Well we had our first “date night” last night since we were up at Skyway on March 15th for St. Paddy’s day music. They have reopened for “take-out,” but being friends of Tom and Tracie we were able to have our meal out back in their outside dining area with our friends John and Marci. Just before everything shut down back in March, Skyway ordered a new smoker to replace the DIY one they had used for years. The new one is A+ and produces nicely smoked meats after being brined and marinated and rubbed with Chef Hornor’s secret recipes. I had the smoked pork shoulder sando and the missus had the pastrami. Both were very good. Unless a second wave hits us soon, they will hopefully be able to open for dine-in and resume the fabulous food and music they bring to the mountain. It was also nice to see the happy faces of the staff, whom we have missed these past three months.
I’ve been thinking about all of the demonstrations and actions occurring across the country over the past few weeks and remember back to 1968 when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. What I am seeing today is probably more happening in the civil rights movement than anything that has been significant over the past 52 years. Not to diminish any of the work that Dr. King did because he was truly an activist, but the name George Floyd and his “assassination” just possibly may be written in the history books as the impetus for the most forceful radical change and equality we have ever seen in the civil rights movement. Just in the last week, the NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that the NFL was wrong not to listen to its player’s protest of racism and police brutality and apologized to them for bending to President Trump’s demands. Y’all remember tRump calling any football player who kneeled during the National Anthem “a son of a bitch” and suggesting the owner of the team fire that player? Yesterday, NASCAR announced “…The display of the confederate flag will be prohibited from all NASCAR events and properties,” after a challenge by Bubba Wallace, the only full-time black racer in NASCAR. The confederate flag has been a branding for NASCAR for decades, so this was a huge action. On Wednesday, the head of the U.S. Soccer Federation announced it had repealed its policy requiring players to stand for the National Anthem. Yesterday the GOP led Senate Armed Services Committee approved an amendment to the annual military spending bill that would require the Defense Department to change the names of military bases and assets named for Confederate leaders. Across the country there is a movement to “defund” the police. On Tuesday the Senate unanimously confirmed Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as the Air Force’s chief of staff, elevating a four-star general who is the first black man to hold the position. Some 43 percent of the 1.3 million men and women on active duty in the United States military are people of color, but the people making crucial decisions, those at the top, are almost entirely white and male. The changes are coming “fast and furious,” and I believe it is happening because of the name George Floyd. And then you have the Imperial Wizard planning his “Transition to Greatness” rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 19th. Tulsa, in 1921 was the site of one of the bloodiest outbreaks of racist violence in U.S. history, in which white mobs attacked black residents and businesses, and June 19th has come to be known as Juneteenth, commemorating the end of slavery. I am going to save that rambling for another post, as we have a few days yet and I need to get “pumped up” for that ramble.
Okay, it’s Friday and the end of a long week, so I am going to retreat to the kitchen and begin the preparation for strawberry daiquiri’s. Stay safe, stay healthy, and keep washing your hands frequently. And get up to Skyway for some good ‘BBQ’!
Mountain Man Musings 