some nitty gritty memories and pleasant surprises in my terrible 80s :-)

some nitty gritty memories and pleasant surprises in my terrible 80s

After I posted this below at my Facebook, three people I don’t personally know made interesting and unexpected comments, and it went from there.

Me

After Alabama lost to Florida State, I wondered if that might be really good for the Alabama team and its coaches, because that loss demolished their national ranking and flushed all of that rat poison down the toilet. I was wondering about my own self, old, grumpy, many, many football games of a different sort under my belt, some of which went okay, some of which did not. Alabama’s head coach Kalen DeBoer then came to me in a dream one night and said, “Sequoia”. I woke up wondering if his team’s performance would improve, and it did, so far. Underdog Alabama led all the way in a really hard fought game, and beat undefeated Georgia in Athens by 3 points. Alabama’s next game is against Vanderbilt, my alma mater, which beat Alabama last year.

Vanderbilt didn’t win many games when I was there. In fact, I was so tired of watching Vanderbilt football that I did not apply to Vanderbilt’s law school, and I enrolled at Alabama’s law school in Tuscaloosa. My father had said several times that he wished he had gone to law school, because knowing the law was so important In business. I was not ready to work for a living, and law school was a good way to postpone that. I did enjoy law school, and then I was fortunate to clerk for a federal judge in Birmingham, but by the time my term with him was up, I was physically ill and had lost my confidence, and so I went to work for my father’s company, Golden Flake, which felt safer for me, and for my wife and children.

Golden Flake competed against Frito-Lay. Working for Golden Flake turned out to be a big mistake for me and for my father, but I worked very hard for there, and I like to think it became a better company because I was there. I wrote some about that in The Golden Flake Clown’s Tale, now a free ebook at archive.org. I wrote about other things in that book, too. A fellow I barely knew growing up in Mountain Brook, later nick-named the Tiny Kingdom, told me that he took up writing short stories in his retirement, and what I wrote in that book often was taught reading, but he wanted to read it, but the tale kept hopping around and it wasn’t how a book was supposed to be written. I told him that I wrote the book as it came to me and it was like a patchwork quilt and that’s how the Muse wanted it to be.

After working at Golden Flake, I went into the practice of law, with a small law firm whose members did not grow up in The Tiny Kingdom. I liked practicing law pretty well, but something was not entirely right inside of me, and I struggled to stay normal Then, I lost two very important lawsuits in federal court, which I ought to have won if the judges were not programmed to rule against labor unions in one case, and against the federal government in the other case. Those two cases broke my spirit regarding the law was suppose to be dispassionate and simply dispense justice.

Toward the end of my law practice, I wrote three books that upset the residential real estate business and lawyers, and got me a whole lot of television and radio coverage, but the New York Publisher did not have the books in bookstores, and I did not get rich to go along with being somewhat famous. I had so hoped writing would become my career, and it would pay me a good wage.

I finally felt like I was a total failure, at the end of my rope, out of bright ideas, and I asked God to help me, I did not want to die failed, and I offered my life to human service. About ten days later, a couple of angels woke me up in the wee hours and told me I would be pushed to my limits but I had asked for it, and they jolted me three times with spiritual lightning, which freaked me out and at the sane time caused me to feel special. Then, they took me on a very long sometimes wondrous but often very rough ride, which demolished my ego thousands of times and changed how i perceived myself and everything else.

Looking back, I see the angels had in mind that I would write a lot, and it didn’t matter to them whether a lot of people read what I wrote. Only, it that I wrote. And so I wrote a few more status quo disturbing books, some where non-fiction sometimes accused of being fiction, and some were novels sometimes accused of not being fiction, and I wrote tens of thousands of pages of status quo disturbing posts at different blogs, some of which a friend turned into free ebooks at archive.org, as well as all but the first three books and one later book. I don’t know right now if I have another book in me, but I have lots of stories in me, and I have theredneckmystic.com to hold them, and I know how to build new Google blogspot blogs.

Perhaps some cosmic humor, as my father drove me to Ramsay High School in Birmingham for my first day of class in 1956, he said he thought I should sign for a typing course because knowing how to type had been very handy for him in his business life. So, I enrolled in a typing class with another boy I knew from Crestline Heights Elementary School in The Tiny Kingdom, and about 30 young girls who lived in Birmingham and knew nothing about living in The Tiny Kingdom. Today, I thank my father for telling me to take that typing course, and anyone who has wished or might later wish I did not become a writer can blame my father .

Linda

Roll Tide I didn’t know you first worked at Golden Flake I knew a lady that worked there. She brought me chips every week. I can’t remember her name. She was good to me

Me

Thanks, Linda, a whole lot of good people worked at Golden Flake. I worked there many summers before going to law school. Besides my father, I was the other Bashinsky who learned it from the ground up. My father’s father and his brother in law bought it after WW II and made my father a junior partner. The intrigue behind that purchase, never told in writing by anyone but me, is told in the Golden Flake Clown’s Tale,https://archive.org/search?query=the+golden+flake+clown’s+tale

Linda

You n Chris mean a lot for me. Yall are perfect love!

Me

Thanks, after we hitched up about this time last year, I stopped waking up wishing the Lord had taken me in my sleep.

Diane

I was a single working 30-yr-old woman who really wanted to buy a house back when interest rates were around 10 or 12%, unfortunately. But I saved and saved for 2-3 years, and I was determined! and thankfully got approved easily enough for an FHA loan with 10% down. The year was 1989.

Thanks to you!… I was extremely well prepared when it came to making an offer and going through the negotiation process, and holding my own at the closing. I say, “thanks to you” because of your book. The realtor said EXACTLY what you predicted he would say!… When I offered 10% less than the asking price, the realtor said, “You’ll insult the seller with such a low offer“ ha ha. And at closing, when the lawyers said I had to pay for something which was NOT listed on my side of the closing docs, I said “OK, well, we’ll just have to meet back in three weeks when I’ve gotten another paycheck because I’ve already covered my out-of-pocket expenses and I’m not responsible for any more. It wasn’t listed in the Buyer’s Column so I’m done, no closing today.” 

I was NOT intimidated. Thanks to you, I was PREPARED. 

Lo and behold the realtors split the cost for the extra $175 fee the sellers had slipped in… Just like you said they would do! 

The name of your book was “Lambs to the Slaughter.” And it made all the difference for me, buying my first house, and my second and my third, and I just want to say THANK YOU.

Me

Thanks, Diane. The full title to that book was HOME BUYERS: LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER? A Birmingham public relations firm owned by June Cunniff had a fell ow named Yanna Davis working for it. Yanna often was heard on Birmingham’s public radio show, WBHM? Yanna got the producer of the Jane Pauley Today Show interested in the book, and I was interviewed on Today by Jane in early January 1985, as I recall, on her show in NY City. I thought I was gonna be a best seller author. Heh, we plan, God laughs?

Dianne

Well, that book should’ve been a best seller! I recommended it to many of my friends and acquaintances! Some of THE most important advice I’ve ever gotten, for sure.

Porter

I’m from ‘The Tiny Kingdom’ myself. Born in 1956 to Kitty and Van Scott, our family of 6 children grew up eating Golden Flake potato chips, which were the best. My mother Kitty even did television commercials for Golden Flake for a while. My first adventure with filmmaking was when my younger sister and I skipped elementary school to film a commercial for the Bambi Iron Ons that were included in each package of Golden Flake chips. 

I enjoyed reading about your unorthodox career path. Finding our way in life is always a challenge. I too have scrambled to reinvent myself over the years. And I’ve always said that the most useful course I ever took during many years of fancy schooling was my typing class in 7th grade. It’s the basic skill that allowed me to transition to the computer age without feeling inept.

Me

Unorthodox, for sure . Yeah, being able to type really helped me transition to the computer age. When I ran for school board in the Florida Keys and learned half the kids don’t go to college, and the ones that do, most don’t complete college, and those who do, most can’t find decent paying jobs, I talked about that on my blogs and during candidate forums, and I said by the time kids get to middle school they should know how to touch type and be fluent in Spanish and English, and by the time they leave high school, they should have a trade skill that can earn them a decent living. And the school district ’s main focus was to teach kids how to take the ATC test, which was really dumb. And that every school should become a charter school, run by the parents of the kids in the schools using money the school board got from real estate taxes. I came in dead last. Imagine me running for the Mountain Brook school board , telling stories about what it was like growing up in the rich white supremacy kingdom  

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com