This is the letter that caused such a startling change in the difficult situation we were in at the time. It’s the situation recounted in Ruminations --- Parts 3a and 3b.
An Open Letter to the Chip-House Employees
As most of you know, there has been an incident lately where one of your fellow employees has been chastised for hassling women. He was suspended for a short time and put on probation, and then the powers that be canned him altogether for the simple reason that this has been a longstanding problem with this individual.
It has come to my attention that your union has decided to back him by suing the women that he was hassling. Should that occur, this is an official notice that this crabby old country boy is going to eat that union alive, and I’m going to tell you why.
As the father of five daughters, I am more aware of the problems women face than most. Perhaps the worst problem is that there are too many males out there who haven’t the foggiest idea of what manhood is.
For instance, there are those who feel that because they are bigger and stronger than others or can dominate and intimidate them, it means they are big men. Let me point out that nigh on to any female ape alive could pick them up with one hand, pluck off both arms and their little dingy, fling the whole works over her shoulder and then go eat another banana, and there wouldn’t be a single thing they could do about it. Would this mean that that female ape is a better man than they are?
Then there are those males who feel that the more women they have sex with the better men they are. I have a question for them. Normally they can only perform once or twice a night; rarely, three times if they’re lucky. But take an old billy goat, line him up with a dozen nannies in heat, and he’ll have the whole batch of them serviced in about five minutes. Then he’ll stand there shaking his head and baa-a-aing at you, wanting to know where the next one is. Tell me, does that make that old billy goat a better man than we are? I don’t think so.
Just because we happen to have something dangling between our legs doesn’t make us men. All that means is that we are males. If we were to boil the difference between a man and a male down to only a few words, we could put it this way: In a man, his brains control his balls. In one who is only a male, it’s the other way around.
I wonder if you have any idea of how many young women deliberately get themselves as fat as hogs for no other reason than that they can no longer stand the males among us sniffing around their butts like a pack of male dogs? To the men among us, it is as one of your fellow employees put it: “It’s embarrassing.”
I would suggest, gentlemen, that our proper role in life is to be the heads of families, and that if we can’t do any better than a pack of male dogs sniffing around female butts, we forfeit both that role and any feminine respect that should go along with it. Is it any wonder that there are women that feel the need to be liberated?
I’ve about had a belly full of walking down the street seeing the fear in women’s eyes due to the conduct of the males among us. I think it’s about time to stand up and say something.
There is a second reason why I feel as strongly as I do. There are women out there whom I wouldn’t even try to defend. They are not worthy of a man’s defense for the simple reason that they have no appreciation for it. They are citified hothouse flowers who, like orchids, are beautiful but survive only by sucking the blood of whatever unfortunate host they happen to land on.
I know one of the girls in this case, for I work with her. She doesn’t fit that description whatsoever. A country girl raised on the “wrong side of the tracks”, not having a father to look to for guidance and protection, she fell in love with a young man and he with her. His folks, the hoity-toity religious type, had a fit and did everything they could to break them up. They failed, and it was not too long before this young couple had three children. Then, tragically, one day he lost control of his car and was killed.
No, she didn’t go on welfare, sit watching TV all day and get fat, while telling the whole wide world what a poor innocent victim she was. She went to work, bought her own truck, and nearly worked her fingers to the bone in an effort to take care of her little ones. Like the rhododendron that grows on the tops of our Oregon mountains, she faced the storms and vicissitudes of life head on, yet still bloomed as beautiful as any orchid, and I mean that in more ways than physically.
Instead of growing hard and bitter at her lot in life as many women have, she maintains an open and cheerful attitude. Instead of the cowardly hauteur many modern women use, refusing to look at or speak to a man who greets her for fear that he may come on to her, she has the courage and common decency to treat us as human beings. Instead of shacking up with whatever jerk that comes along in an effort to get all she can out of him, she is a one man woman, and she feels that that she has found that man. I would suggest that this woman has earned our respect the hard way.
And this is one ornery old country boy who says that she is going to get it. Or else. So I extend this invitation to that union: Make my day. Push it. There are few things in this world that I enjoy more than the taking on of a bureaucracy or organization that thinks they are so great and powerful that they don’t need to deal with fair play and justice. I reckon this is fair warning.
Finally, if there are any damned fools out there who feel that the only reason that I would defend this girl is that I am “getting some” on the side, let me assure them of something. I have a little freckle-faced brunette at home that is all the woman that I can handle. We have been married thirty-seven (forty-one now) years and have six kids. I don’t need to look anywhere else.
Tom Howell
Folks, again --- the leadership of the Organization is only a bunch of men, and not very competent men at that. When I look at them, I see a very rich target area, to borrow a phrase from the Air Force.
Sure, such a fight will be a little more complicated, but all that means is that it will take a little more preparation and insight. It’s not hard, and in some ways, quite enjoyable. Picture if you will, Ted Jaratz (forget how to spell it) and crowd bent over a log with their big butts stuck up in the air, and you having a handful of darts. That’s about where we are. The only thing stopping us is our own fear.
Will they try to defend themselves? Of course. But I learned a long time ago that there are very few things that they throw at us that can’t be used, quite effectively too. Indeed, what they give us will probably be enough to get the job done.
We’ll start getting into how this can be accomplished in succeeding episodes.
Tom Howell
Alias: LoneWolf