WEBVTT

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"The only sure thing were the
prices and the temperatures.

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Two pounds of Oleo cost $0.25.

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And five cans of Cherokee
freestone peaches are $1.

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The Cosmos Club
president held a tea

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at her lovely lakeside home.

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Two more Big Tree boys
make fine soldiers.

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A Rolling Stone was found in
the bottom of his swimming pool.

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Rufus Thomas and
his Bear Cats will

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headline at the Negro fair.

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And Miss Teenage Arkansas,
a comely young miss,

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is saluted once again for
her charm and pulchritude.

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Sunshine fresh Hydrox
cookies, 1 pound for $0.59.

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The assistant warden,
at 300 pounds,

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is the one identified
for administering

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the strap at the Arkansas pen,
a self-sustaining institution.

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Several say they were beaten for
failing to meet cotton quotas.

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Others more often than not did
not know why they were beaten.

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One testified to more
than 70 beatings.

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The strap is not in question.

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In question is when it
is to be administered."

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"The river is
impounded by the lake.

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Below the lake the river
enters the lowlands,

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it slithers through
Cypress and willow.

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And the air itself,
cloudy or clear,

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stirring with smoke or dust or
malathion, if you get my drift,

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must not be construed
to be indivisible.

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No more than blood.

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There is black blood
and white blood.

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There is black
air and white air,

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this includes the air
in the tires blowing out

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over the interstate
between town and river,

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the air that riddles
the children when a crop

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duster buzzes a schoolyard,
the air that bellows

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from the choir of robes when the
Very Reverend Pillow bids, Be

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seated, and even the air socked
from the jaw of the champ,

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born 17 miles west, in
Sand Slough, when he took

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that phantom punch the year
in which this particular round

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of troubles began.

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Today, Gentle Reader,
the sermon once again

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'Segregation After Death."

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Showers in the AM.

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The threat they say is
moving from the east."

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Sorry.

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"Yeats she knew--

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[INAUDIBLE]."

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"And on the other
side of Division,

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a whole other population
in year-round lockdown.

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A girl that knew
all of Dante once

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lived to bear
children to a dunce.

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Yeats she knew well enough
to wield as a weapon.

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It would pop out
when she was put out.

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Over the ironing board.

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Over cards.

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Some years the Big
Tree Catholic foursome

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would all be pregnant
at once, playing bridge,

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their cards propped up
on distended bellies.

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Laughing their
bourbon-logged heads off.

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She had a brain like the Reading
Room in the old British Museum.

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She could have donned
fingerless gloves

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and written Das Kapital
while hexagons of snowflakes

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tumbled by the windowpanes.

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She could have made
it up whole cloth.

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She could have sewn the
cotton out of her own life.

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While the Thames froze over.

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She loved words.

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Cats.

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Long-playing records.

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Laughter.

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Men.

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Alcohol.

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Cigarettes.

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The supernatural.

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It makes for a carnal list.

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Pointless to rank.

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Five in diapers
at once, a stench

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she claimed she
never got used to."

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"It gradually turns
from clear to coffee,

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the river receives another
river near its mouth

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and joins the mighty river
to the south of Helena.

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Yoncopin are the lilies in
the ditches, pretty bloom

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for a filthy drainage
ditch, isn't it now?

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An Arkansas arc is not a
rainbow but an old iron bridge

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over troubled brown waters."

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"DEAR ABBY, when Daryl
and I were first married,

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he asked me to iron
his undershorts.

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His mother always did.

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At first I didn't mind
because we had no children,

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but now have two, and I
could save a lot of time

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tossing them in the
dryer and folding them,

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but I tried that once and I
never heard the end of it.

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Daryl says he could
'feel' the difference.

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What would you do?

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DEAR TOO MUCH IRONING, I
would iron his underwear.

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You are wasting more energy
complaining and arguing

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than it takes to iron seven
pair of shorts once a week.

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Everybody has a problem.

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What's yours."

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"In Big Tree People are
reading their Bibles in bed.

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Their laces hang by
their walking shoes.

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People are dreaming money semen
and boll weevils on the creep.

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Some could be
soothed by a mourning

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dove some would be soothed
by the Prince of Peace."

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"Love then, she was
all but dying for,

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except the love of
Catholic men, who did not

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live to love for whom it
was an article of faith

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that life is and forever
shall be, for suffering.

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V like to say, it makes
martyrs of the women

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and emasculates the men.

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If religion, she
also liked to say,

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is the opiate of the
masses, fundamentalism

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is the amphetamine.

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That busted us up.

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The hierarchy, indisputable.

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The hereafter, actual.

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Sin, she believed in.

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That she was born in
and bound to do it,

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she was likewise accepting
of being sinned against.

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Injustice she rejected.

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Through and through.

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Something else, lie, was
not in her vocabulary.

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The pure inflammatory
truth she could take it,

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and Gentle Reader, she
knew how to inflict it.

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The night the town
erupted, the night they

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beat the Memphis organizer,
the Man imported from Memphis,

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the City of Good Abode, the
self-named Invader, the tag

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was picked from a
sci-fi show; it stuck,

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and it send its message
straight to the eighth nerve."

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"Graduate of the
all-Negro high school,

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I did not participate
in the uprising.

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I was in the band
room, practicing.

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Keeping time.

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Our mother was very strict.

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What was your band called.

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Come again.

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Your band.

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You got me there."

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