In 1949 my parents moved from the small town of East Point, Georgia to a quiet, tree-lined street in the northwest section of Atlanta. There we had wonderful neighbors who became our close friends and with whom we shared life’s joys and sorrows. I could – and probably should – write a book about growing up in that neighborhood during the 1950s and 1960s. Until then, suffice it to say that, according to today’s child safety experts, I was killed or seriously maimed approximately 4,279 times before reaching adolescence. The boys on our block played with bows and arrows, knives, firearms, fireworks, home made explosives (don’t ask), caught snakes and frogs, hunted, fished, went camping, rode bicycles in traffic without helmets, played football without pads, cleats or headgear, beat the snot out of each other (only to shake hands afterwards) and generally lived a life in which helicopter parenting was unknown and in which we learned how to fend for ourselves and solve our own problems. All of it was a gift for which I will always be grateful.

Out of all the fine folks who lived on our street, there was one family – the Wysongs – to whom I gravitated. To me they were and are simply amazing.  Again I could write a book about this terrific family and their exploits and achievements.

In the early 1960s, Mr. Wysong died at a relatively young age from lung cancer. His widow courageously took charge of the family business, a ceramics factory in what was then rural Cobb County, and ran it successfully while raising her four sons and one daughter. She’s now 106 years old and just returned home from the hospital after a brief but serious illness. One of her boys, Gordon, told me that he expects his mother to “outlive us all.” I hope she does.

Now Gordon was the second youngest of the siblings. He was born on Halloween so his folks and the rest of us called him “Spook”. Even as a small child he was a skilled debater. His debating technique consisted of forensic rope-a-dope in which he let his opponent verbally punch himself out and then Gordon would go in for the kill. “You’re not,” he would dismissively tell his opponent, “the boss of the whole world.” Game, set, match, Spook! After all he was right. None of us could ever figure a way around this knock out punch because none of us was the boss of the whole world. QED.

Gordon  grew up to become an engineer, an entrepreneur and for a period of time served as a Cobb County Commissioner. Over the years I have stayed in touch with all the Wysongs, but the last time I saw Gordon was on television in 1993 when he debated and made a complete monkey out of Ted Koppel on ABC Nightline. The topic was a Family Values Resolution sponsored by Commissioner Wysong pursuant to which taxpayer money would not be used to fund plays, entertainments or other public events which promoted lifestyles that were at odds with the prevalent public mores of the taxpayers of Cobb County. Gordon wasn’t advocating the banning of such events. Instead the resolution was merely aimed at not using public money to pay for them.

You will be shocked to learn that Koppel and the rest of the mainstream media characterized the resolution and Gordon as being antigay.

When Gordon was sponsoring the Family Values Resolution, the Olympics were coming to Atlanta. Because he and the resolution were being characterized by the main stream media as homophobic, the Atlanta Olympic Committee threatened not to place any of its venues in Cobb County. To this Gordon and his supporters said in so many words, “Go ahead. Make our day.”

Here’s Gordon’s recent email describing those days.

 

Gordon is now a regular contributor to the American Thinker. Here’s a link to his recent piece predicting that President Trump will be re-elected in 2020. Gordon is a prolific writer, and I get a kick out of his articles. I hope you will click on the link, like what you read and keep on the alert for similar articles by the one and only Spook Wysong. So far in his writing he hasn’t used his “boss-of-the-whole-world” gambit, but I predict it’s only a matter of time before he lowers the boom on some progressive miscreant.

On another front, revised and improved versions of my last two Knowledge is Good blog posts have been published by The American Spectator. You can link to the articles here and here. As usual, many of the the readers’ comments are a hoot. So take a look.

Finally, as requested by subscribers to this blog, I may be reached by email at kignet1@gmail.com.