Second Chance Ranch, the structure, was built in 1953. An addition was tacked on a few years later and the detached garage built sometime before 1960. Along with mid-century character, it still has a bunch of mid-century parts.
The bathroom fixtures, for example, are charming — Mamie Pink in the hall bath, Ming Green off the master bedroom. Both toilets are much-coveted (and politically incorrect) high-capacity models, made before federal regulations strangled our household thrones to 1.6 gallons. They’re in good shape, but they’re also almost 70 years old.
Not long after we returned last month the Ming toilet developed a problem that’ll mean replacing the wax seal and some subflooring, maybe more. That’s no big deal in our daily life, since we have a working Mamie.
Or we did, that is, until last night, when she refused to drain. All attempts to plunge her failed. Fortunately we had the option of taking our business out to Ernie while we awaited a plumber.
It took him a half-hour this morning to get Mamie working again. All’s well.
Ernie continues to mark time in the driveway. A freak cold snap, dropping last night’s low to 22°F, had us running the furnaces again. Looking at the extended forecast, we may not be completely out of the sub-freezing woods ’til mid-month.
The upcoming week should bring us a dumpster, allowing us to accelerate our household purge. And because we can’t do everything — or everything at once, anyway — we’re hiring a guy to clear leaves and branches that weren’t dealt with last fall. I’ll mow the lawn myself as long as we have a lawn and a mower (which eventually we’ll auction off).
I will, however, have to throw a charger on my rider. Like my truck’s battery was, that one’s dead, too.
I visited Disneyland with my family in 1968, when I was 11 years old. A couple of years later, while vacationing in Florida, we drove out into the swamps to view the Disney World Preview Center, and as an adult in the ’90s I spent several days at Walt Disney World itself.
Throughout my formative years Disney was a reliable ally of parents everywhere, endorsing and actively promoting traditional American values. Walt Disney himself, obviously a practicing capitalist, was (eventually) socially conservative and supported Republican candidates.
That doesn’t mean he was an unwavering friend to Liberty-minded Americans, however. “The one thing I learned from Disneyland,” he once said, “was to control the environment.” Within the Magic Kingdom that was fine, but his penchant for control made him a proponent of social imagineering that extended beyond the gates of his theme parks.
For evidence, look no further than his vision for the “Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow.” What we now know as “E.P.C.O.T.” originally was conceived not as a theme park but as a city unto itself, manufactured and managed according to Walt Disney’s view of what the world needed to become:
“It will be a planned, controlled community, a showcase for American industry and research, schools, cultural and educational opportunities. In E.P.C.O.T, there will be no slum areas because we won’t let them develop. There will be no landowners and therefore no voting control. People will rent houses instead of buying them, and at modest rentals. There will be no retirees; everyone must be employed.”
That’s not creepy at all, now, is it?
Still, through its franchises and productions, for decades Disney was pro-America and good for America. The company didn’t need a “diversity and inclusion manager” because the value of all persons was a lesson taught through its characters naturally. Disney told the stories and left raising children to parents.
The House That Mickey Built no longer exists, of course. In fact, a re-imagineered Disney has led the entertainment industry’s lurch to the left. Making the news this week was the company’s scrubbing of “ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls” (and other biologically indisputable gender-specific language) from its theme parks.
Reportedly an infinitesimal minority of employees bullied the company into adopting this idiotic newspeak. After what I’ve seen of the latter-day Disney, I say that was a short trip and didn’t take much of a push.
The move is a thinly veiled rebuke of Florida’s new “Parental Rights in Education” law, which was signed by the governor on Monday and takes effect July 1st. The People of Florida, through their elected officials, drew a bright line between a progressive threat and their children. Opponents, including Disney, want the Left’s grooming-and-indoctrination tactics to be inflicted on children as early as kindergarten, even if a child’s parents object.
That’s consistent with a long-standing tenet of progressive ideology. You may remember a certain liberal anchor — y’know, the one who wore tampons as earrings — saying this almost a decade ago:
“We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families.”
To right-thinking Americans that’s intolerable, whether it comes from media, from a corporation or from the State. I’m pretty sure that Walt Disney, whatever else he may have been, would’ve found it unacceptable, too.
Today’s Disney is waging war on America and its culture. It’s succeeded in erasing any nostalgia I might’ve harbored for the days when “A dream is a wish your heart makes” came without Orwellian baggage.
As much as I hate to say it, Disney has become the enemy.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB
(Today’s header image — washing the Ranger, a month ago on The Mountain.)