Blue Jeans and Bibles

 

THE GREAT BLUE JEAN CONSPIRACY
by Talks With Beagles

 

When I was in the fifth or sixth grade, I somehow got myself elected to the student council. I wouldn’t have even ran for it if I hadn’t been talked into it by my teacher. She promised me that I would get to see democracy in action. We had just finished learning all about American democracy and why it was better than the Communist dictatorships in the Soviet Union. The teacher said that I had shown more interest in this subject than anyone else in the class, so I was a natural for the student council. Also, I kind of felt sorry for her because she couldn't get anyone else to run.

At my very first meeting, the teacher [not the same one who talked me into it] announced that the first order of business was that we had to pass a resolution that said kids couldn’t wear blue jeans to school any more. This kind of stunned everybody for a minute and I was the first one to break the silence with: "You can’t do that, that’s Communism!" Now, you may wonder what blue jeans have to do with the theories of Karl Marx. Actually, not much at this point. You see, in those days, Communism was thought of as the ultimate evil in the world so, after awhile, it had became a generic term for anything that was really bad. I suppose people today would say," That sucks!", and it would mean about the same thing. At any rate, the teacher told me I was out of order and to shut up and sit down. As soon as I sat down, somebody else took the floor and tried to explain to the teacher in a more rational manner why we just couldn’t do this. You see, in Chicago in the 1950s, all the kids wore blue jeans and all the adults didn’t. When I say "all the kids", what I really mean is "all the boys". Girls probably wore dresses or something, but nobody paid any attention to girls in those days.

There were only two other kinds of pants in the world in those days, good pants and wash pants. Good pants were expensive to buy and had to be dry cleaned when they got dirty, which also cost money. When you wore good pants, you had to be good so as not to wreck your pants, which is why they were called “good pants“. Kids only wore their good pants to church or other places where they had to be good anyway, so it didn’t really matter. Wash pants were worn by adults who worked in jobs that would wreck their good pants if they wore them there. The trouble with wash pants was that they had to be starched and ironed after they were washed. Also, they were so thin and flimsy that you could wear the knees out of them in about one day. No self-respecting kid would wear wash pants, so the only thing left was blue jeans. This must sound pretty elementary to you, but the teacher just didn’t get it. Teachers in those days were even dumber than the kids they taught, but that’s a whole nother story. All she kept saying was that there had been enough discussion and it was time for somebody to make a motion, which nobody wanted to do. Right in the middle of this, some stupid girl got up and announced that a new type of wash pants had recently been invented. These new wash pants did not need to be starched and ironed, and they were even cheaper to buy than blue jeans. This is a perfect example of why nobody paid any attention to girls in those days.

By this time the teacher was beginning to realize that this wasn’t going to be an easy sell, so she decided to tell her side of the story. It seems that, sometime after World War II, a whole new category of kids had been invented. These kids were called "juvenile delinquents" or "hoodlums". The hoodlums wore blue jeans too, of course, because they were still kids. I don’t know why they even invented these hoodlums in the first place, because all they did was give the rest of us a bad name. Some adults were beginning to think that all kids were hoodlums which, of course, was not true. Apparently, some of these misguided adults held a meeting and came up with the brilliant idea that, if they could make the hoodlums stop wearing blue jeans, then they wouldn’t be hoodlums any more. One of the kids at our meeting came up with a pretty good solution to this whole problem, but the teacher wasn’t interested. Why not make only the hoodlums stop wearing blue jeans and not us? Then it would be easier to tell the hoodlums from the rest of us and they would stop giving us a bad name. Like I said, the teacher wasn’t interested, because she already knew what she wanted us to do. Another kid had a pretty good idea too, although, it would still be Communism. Why not have the principal make this rule instead of the student council? It’s his job to make rules anyway and, if we do it, we won’t have a friend left in this school. The principal had nothing to lose in that respect. The teacher told us that option had been considered, but it was decided that it would "look better" if this idea came from the student council.

At this point, I had to go out of order again, because this light bulb lit up in my head, and I had to tell everyone about it. "You know what?" says I, " This really *is* Communism! This student council is what they call a ‘puppet government’, just like what they have in the satellite nations of the Soviet Union!" The students were delighted with my statement, because they thought I made it up just to be a smart aleck and aggravate the teacher, which is what she deserved. Of course, I hadn’t made any thing up at all. We had studied all about this stuff not long ago, but I guess I had been the only one paying attention that day.

Things got really crazy after that. I guess the teacher was frustrated because we weren’t as easy to fool as she thought. We had all known her for years, and she had a reputation for being kind of mild mannered, for a teacher, but now she got real mean. She told us that there would be no more discussion and that it was time for somebody to make the motion, which nobody still wanted to do. She said that school was letting out in about fifteen minutes, which was true, but that nobody would be allowed to leave until this resolution was passed, and that we would stay here all night if we had to.

There was a lot of mumbling and grumbling from the kids, but I don’t know if everybody was thinking what I was thinking or not. What I was thinking was that I was walking out that door when the bell rang even if I had to fight my way out, but I never got to do that. Some brown nose (which was what we called a big suck in those days) made the motion, and another one seconded the motion, which was a real disappointment to me. Then the teacher said, "All those in favor , say ‘aye‘.’’. A few people said "aye", but not very enthusiastically. Then the teacher announced that the motion was passed and entertained a motion for adjournment. It was the teacher herself who was out of order now, because she never called for the "no" votes, and I told her so. "Very well", says she, "I’ll call for the "no" votes; but there better not be any, because I want this motion to pass unanimously. " Well, too bad for her.

This was my finest hour. When the teacher called for the "no" votes, I stood up like a tall oak tree and proclaimed with a voice like thunder;" NO! LET THE RECORD SHOW THAT TALKS WITH BEAGLES VOTES ‘NO’ ON THIS MOTION!" The secretary was starting to write this down when the teacher said; "Don’t write that down. Talks With Beagles has been out of order all day, so his vote doesn’t count. Let the record show that the motion passed unanimously." So, If you go down to the Sidney Sawyer Elementary School today and look up the minutes to that student council meeting it will say that the motion passed unanimously, which is not true. That’s why I’m writing this story now. I think that, after all these years, somebody should set the record straight.

You may wonder why I call this a conspiracy, well here’s why: All over the city of Chicago, during that very same week, student councils were passing that very same motion. By the weekend, signs had been put up on business establishments all over the city saying, "No one admitted wearing blue jeans." It got so that a kid couldn’t go anywhere in that town wearing blue jeans. Our parents must have been in on it too because, when I got home from school that day, I found several pairs of those new wash pants laid out on my bed. Coincidence? I think not!

I wish I could tell you that we organized a strike or a boycott to fight this thing, but we didn’t. We were only kids after all, and the 1960s were still a few years away. Sure, we talked about it a lot but, in the end, we folded up like a pair of cheap wash pants.

Years later, when I came home from the Army, I found that everybody was back to wearing blue jeans again, even the girls, who people were starting to pay attention to by then. Even some of the adults were wearing them. This was probably because all the people who used to be kids had turned into adults and taken over the country. So, I guess you could say, we won in the end.

Be that as it may, the most important part of this story is not the part about the blue jeans. The most important part of this story is the part about that student council meeting. You see, I originally joined the student council to see democracy in action and, instead, I saw Communism in action. Now, there is nothing wrong with teaching kids about Communism, but you should call it “Communism“, and not try to pass it off as democracy, like those people did. It is for this reason that I have never voted to approve a millage proposal or anything else for the schools, and I never will. If I didn’t learn another thing from this experience, I learned how to vote "no", and I have been voting "no" ever since. TWB

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It was easier to reprint the whole story than it would have been to tell it all over again. All the grades weren't represented in the student council, just the upper ones, either fifth or sixth through eighth. There wasn't actually an election. Our teacher asked for nominations, but everybody who was nominated declined. Later, she approached me privately about it and, like I said, she talked me into it. Now that I think of it, she must have persuaded some others too because there were 10 or 20 kinds in that first meeting. I attended a couple of meetings after that, but my heart wasn't in it. One day the teacher announced another meeting and I refused to attend. I don't remember hearing anything about a student council after that. Maybe it was an experimental thing and they gave up on it after awhile. Or maybe they had formed it for the express purpose of passing that blue jean resolution and dissolved it after they had gotten what they wanted. Do you remember having a student council at your school?

I don't understand, you said that you wanted to talk about morality from a philosophical point of view, but not from a religious point of view. What's the difference? Okay, technically religion is theology not philosophy, but it seems there is a fine line between the two. Until a few centuries ago, all intellectual people were called philosophers, but then the other disciplines branched off on their own. Even today, though, we sometimes speak of philosophy in a narrower context, like political philosophy or artistic philosophy. If you want to isolate morality from religion, you are chopping off a few thousand years of its history. Secular humanism only dates back to about the Enlightenment of the 18th Century. Anyway, there is lots of philosophy in the Bible. The whole book of Proverbs immediately comes to mind, and most of the myths seem to have a philosophical slant to them. The letters of Paul in the New Testament contain a lot of his personal philosophy, although most religious people have historically taken it for gospel. Technically, "gospel" only refers to the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Gospel means "good news" in Greek, and it has been applied to the life stories of Jesus. Just because something is in the Bible doesn't make it gospel, although a lot of people seem to think it does.

There is nothing about the 50s that I remember fondly, except the trips I made to Michigan.

back to that other book

Well that whole jeans controversy is a lot more nuanced than I thought.  So who composed this student council?  Was it like one student from each grade, each classroom?  How were they chosen?  Did each classroom or grade vote their own representative?  How did you get nominated?  What was your platform? 

Was this a binding vote or just a resolution with no teeth?  What were the circumstances of the vote?  Was their clearly a majority after the ayes had expressed their opinion?  How can you know that other council members opposed the issue?  You know politicians, they will always act like they agree with you.  What was the nature of your being out of order all through the meeting?  Maybe you're lucky you didn't have to stand in a corner for the rest of the semester.

And don't tell me what Ezekiel had to say about voice votes.  I don't think I talk that much about religion.  I talk about morality a lot, but it's mostly in philosophic manner.  I talk about the institutions of religion sometimes, and I certainly want to talk about the St Nicholas, but I don't see much biblical relevance to any of that.  Well i don't know, it just seems to me that we are talking about something philosophical and the next thing I know we are deep in biblical weeds and I am at a loss to understand how this has anything more to do with what we are talking about than the latest Cubs box score.

Remember Madalyn Murray O'Hare?  She won a case in the supreme court to eliminate bible reading in public schools in 1963, and founded something called American Atheists, and just generally raised hell against religion for about thirty years.  She was a wretched person, I saw her on tv a couple times and it seems like mainly she liked to argue, and in that Donald Trump manner where she just called everybody who disagreed with her idiots and never really responded to questions she didn't want to answer.  She never wrote much, but sometimes I wish she had so that I could go on and on talking about her writings whenever somebody started talking the bible to me.

So anyway I keep wanting to get back to 1957 in Gage Park, and how it seemed like there was a powerful force to not be different, to not make trouble.  We were all well-fed, well-housed, and though a lot of our education sounded like propaganda they did teach us math and reading well enough.  You know I hated all that authority that the school held over us, but anymore I don't mind it so much.  We were really too young to do much thinking, and probably it's best to do your thinking when you get out of school when you can choose your own books and you're not dependent on getting some grade.

You know the author, Ehrenhalt, expresses nostalgia for that time, and even though I would hate to go back there, I feel it a little bit.  Maybe we were better off somehow believing in something, even if it was wrong, then the way it is now.

Well that's all pretty vague, but I am going to ask you what do you think?

Go to the Source

The blue jean travesty at Sawyer wasn't a general election of all the students, it was a voice vote of the student council. The teacher called for the "aye" votes, but she didn't call for the "no" votes. When I called this to her attention, she reluctantly agreed to call for the "no" votes, but told us that she didn't want to hear any because she wanted the motion to pass unanimously. I know there were other council members who opposed the motion, but I was the only one who loudly expressed my "no" vote. The teacher then proclaimed that my vote didn't count because I had been out of order all through the meeting, and she instructed the secretary to record in the minutes that the motion passed unanimously. Democracy in action!

One difference between the Catholics and the Methodists was that the Catholics said the Methodists were going to Hell, but the Methodists did not say that the Catholics were going to Hell. The folks at Elsdon told me that it was not our job to judge people, that was God's job. When we did Holy Communion at Elsdon, all baptized Christians were invited to participate, while the Catholics reserved theirs only for Catholics. Another difference was that the Methodists encouraged their members to read the Bible, while the Catholics did not. They had allowed the Bible to be translated into English by then but, for centuries, they had insisted that it only be printed in Latin. John Wycliffe, the first guy to attempt to translate the Bible into English, was burned at the stake for his trouble. Over a hundred years later, Martin Luther finally had it translated into German, but he had to get himself excommunicated and start his own church before he could do it. I don't know when the Catholics allowed an English translation but, by the 1950s, they still weren't encouraging their people to read it for themselves.

The reason I keep referring to the Bible is that you keep asking me religious questions, and that's where the answers are. I am not asking you to believe any of it but, if you want to know what Christianity has to say about something, that's where you have to look. I specified "Biblical Christianity" last time because what the Bible says is sometimes different than what you are likely to hear from the average church goer. Some religions believe that every single word in the Bible is literally true, while others allow that many of the stories are probably allegorical. You can argue about interpretation until the cows come home, but it seems to me that you should read something yourself before you try to interpret it. Of course you don't have to read it, or interpret it, or believe it but, if you don't want me to reference it in these discussions, don't ask me any more religious questions.

questioning authority on the southwest side in 1957

So I guess it  was courtship that you thought should be done honestly and responsibly.  I was hoping to hear something about sex, but I guess you don't think it is a sin like, oh cannibalism.  And here I am veering into a different kind of sin, not the ftpotd sin, but that kind of religious taboo sin.  That stoical, religious, thou shalt not, kind of sin, where the sin is in the act itself.   Let's call that the stoical sin.  And since I am mentioning that, I will have to include the utilitarian sin where you have to determine the consequences of action to determine if it is a sin.  So now we have three kinds of sin, whereas the Catholics only had the venial and the mortal. 

Jimmy was right on the beam.  St Nicholas didn't want anybody to go around examining the meaning of any of the words because they might get it wrong, and worse, they might think they didn't need the priest at all, and maybe they would get to thinking they were even smarter than the priest, and there you go getting into heresy and leading people straight into hell.  By the way, who told you that you wouldn't go to hell for not being a Catholic?  The Methodists?  What the hell did you expect them to say?

It's all about authority, you obey it, you don't question it.  You got the pope and then the cardinals and the bishops, right on down to the priest and then Sister Rita with the ruler ready to rap your knuckles and enjoy doing it (the author is pretty hard on the nuns, but what I gathered from our catholic pals, they were pretty fearsome).  And then you had the president, and the mayor, right on down to the cop on the street or maybe the teacher at Sawyer who didn't approve of jeans no matter what the majority thought (I don't quite remember the story, but didn't she hold some kind of election and when it came out in favor of jeans, she overruled it?  Why did she ever allow an election, and why didn't she stuff the ballot box?). 

I don't recall that there were any rebels, back in those days.  You had like Elvis Presley, but it was all a pose, he acted all snarly and sexy, but he never did anything rebellious, and when the army called he went in without a peep.  You had the hoods, and they were reputed to do rebellious things.  Stealing hubcaps seemed to be something that they were always being accused of, but I don't know anybody who did that.  Well not that I knew any hoods, hanging out in those stupid honor classes.  I tried to look and act like one, but there was nothing tough about me.

And for all that the hoods never really questioned authority, they maybe didn't want to obey it, but they didn't much care whether other people did or not.  It seems like the first people to come along and challenge authority were the civil rights guys.  And you know they didn't come out of nowhere, they followed the same code that America pretended to believe (all men are equal), and tried to enforce it, but the authorities, fearing the loss of authority, successfully fought them down.  You know there is a parallel in Lost City between Father McDonagh and Father Flynn.  A parallel even in young Beagles who seemed like an upstanding young man, but became disillusioned when it turned out that not everybody was upstanding.

Authority pretends to a sort of nobility as being the upholders of high ideals, but since it is composed of fallible men, it is often just concerned with maintaining itself.

You say according to biblical Christianity, but what you are really giving me is according to Beagle's interpretation of biblical Christianity, because according to the catholics, who are also based on the bible, you can get into heaven by good works, and really everybody interprets that book every which way, and like you said, even you don't believe it.  So why does it keep coming up?  Are you like neighborhood Jimmy who has memorized something and likes to just keep repeating it?

"The Truth Shall Set You Free."

That's in the Bible somewhere, and I'm probably quoting it out of context, but it certainly has a nice ring to it. Don't you think?

I meant to answer your "honestly and responsibly" question yesterday, but it seems to have fallen through the cracks. The act itself is pretty straight forward, which is probably why I liked it so much. Other than failing to use birth control, there isn't much you can do wrong in that respect. It's the social bull shit that goes with it that requires honesty and responsibility, and that can be a challenge. Most of the guys I have known who were really successful with the ladies were deceitful and manipulative, and I decided early on that I wasn't going to play that game. It really is a game, you know, the girls expect it of you, and most of them can dish it out as well as they can take it. Nevertheless, I would rather be right than successful. I have to live with myself 24/7, which is more time than I spend with any woman, or any man either for that matter. If I am not happy with myself, how can I be happy with anybody else?

I always thought the Catholics were kind of strange myself. I got along with them okay, but I didn't want to be like them when I grew up. My mother said that Catholicism is a good religion for people who don't want to think for themselves. One day Jimmy next door came over and recited his catechism to her like a machine. He was so proud that he had finally memorized it all. When he was finished, Mom asked him if he could explain the meaning of all that in his own words. Jimmy replied laconically, "Oh, we don't have to know that."

I liked the people at Elsdon much better. If there was anything that you didn't understand, they would try to explain it to you, unless, of course, it was about sex. That was no big deal because nobody expected adults to honestly discuss sex with a kid anyway. The first question I asked any of them was if I was going to Hell because I wasn't Catholic. I believe it was another kid my age who quickly reassured me that I wasn't because Jesus had already died for my sins. Decades later, I came to conclusion that it didn't make a whole lot of sense but, at the time, it was a comforting thing to hear.

I have tried to explain this to you before, but I don't think you understand it yet: According to Biblical Christianity, you don't get to Heaven by racking up enough good points to overcome your bad points. That belief comes from the Persian prophet Zarathustra, who predated Christianity by at least a thousand years. In Christianity, your salvation depends on your acceptance of the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Sin, with a capitol "S", is not an act you commit, it is a state of alienation from God, and only God can overcome it. I suppose God could overcome it without your cooperation, but He chooses not to, you have to ask for it. Hey, don't shoot the messenger! I'm not so sure anymore that I believe it myself, which is one reason I no longer go to church. I am not comfortable standing up in front of God and everybody proclaiming that I believe something when, truth be known, all I can  say with certainty is that anything's possible.

St Nicholas, 1957

I have been waiting all day since yesterday morning to find out what the honest and responsible position was but I guess that is not to be revealed.  I guess you just meant that one should go about having sex in an honest and responsible manner, as one should go about everything in life, as Beagles always does, and as I always say I do.

Let's catch up then.  The bible is pretty useless as far as finding advice to run your life.  Money can't buy you love and it is too bad because money is easy and love is hard. 

I had read the story about the Michigan congressman claiming he was being blackmailed by a male prostitute to somehow obfuscate the affair with the congresswoman, and there was some kind of annoyed whistle-blower staffer involved.  I don't know why this story is not getting bigger coverage.  I love these kinds of stories.

In other matters, I believe we agreed that cannibalism is ok as long as you think there is nothing wrong with it, but not if you think there is.  Rationalizing and reasoning are two entirely different things.

So let's go to St Nicholas in 1957.  We both turned twelve that year.  I would vaguely put that as the year I started thinking about things.  The Catholics, you know I always felt that it was their world and we were just living in it.  Those big old churches were everywhere, and they were portals to a whole mysterious code of right and wrong and eternal life.  They were like the part of the museum where they keep the mummies, not that I ever stood foot in one of them, they scared me to death, those nuns in those big black habits and those priests in their outlandish display of hats, omigod the hats.  And all we had was that dinky little Elsdon Methodist church singing The Old Rugged Cross off key in the shadows of the cathedrals.

But for all that, outside of not knowing all those arcane laws, which truth be told our Catholic pals didn't seem to think much about, except to remember it was Friday before Uncle Ken could talk them into getting the pepperoni pizza, we didn't seem to think that differently from them.

The mid fifties on the southwest side were a time of rules, there was a rule for everything and it was up to you to pay attention to them and follow them and nobody would think you were a weirdo, and you could lead a pretty good life with a nice wife and a tv and a car.

You know morality, and here i mean something deeper than do onto others, which comes straight from the heart and is more a feeling than a philosophy, gets pretty complicated pretty quickly if you think about it, and then if you throw in that list of don'ts, no sex (outside of procreation), drinking, cannibalism, graven images, etc, and things like the nature of god, well it just gets really hard for a feller to figure out how do you keep out of that fiery lake.

That's what you have a priest for, to take on that heavy burden, not unlike Christ on the cross.  You know i always thought that part was way overblown.  Christ knew he wasn't going to die, he knew he was going straight back to Heaven.  It was probably painful, but three days of pain, what are they against eternity? 

Anyway you didn't have to worry your mortal little head about that, there was a rule for everything right down to that slice of pepperoni on a Friday night, all you had to do was follow the rules, which were a little constricting.  Why were all those things you wanted to do against the rules?  Why had God crafted you in such a way that you wanted to do all these things that were against the rules?

"Do As I Say, Not As I Do."

I don't know the origin of that quote, but my father used to say it from time to time. I don't think he really believed it, though, I think he used it as a sarcastic joke. Be that as it may, that quote pretty well sums up what most adults told us about sex in the 50s. I don't know what they really did in their own lives because adults didn't like to talk about sex at all in front of the children. The boys talked about it a lot among themselves, but not in front of the girls. All I ever heard the girls say was that you shouldn't do it until you're married. I have no idea what they said to each other when the boys weren't around. Looking back on it now, I think we may have gone too far with our sexual revolution in the 60s, but we had to do something, what they had in the 50s was totally unacceptable.

Like I said, I didn't find the Bible to be much help. There are passages in there that seem to confirm what the adults and the girls were telling us, but only if you quote them out of context. If you read the whole thing, there are lots of examples of people doing it all kinds of ways, and some of them weren't very nice. Like I also said, the Biblical concept of marriage was substantially different than it is in contemporary American culture. It seems like it would be a lot easier to wait until you're married when you could look forward to being married at the age of 12. Well that was the girls, I think the guys had to wait until they could come up enough livestock to purchase a wife, with enough left over to maintain her in the manner to which she was accustomed.

I used to read a lot in those days: books, magazines, newspapers, cereal boxes, whatever I found lying around. Anytime I came across something about sex, I paid special attention to it because I was interested. Then there were the movies and TV shows. They were full of sexual innuendo, although it was much more subtle in those days, so you really had to pay attention. By the time I first got my hot little hands on a copy of Playboy, my mind was already made up, but it was nice to see that somebody else agreed with me. It wasn't just the pictures either, I read it cover to cover, every single word of it. I didn't agree with all of it, but I read all of it just to broaden my perspective.

I was just kidding about wishing I had pursued money instead of sex. I ended up with plenty of money anyway without hardly trying. I only wish the sex had come so easily.

Speaking of sex, you know those two goofy congress persons who are involved in that big sex scandal? Well, it turns out that the guy tried to weasel out of it by claiming he was gay. Apparently it's more socially acceptable these days to be gay than to be adulterous. And you say that they haven't taken over the country!