Sun Jun-07-09 09:20 AM by CorpGovActivist

Some of you know that I have written about growing up as a gay Pentecostal in the Southern coalfields of West Virginia.

The small town where I grew up is named Hotchkiss. It has no post office of its own. We took our mail from a rural mail carrier in Slab Fork, where the Slab Fork Coal Company employed many of the fathers nearby.

Bill Withers is the most famous native of Slab Fork. His music means more, I think, if you know the beautiful, haunted hollers in which he grew into a songwriter.

This old thread at DU explains a lot about me, I suppose.

I digress.

Hotchkiss has its own chapter in my autobio at 17. At 17, the hurt of being ripped from my childhood home - my native soil - was fresh.

At 37, it still hurts.

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If you read only one chapter in that autobio, the Hotchkiss chapter should be it.

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Strange place, Hotchkiss. All that beauty. All that Evil.

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To understand Hotchkiss, you must understand Jedediah Hotchkiss, the cartographer to the Confederacy.

To understand Jedediah, you must understand his relationship with the slaveholding Virginia branch of The Halsey Family. A Google of Hotchkiss and Halsey reveals much.

The letters on file at UVA reveal much. The Morton-Halsey Papers, alone, reveal much.

Losing the Civil War, some slaveholders just wouldn't - couldn't - let it go.

They held the grudge about the western counties of Virginia splitting away during the conflict about as tightly as they could hold it.

"Fine! They took away our ni**ers. We'll enslave their kids instead."

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Before charging forward, let us pause to note: in every Clan Feud, there are good apples in the rotten barrel, and rotten apples in the good barrel. If you forget that each apple is an individual, and label the whole barrel, you'll miss the whole point of the sermon.

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The boy I loved more than any other, growing up?

Andrew Michael Hartsog

I honestly don't remember a time when I don't remember Andy. His mom and my mom arranged play dates for us from the time we were in diapers.

His maternal aunt was our next door neighbor in Hotchkiss. On the distaff side, Andy is a Halsey.

Growing up, Andy yammered all the time about how he wanted to grow up and become the next Bull Halsey - an admiral who helped win World War II, for those of you not up on your 20th Century Notables.

Bull Halsey was from the more "upscale, Up North" branch of the Halseys. His best friend and he spent one year at UVA. I bet they tore the place up right.

: )

Call it a hunch. Halsey boys and their best friends are apt to do that.

I would know.

*snicker*

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Before I go on with the sermon, it probably should be noted: the pedophilia and drug rackets run out of Appalachia go back for ... well, time out of mind.

The hushed-up methed-up BoiToi Scandal that threatened Poppy Bush`s White House in Summer 1990?

I turned 18 in January 1990.

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Does the congregation have any questions so far?

- David

In response to Reply # 0

no questions, keep posting... tell more

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If you don't know where you are going, you won't know where you are when you get there.

In response to Reply # 1

In response to Reply # 0

... this sermon concerns precisely how I managed not to be, despite all those attempts. But it goes well beyond that. However, to ease everyone in their pews: this is not a tale of how I personally became a victim.

This is a tale about the triumph of free will over Fascism.

: )

- David

In response to Reply # 0

I'm sincerely curious about the gentleman who calls himself Jeff Gannon/Guckert/whatever. Man has more aliases than I can count.

I have heard gossip/interesting tidbits about Gannon Being Jeff Gosch, and wondered how credible you think that might be. It's just another one of those tantalizing things I'd like to be able to tie into the narrative.

It would explain his access to the white house, I would think...and where he got the money for post-secondary education.

All who wander are not necessarily lost.

In response to Reply # 4
Sun Jun-07-09 02:38 PM by CorpGovActivist

In response to Reply # 5

So.......how credible is this bit of trivial gossip? Enquiring minds want to know.

All who wander are not necessarily lost.

In response to Reply # 6

In response to Reply # 7

Quote

Quote

So.......how credible is this bit of trivial gossip? Enquiring minds want to know.

Ex-POTUSes even moreso.

"You can't fix stupid" ~ Ron White
"I never said I wasn't a brat..." ~ Talidapali

In response to Reply # 8

In response to Reply # 9

Okies...yes...Gannon/Guckert is an adult and as such deserves his privacy. Even if he seems more than willing to post himself on websites and advertise his availability...

But the pedophiles that were alluded to in the Bush 41 administration need to be outed and prosecuted if possible.

"You can't fix stupid" ~ Ron White
"I never said I wasn't a brat..." ~ Talidapali

In response to Reply # 10