Greensboro Boy! Why Greensboro Is God's Own

posted by oscar wilde @ 12:36 PM Permalink

Greensboro boy! Why Greensboro North Carolina Is God's Own Little Bit Of Country.

It has lurked there for many a year, tucked away in the back of the mind, but still there none the less.
Not unsurprisingly then that it should be brought to the fore after my recent re-hash of "Dildos in South Carolina" article. I know the true heading should be "sex toys," if one were to be pedantic about things, but somehow the word dildo by far better captures the essence of the story, never more so than associating it with Davenport the sponsor of the sex toys bill.

A bill incidentally that would exact far greater penalties for selling a dildo (5 years + $10,000) than would be received for transgressing most of South Carolina's firearms laws,(section 16-23-20) scant few that they are. (That is some wicked amount of jail time.)
In fact one only has to have a brief scan as to how few controls are in place for gun purchase that the very thought of it is enough to give us Europeans the heeby jeebies.

That said, given the amount of guns that are in circulation, the murder rate, the violent nature of American society and the disproportionate number of nutters that abound there, I too would want weapon, in fact I would want one for every day of the week and two for Sunday's, definitely two for Sundays, one should always make adequate provision for running foul of those suffering from extreme delusions.

I don't write as an anti-gun activist, after all the damage is done, the guns are out there already, little point then in trying to take away the legal ones, can't have a situation where it's just the black hats running around shooting up Dodge, old Hopalong wouldn't have lasted long under those kind of circumstances.

No not anti-gun at all, I couldn't be, not after being a keen skeet shooter myself, so keen in fact I look back and think about the amount of money I smoked down the end of a barrel and think small countries were run on a lesser budget. If that was the case with my skeet shooting, when I took up trap shooting as an added discipline, well, let's not go there shall we.

But there were reasonable controls in place for gun ownership, and after an incident with a nutter of our own controls went from reasonable to strict. Steel gun cabinets bolted to the wall became mandatory for shotguns, pistol clubs disappeared, in fact I don't think Joe public can own a handgun under any circumstances these days.

It was some time after this I had a wee brush with the law, getting pulled for a DUI, subsequently resulting in a riot act letter from the head honcho in blue. The usual yada yada as to my suitability to own a shotgun , the whole nine yards in fact. He sounded a biteen upset, I can't help but wonder how he would have sounded if he knew I had the gun in the trunk at the time of arrest.

You will have to forgive my little digressions, I quite enjoy going off on little tangents, it keeps my interest if not yours.

The late seventies saw me, my wife, and two small daughters living in Canada but tiring of the place somewhat and before our planned return to England a year later fancied a change of scenery, stateside seemed to fit the bill.
Securing a job wasn't a problem at all at all, held in high esteem are we toolmaking Brits, and soon narrowed it down between a choice of two, just let me at this juncture mention pay rates, for no other reason than to highlight how dismally low the minimum wage is at present.
I was making eight dollars an hour in Canada, one of the job choices was in Covina California, a place that was looking the favourite of the two, that rascal paid, albeit for fifty hours per week, twenty eight thousand a year, handy enough money by anybodies stretch.

Still sitting on the fence as to which job to accept I read a bit of something in the paper, not whilst sat on the fence of course. Some poor lass not too far from Covina had run afoul of a crazy who took it upon himself to cut the arms off this lass at the elbows, and really didn't have a reason other than he was an evil bastard, well as the parents of two pre-teen girls you can imagine how quickly the luster of California tarnished. So there we were, mind made up for us.

I'd be thinking, I better check out just what kind of gaff the other place was. So I duly phone yer man down there and basically ask him if it's safe for my wife and kids to walk the the streets, you already know the reply:
Greensboro boy! Why Greensboro North Carolina is God's own little bit of country.

Not two days later the wife and I were watching the evening news and low and behold, an item of news from God's own little bit of country.

Never did get to the States.