THE THIRD GENDER

Why do you suppose I nearly always start my blogs by saying, “A long time ago” or maybe “Many years ago”? because that’s what I have to say now, many years ago, which will be prehistoric for most of you, I am sure, but anyway, that’s when it was, a long time ago, when  I went to school in a suburb of Boston.  This was so long ago it was before WWII!

In our high school history classes we (my sister and I) had a wonderful instructor, Edward Rowe Snow. Every student should have an instructor like Mr. Snow. He made you glad to be an American!

He was known as the Flying Santa Claus because each Christmas for years, students collected gifts which he delivered by dropping them from  his small plane at  lighthouses up and down the East Coast.  Now, of course, automation has replaced the lonely life of the Light Tenders.

Mr. Snow was a history teacher at the local high school my sister and I attended in our junior and senior years.  We had transferred there from the midwest.  We were signed up for English History, ancient history and American history.  Mostly what we got was the history of the Revolution in the Boston area which many residents boasted was the “cradle of liberty.”  Histories of those epic-making Revolutionary War days, make you realize how great the people of that era really were and what they endured to get out from under tyranny.

Come Isummer Mr. Snow was known to canoe   groups of teens  to the islands in Boston harbor, particularly, as I recall,  Governor’s Island which has the remains of a fort.

This became of particular interest to Mr. and Mrs. Snow one time when he related the story of one prisoner who escaped,  as I recall, through heating a gun slit, expanding the opening allowing him to slip out the  narrow aperture.

One of Mr. Snow’s more aggressive students, Priscilla,  decided to try this, except she didn’t have anything to heat the stone with, she just tried to get through the gun slit and found it was too small (or her hips were too wide) but neither could she back out!

I wasn’t there that time, but we were in the same class, so I  heard about it and also from her brother, Eugene, who spent his evenings on our front porch.  Once,  with the connivance of our father, Euie pulled a dirty, dirty trick on my sister and me.  I’ll tell you in a moment, but back to Priscilla who was stuck in the window. 

Mrs. Snow sent all the fellows packing so she could remove some of Priscilla’s more intimate garments and oiled her down with salad dressing to get her unstuck from the gun slit! This story was told so often It became an historical anecdote!

Euie, her brother, was working his way thru college in Boston on a  program in which he went to school for 6 weeks and then worked 6 weeks.  So he had a job in a factory where they made gum which looked like Feenamint, but he said,  wasn’t. (Maybe you mikght not know, Feenamint was a laxative.)  My sister and I were at choir practice one night when Euie came to the house.  In our absence he  left some of the gum pellets with our father. When we returned home the open package of gum was conspicuously placed right under the hanging Tiffany lamp over the center of the round oak dining room table.  It was so conspicuous, I was suspicious.  Not so my sister.  Oh, no!  She who rarely chewed gum grabbed a handful.  I took just one.   If  they weren’t Feenamints, they were the next best to it. 

The next day Margie spent her time making numerous very rapid trips to the head, at the top of the stairs on the second floor. It was the only bath in a remodeled sewing room in this 1880’s Victorian frame house. 

On one hurried trip up the stairs, she met our father halfway, paused  with his arms extended from the wall to the balustrade. “What’s your hurry?” he asked her.

“Come on, daddy,”  she squealed, “I’ve got to go!”  She pleaded with him and eventually,  he allowed her to pass. 

That 3-story Victorian frame house  we rented contained furniture I always wondered  how it  managed to get to the second floor bedroom my sister and I shared, it was so large.  Ignorant of antiques, yet I could not help admire a huge black walnut ladies’ dressing table in a corner of the bedroom, containing an exquisite  tall mirror between two marble-topped side arms over a drawer.  (I was so ignorant of antiques I did not like that Tiffany lamp hanging over the dining room table and the first time I saw the Antiques Roadshow, I revised my opinion of Tiffany lamps, and wondered whatever happened to it?)

All that was long before WWII and it wasn’t until 1974 I could return on a business trip from California to the Boston area and again in 1979.    I discovered Mr. Snow was still making trips around the Harbor, but now it was on a large boat for tourists.  Of course, I had to make the trip and hurried off to buy a ticket and board the ship.  ship. I sat next to the railing on the top deck and as Mr. Snow came aboard to narrate from a glass-shielded cabin, he saw me,  and looked rather puzzled, as if he knew he should know me. When he finished greeting his admirers, I went over to him and said, “Class of ‘40.”  Open Sesame! 

To the consternation of the other tourists I was invited to ride with him in the glass enclosure from which he narrated the sights we were seeing.   Eventually we docked at Governor’s Island where I decided to break this up and took refuge in the ladies loo where I waited and waited and waited.  I did not want to climb and walk the trail to the fort, my shoes were not convenient for such a ramble. and  my feet hurt already.

When I thought enough time passed,  I opened the door to find a long line of tourists waiting impatiently  immediately outside the rest room door.  I stood on the threshold,  shocked, with LADIES emblazoned  over my head.  Although Mr. Snow was out of sight,  I  heard him roaring,  “Where is she?  Where is she?”  There was nowhere to flee . Every eye in that long line shifted to the opening door where I stood in shock.  I saw their  puzzled faces wondering who was this mystery woman?  As I stepped down, resigned to my fate, and passed  to the front of the line, I muttered over and over, “Class of 40, Class of 40.” With a collective sigh, the line relaxed!

The only thing important about that anecdote is the expression, “Cradle of liberty.”  I don’t know what has happened to those people, once so proud of their heritage.  Why would they keep voting the late Ted Kennedy back into office with his miserable record? What pray tell, could he know about the average working man’s life?  We thought of him as “Chappaquiddick Dick” and scarcely adequate material for so exalted a position as a U.S. Senator.  Well, what did we know?  I guess by now there are worse who have born that once honorable title.

And now, the area is the “Cradle of License!”  More of the aberrant futuristic ugliness seems to be passing through their State Legislature than most of the other states combined!

The Supreme Court of Massachusetts, it was said, recognized Alger Hiss’s guilt as a Soviet spy, but since he was only found guilty of perjury, they restored his right to practice law, plus he was able to collect a government pension until he died.

Massachusetts was also the first state to get into the third gender controversy as well.  Of course, now the State has the help of the Feds with Obama proclaiming June as “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender pride month,” according to news reports.  So, even though the Legislature of Massachusetts had to cut government costs all down the line, they still raised funds for “homosexual programs in the public schools.” which apparently has a strong lobby in the State House. even though there is  strong resistance, as well. (MassResistance.com, P.O. Box 1612,  Waltham, MA 02454)

You can’t help but wonder how such a small percentage of people could wield such power at the State and national levels, because traditionally there aren’t over 3% of the populace into that culture.  However, I remember that a member of the Communist Party vowed to change that, and apparently he has.

Harry Hay was an organizer for the CPUSA who appeared before a government committee in July, 1955, where he took the 5th Amendment in response to his Communist Party membership.

This is interesting in view of the appointment by Mr. Obama of a man named Kevin Jennings as “Czar” of safety for children in school.  It seems that Mr. Jennings in a 1997 speech boasted of his relationship with Harry Hay who was his “mentor.” Mr. Jennings doesn’t keep his identity as a member of the 3rd gender a secret either.   Hay had a web site for several years before his death where he did not hide his relationship with the CPUSA, either. 

Hay read the discredited Kinsey report in 1948 which incited him to found in 1950 a secret society he called The Mattachine Society, after Renaissance males who hid their faces behind masks.  Very appropriate title, but since then has been superseded by more radical non-secret societies, which have gained a surprising amount of support among non-gay society.  You can find more information in my book, In the Presence of Our Enemies, and if you haven’t a copy, but want one, let me know for there is much more to tell.

The sad thing is  its  entre’ into the younger classes of Massachusetts’ schools, now no longer the cradle of liberty, but of license.  The assault s on the foundations of this country are immense, but sadly, most Americans are so brainwashed they don’t even recognize this.