally. Yet it’s amazing what you can do with Garageband and a good mic (a Blue Yeti, which looks like a 1950s comic book rocket ship). I dedicate this song to the growing number of families around the country and world that have lost someone to Covid-19. It also goes out to the many people putting their lives on the line to save your life and mine. And the helpers who run to the disaster, instead of away. May all see sunshine as soon as may be.
+ MORE SONGS OF COMFORT, SONGS OF HOME
PARTING SHOT: You can appreciate this photo I shot in February 2019, in Havana, Cuba, without any context at all. It’s interesting on its own. What’s going on? I have no idea. I shot it while a drive-by tourist in Havana for two days. I was snapping what caught my eye. What are we seeing here? Havana is a complex place. In the photo-essay at the link, I try to parse a handful of my Cuban snapshots. Yet it may be impossible to suss out the backstory of such scenes without more time on the ground in Cuba. That wish is now officially lodged as a “Preferred Item” on my bucket list.
+ HAVANAGRAMS: It’s ‘Complicado’
A bright and perhaps not-so-bright face of Havana, near the Catedral de San Cristobal in Old Havana. Or is that even right? | PHOTO by TheStoryIsTheThing.com | feb2019
Thanks for reading, listening, sharing. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, subscribe for free at: TheStoryIsTheThing.substack.com. The website is at: TheStoryIsTheThing.com | E-mail me at: douglasjohnmartin AT icloud.com | Stay Safe. Be well. Wear a mask and be a superhero. | Douglas John Imbrogno
Hillbilly Hotdogs & Molotov Limericks
I have fond memories of sitting at a picnic table under sheltering trees on an Ohio Riverbank, scarfing down yummy Hillbilly hot dogs. I've never felt more content. (I hope that news I heard later, that Hillbilly Hot Dogs had given up its riverbank to move to Huntington, was fake. And btw, I was and am a vegetarian. Usually.) The same day, I bought a brilliant yellow nylon vest at the Hurricane Goodwill half-price for $1. Still, years later, it's my favorite piece of clothing and still gets me compliments on Manhattan streets.