Recalcitrance And Intransigence Are Not Virtues

My grandfather was a wretchedly stubborn man. We would often go up to the ‘slop house’ under the viaduct to ‘go tell some lies’ which was the favorite pastime of the Danville yokels. The Slop House was just a restaurant where we’d go get a cup when Granny was sewing.

The old men were either bald or had buzzcuts. Bib overalls and boots were the typical ware but Pop always wore his blue work uniform from Seller’s Engineering. Granny would get the uniforms and tailor them to fit Pop.

In a county full of evangelicals, one of the big concerns was teaching ‘evolution’ which was the work of the devil, apparently. They didn’t have much use for no fancy book-learning and they was sure that the Amish had the best answer for edumacation by only letting their kids go to the eighth grade.

One of the more notable whoppers that went around was the absolute and irrefutable fact that men had one less rib than a woman because god took a rib from Adam to make Eve and if you was to look at an Xray, you would see it for yourself.

Well, it just so happened that I was in the AP Genetics class and studied me some X-rays in my biology class and guess what? Men had the same number of ribs as a woman. When I announced this to the class of rubes, they called me a liar and asked me if I was on god’s side or Satan’s…