The Colonel knew what he signed up for when he joined the Marines.
His mother was nearly apoplectic and his career Air Force NCO dad couldn't decide whether he was more upset that his son was going into the Marines or that he was going to be a [expletive deleted] officer. They, and everyone else in the Colonel's world, opined with amazing foresight that serving in the Marine Corps would be hard at first and then get worse.
So, the Colonel knew what he was getting into.
Nobody, however, warned the Colonel about the absolute gut-wrenching, soul-sucking, hate-inviting, head-in-hands, cap-throwing anguish that would attend his life every football season as an Ole Miss Rebel.
Thanks to his aforementioned career Air Force dad's assignments, the Colonel spent little time in Mississippi (his parents' home state), and knew precious little about Mississippi -- other than lots of doubled consonants. There was that fifth grade year ('66 -- '67) in Columbus, while his dad went to fight the communists in Vietnam -- but, other than that, he had no clue. He knew more about Morocco, Panama, and other foreign places (like Arkansas and Louisiana), than the 'Sip. He was 18 and a stranger in a strange land when the Colonel's folks dropped him off in front of his dorm in Oxford.
Ole Miss greeted the Colonel like something foreign on the bottom of a penny loafer. Ole Miss was old money, southern aristocracy, and partying preppies. None of which matched the Colonel's pedigree. To say he didn't fit is like saying you shouldn't put ketchup on a T-bone.
Duh.
And, yet... even though Ole Miss didn't love him, the Colonel fell in love with Ole Miss.
It wasn't love at first sight -- more like love at long association.
And, it was a tumultuous, if not torrid, affair, punctuated with Rebel yells and early fall mornings cutting through the Grove for that 8 o'clock class, alone on his path and in his thoughts, the greatest of which was why in the name of all that is righteous did he let his academic advisor sign him up for a 5 semester hour math class that met at 8 in the morning every... day... of... the... week.
An 8 o'clock 5 semester hour math class should have been enough warning to send the Colonel running for his life. That particular first semester freshman hell was, it turned out, harbinger of the nature of his life-long, love-hate relationship with Ole Miss.
And, speaking of harbingers... Ole Miss football in the mid-seventies was atrocious. The first season of games attended by the Colonel was painful.
Eleven on a scale of one to ten painful.
Root canal by a recent dental-school grad painful.
Bumper hitch ball - shin collision painful.
Listening to Donald Trump pa...
You get the picture.
Rebel football was so bad in 1974 that South Carolina beat us 10-7 on our homecoming.
Why is that so bad you ask?
South Carolina won just one football game that year...
Then, just when the Colonel finally resigned himself to muddling in the mire of Ole Miss football mediocrity, the Rebels would pull off a stunning upset (Alabama and Georgia in '76, Notre Dame in '77); playing football like they actually knew how to play to win.
The last ten years -- since the Colonel returned to, and re-retired on a slice of country paradise just north of the campus..., and bought season tickets -- have been particularly painful.
There have been spectacular wins against hated rivals and complete collapses against non-conference patsies. The emotional roller coaster that is to be an Ole Miss Rebel is not for the faint of heart.
Luckily, the Colonel, as has been pointed out by many close to him, has no heart...
Still, the Colonel gets entirely too wrapped up in the outcome of a game played by a bunch of teenagers. So much so that most Saturday nights during football season, he doesn't sleep.
Not one wink.
Win or lose, late into the wee hours of Sunday morning, the Colonel will toss and turn, replaying the game's turning points. It's stupid, the Colonel knows. But, he ain't smart and you can't make him...
Tonight, a hated rival -- LSU -- comes to town. Nothing epitomizes what it is to be an Ole Miss Rebel more than Rebel Nation's absolute and abject hatred for LSU. Tonight, the Colonel will pay way too much to park way too far away and hike way too long to climb way too high to his season-ticket seats for which he pays way too much of his hard-earned pension to yell way too hard for a bunch of teenagers in whom he invests way too much of his emotional energy.
In all probability -- if his long history with Ole Miss is any indication -- the Colonel will walk a couple of miles back to his car tonight, dejected, frustrated, and swearing that this is the last year he's gonna subject himself to this insanity.
Then, again... we might just win.
Either way, the Colonel won't sleep much tonight.
The Colonel doesn't understand the big deal about Columbus.
Seriously, he got lucky.
Timing is everything and the Genoese (Italy didn't exist at the time) map-maker hit the court of Ferdinand and Isabella at just the right time. The rulers of the united kingdoms of Castile and Aragon (Spain didn't exist at the time) were feeling froggy after finally running the last of the Moors out of the Iberian peninsula and they jumped at the chance to enrich themselves with the opening of a new trade route to the Orient.
But, if Columbus hadn't gotten backing from the court of Castile, the Colonel feels quite comfortable in positing that another intrepid explorer from any one of a number of European countries would have very soon found his way across the Atlantic and washed up on a beach in the Caribbean or found shelter in a bay along the North American eastern seaboard. It was just a matter of time.
Heck, French fishermen were already sailing pretty darn close. And, we don't need to even begin a discussion about Norse longboat landings several centuries prior to that of Columbus's leaky second-hand caravels.
It's a bit ironic, since Columbus was in search of a westward sailing route to China, that there's fairly good circumstantial evidence that a Chinese mariner hit the west coast of North America seventy years before Columbus bumped into the Bahamas.
The Colonel's point, blunt as it may be, is that we make far too much of a big deal out of Columbus (Cristobal Colon). His "discovery" of the "new world" was a happy accident (happy, unless you happened to be an Arawak) that would have been accomplished by somebody else within a very few years.
(For the Bama and LSU fans who may have stumbled upon this blog whilst searching for pachyderm print toilet paper or a corn dog recipe, the Arawaks mentioned above were the inhabitants of the Caribbean islands when Columbus arrived. They no longer exist.)
And, while we're on the subject (if tangentially) of European exploitation of the Western Hemisphere, can we please dispense with the tired, and quite specious, argument that the "native" inhabitants of the Americas would have continued to live peaceful, noble lives in complete harmony with their environment if not for European interference.
First of all, even the most cursory examination of Amerindian history reveals rampant inter-tribal warfare (replete with massacres, displacement, and -- gasp! -- cultural appropriation), large-scale terra-forming and nature-displacing city-building, and wholesale destruction of local environments.
Second, even if Europeans had not attempted to colonize in the Americas and only contented themselves with establishing trade with the Amerindians, there would still have been no way to prevent the introduction of diseases for which the Amerindians had no natural resistance and from which perished upwards of 90% of the native populations extant in the Western Hemisphere at the end of the 15th Century, C.E.
Granted, the next three centuries of European exploitation of the Americas were replete with actions judged heinous by our "modern" sensibilities -- slavery and forced labor chief among them. But, to assume that those practices began with the exploitation of the Americas, and were the exclusive province of European cultures, plumbs the depths of historical ignorance.
So, let's cool the Columbus jets, shall we? Let's put his accomplishment in the proper perspective -- recognition, without lionization or stigma.
During his operational time as an infantry officer in the Marine Corps, the Colonel's radio call-sign was "Rebel." It was naturally and obviously acquired because the Colonel didn't go to college -- he went to Ole Miss.
When the Marine Corps advanced him, at the turn of the century (this century, not last -- he ain't that old) to the rank by which he will forever self-refer, the Colonel determined that he could and would also forever self-refer as the 21st Century personification of the Ole Miss mascot -- Colonel Rebel.
The Colonel is the real Colonel Rebel.
Imagine his dismay when, in 2003, the temp-help filling positions of leadership in the University of Mississippi's administration caved to a very vocal and very small minority demand that Ole Miss retire a mascot that very vocal and very small minority deemed offensive. Eventually, a rigged election selected a danged bear as the new Ole Miss mascot.
A bear.
A goofy bear -- bearing absolutely no qualifications nor any historical association with Ole Miss.
Em - bear - assing.
Well, as of this week, the bear is dead. The temp-help filling positions of leadership in the University of Mississippi's administration caved to a very vocal and very small minority of students who wanted the bear replaced by...
... ready for this?
A landshark.
The inmates are firmly in charge of the asylum.
The animals are running the zoo.
The second lieutenants are leading the regiment.
The monkeys are managing the circus.
Donald Trump is the pres...
You get the picture.
Unconstitutional political correctness is rampant on our Republic's college campuses and Berkley ain't the epicenter.
The Colonel declares, with not one scintilla of parochialism, that Ole Miss is the epicenter of unconstitutional political correctness -- the very poster child of the pestilence of idiocy infecting our nation.
Appeasement of the political correctness fascists (political correctness is the ultimate expression -- the very face -- of fascism) is a never-ending exercise in frustration and loss of physical and intellectual freedom.
Appeasement always begets additional demands from the appeased, because the demand to which the appeaser accedes was never really the reason for the protest. Political correctness is far less about social sensitivity and far more about accretion of social power at the expense of another's right to the innate human freedoms of expression, self-determination, association, orientation, and religious belief.
The slashing saber of political correctness cuts both left and right. For this reason, our wise (if imperfect) forebears incorporated in our republic's plan of governance certain protections (and a means for strengthening the original plan's protections) against the capricious societal use of mob rule (also known as "democracy" -- a term not found anywhere in the Constitution) to deny the holding of minority viewpoints critical in a truly "free" society.
But..., holding a Constitutionally protected minority viewpoint does not give an American citizen veto over the Constitutionally protected beliefs and actions of the majority. The Constitution does indeed protect the rights of the minority. The Constitution does not protect the feelings of the minority.
Governmental, or other authorities', actions which attempt to protect the feelings of the minority at the expense of the rights of the majority are UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
By the way... the Colonel is deeply offended by the caricature of a fisticuffs-ready leprechaun and the term "Fighting Irish." Irish mercenaries were enlisted to hunt down and kill the Colonel's politically outlawed clansmen (MacGregors) in Scotland several centuries ago. Irish immigrants were enlisted to hunt down and kill the Colonel's politically outlawed kin during the War for Southern Independence.
And..., exploiting a shark as a mascot is the very height of disregard for animal feelings.
Just saying.
