University of Mississippi football standout — songwriter subsequently — Jim Weatherly composed his masterpiece after his friend Bruce Majors’ girlfriend Farah Fawcett announced that she was “leaving on the midnight plane to Houston.” The song took flight after Gladys Knight recorded it using the words “leaving on the midnight train to Georgia.”
Departure occurred because he “found out the hard way that dreams don’t always come true.”
Weatherly learned that lesson as a championship player under Coach Johnny Vaught. The two minutes after kickoff do not predict the entire game. Most people internalize equivalent knowledge early in life.
The message was eloquently explained by Ashley Wilkes in “Gone with the Wind,” responding to romantic blowhards, at his family’s Twelve Oaks picnic, bloviating about their certain success securing the world for slaveholders and white supremacy:
“Most of the miseries of the world were caused by wars. And when the wars were over, no one ever knew what they were about.”
Alastair Cooke, hosting “Masterpiece Theatre,” began subsequent episodes of multisegment programs, “When we last left off…”
“When we last left off,” individuals too feebleminded to appreciate the preamble to the Declaration of Independence: “all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights” and foundational precepts of the Judeo-Christian tradition: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets” and
“Red and yellow, black and white
They are precious in His sight”
They mistakenly fantasized that Fire-Eaters would dominate the debate over slavery during decades preceding the Civil War; deluded themselves that an agrarian economy would vanquish emergent industrial states having vast assets with which to wage war following secession; ate humble pie when conceding to “Unconditional Surrender” Grant at Appomattox Courthouse; saw the face of the future during reconstruction notwithstanding incapacity to recognize reality any better than someone suffering advanced dementia identifies what one should; fooled themselves that victory was stolen from the jaws of defeat during redemption; celebrated prematurely after absurdities such as the 1890 Constitution and Plessy v. Ferguson — pretending the plausibility of separate but equal — were enshrined into law; imagined themselves inerrant in their conviction that massive resistance would succeed as surely as President Kennedy’s commitment to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade; and convinced themselves that the Civil Rights Movement could collapse.
Such serial descent delusion is worthy of satire: Gilda Radner on “Saturday Night Live” referenced — Quitman native Wyatt Cooper’s wife — Gloria Vanderbilt (unbigoted to my knowledge) as “Miss Smartypants:” “Miss Smartypants, you’re getting a bit big for your britches if you believe that white supremacy shall succeed after 200 years of losing battles.”
A line of dominoes fell sequentially, gaining speed geometrically. Those defining the — framed — Central Park Five as rabid animals and believing — absent a scintilla of evidence — that Barack Obama was not born in America shall receive additional disappointment in the not too distant future.
Too many people enjoy rewarding interactions with people unlike themselves for another British Empire — on which the sun never set — prioritizing White Anglo Saxon Protestants to arise.
Akin to The Grateful Dead:
“… Lord he’s gone, he’s gone
Like a steam locomotive, rollin’ down the track
He’s gone, he’s gone and nothin’s gonna bring him back, he’s gone”
Get over it, already!
I was once in London during Comedy Week. A list of the funniest films was published with “The Producers” at the top. I saw the movie soon afterwards, finding it as sidesplitting as suggested:
Two grifters pursue a scam certain that they can forge a theatrical failure and pocket the investment, sold many times over, subsidizing an unprofitable play. As the curtain rises on “Springtime for Hitler,” they retreat to a bar to celebrate success: prematurely.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Losers shall rue being the equivalent of Noel Coward’s mad dogs and Englishmen, eager to “foam at the mouth and run.” Things we will look different when history is written: sooner rather than later.
Jay Wiener is a Northsider
