The Women Holding Minneapolis Together

[AverageOldGuy]

8. My experience with ladies

First -- back in the mid-1950's when I was a pre-teen growing up in a crossroads cotton picking town in South Mississippi, I used the word "women." My grandfather corrected me and told me to use the word "ladies." So I do.

At age 80, I learned a looooong time ago to not mess with ladies. Just don't do it.

My sainted grandmother (1899-1983) was an uppity lady. I learned later that as s teenager she marched with the suffragettes.

My mother was an uppity lady. I was with her one time when a big White guy raised hell with a tiny Black lady. My mother launched on him, chewed his ass, and sent him packing. We moved from Mississippi to an city in East Tennessee where there was a Black ghetto. She went into the Black neighborhoods twice a week -- me and my little brother in tow -- to teach Bible school lessons to the little Black kids. Every so often, someone would give her a ration of shit because she was "going into N####rtown." Remember the Bible story about how Jesus made a whip out of a piece or rope and drove the money changers from the Temple? No one messed with her a second time. At her funeral service in 2007 nine Black professionals who grew up listening to her Bible lessons came to say good-bye.

My wife and daughter are smart-ass, loud-mouthed uppity ladies. Just don't mess with them. My daughter is a trial lawyer -- she wears a pin on her lapel -- a Great White Shark.

And it should surprise no one that much of this work is being led by women.

Because that's the way they are. It's the Momma Bear syndrome -- just don't mess with their cubs. The ladies of Minnesota appear to have adopted the people of Minnesota as cubs.