My father, the ultimate rough-house man with a hair-trigger temper for violence, had a saying: “No matter how much a woman pisses you off, you never lay a hand on her.”
My mother was an expert at inciting him when he had it coming, and they argued constantly, earning us the neighborhood tag as the 'battling Franklin's.” Mother's piercing barbs sent Dad into rages where he kicked, threw and punched inanimate objects, but he never laid a hand on mother.
Dad was also from an old school where you kept your hands off women when courting them, unless they invited you to, because it was THEIR decision, and besides, why would a man force himself on a woman romantically and sexually when he is not wanted?
And what fulfillment did he achieve unless he felt a need to dominate or conquer what he deemed a weaker species unable to defend itself—a form of bullying. What satisfaction is there in foisting yourself on a woman who is in a helpless position unless it is to feed a pathetic ego or biological need that cannot be controlled and if not should he punished by the law or protected by a man whose manners and values will not stand for the encroachment on a woman's rights.
What we might call a “rape of the spirit,” which is a code the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, evidently lives by.
My Dad had a solution in how to treat such abusers. My mother had five sisters, and when one of my uncles beat up my aunt Bonnie down in San Diego, Dad drove straight down from our home in Compton and gave my uncle a merciless beating, and afterwards warned him if he touched her again in such a manner he'd receive a beating worse than death.
My uncle never laid another hand on my aunt.
********
Dad grew up in a brutally tough neighborhood in Chicago as the only Russian Jew surrounded by anti-Semitic Germans and poles. From his earliest childhood he was bombarded with terms like kike, sheenie and Jew-boy and gang beaten or mauled by older bullies. Worse, his two sisters were spat upon by these same bullies and called Jew bitches and Jew whores. By the time dad reached puberty, and had spent time in the same boxing gym that spawned a champion named Barney Ross, and became a champion amateur himself, Dad found all these attackers and pummeled them into bloody submission.
In high school, where he starred in sports to such an extent he played at the university of Illinois and later for the Detroit Tigers, dad was still on a crusade of protecting his sisters and shoved some of their offender's snoots in urinals while ambushing others in parks and administering them beatings “they'd never forget, beatings they'd think twice about before they ever decided to spit on or abuse a girl again.”
Growing up in Compton, a blue-collar town with not a few rough-necks and rowdy families destined to produce future criminals to do time in prison, there was a clan that lived two doors down from us, the Merrit's,
The Merrit's were transplants from Oklahoma, a brood of five boys and a girl, and just for the hell of it, their youngest boy, who was six, spat on my sister Susan, who was five and 5 years younger than me, and sent her home crying one afternoon while mother was in the kitchen and I was out playing ball. When dad got home later that evening, he dragged me over to the Merrit's and knocked on their screen door while the boys lounged about on the yard full of jalopies and tires and various debris. When the wife came to the door, dad asked to see Blackie, the father, who worked on the oil rigs at Signal hill in Long Beach and considered himself a tough guy.
The wife said, “Blackie's having a beer, Franklin, get off our porch.”
“Either you get him or I come in after him,” Dad told her.
When Blackie came to the door with a sneer, dad ripped open the screen door and snatched Blackie by the neck and hurled him off the porch onto the lawn and pounced on him, hammered him twice with punches and then turned him over and shoved his face in to some dog turds and told him to “pray for your life.” While doing this, he addressed the Merrit boys, who stood rather shell-shocked: “Any of you little bastards as much as look at my daughter from here on out, I'll kill this sonofabitch and you'll all starve to death.”
He let Blackie up and we returned to the house, and he told me, “this is what we do when people mess with our women.” And from that point on the Merrit boys steered clear of our family and were polite when they ran across us. Today, my Dad would go to jail for such action—the very same place Donald Trump belongs, because no woman or girl should have to worry about any man putting his hands on her without their consent when it comes to sex or romance, and no man should ever expect to strike a woman physically for any reason without expecting to go to jail—or receive the kind of savage and unforgettable beating my Dad gave any man who inflicted pain on a woman.
“Any man treats a woman that way's not much of a man,” Dad said. If he was around today he'd want to do what a lot of men want to do to Donald trump—beat him to a pulp and throw his ass in jail...this very same despicable coward who leads his followers in chants of putting Hillary Clinton, a woman, in jail.
My mother was an expert at inciting him when he had it coming, and they argued constantly, earning us the neighborhood tag as the 'battling Franklin's.” Mother's piercing barbs sent Dad into rages where he kicked, threw and punched inanimate objects, but he never laid a hand on mother.
Dad was also from an old school where you kept your hands off women when courting them, unless they invited you to, because it was THEIR decision, and besides, why would a man force himself on a woman romantically and sexually when he is not wanted?
And what fulfillment did he achieve unless he felt a need to dominate or conquer what he deemed a weaker species unable to defend itself—a form of bullying. What satisfaction is there in foisting yourself on a woman who is in a helpless position unless it is to feed a pathetic ego or biological need that cannot be controlled and if not should he punished by the law or protected by a man whose manners and values will not stand for the encroachment on a woman's rights.
What we might call a “rape of the spirit,” which is a code the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, evidently lives by.
My Dad had a solution in how to treat such abusers. My mother had five sisters, and when one of my uncles beat up my aunt Bonnie down in San Diego, Dad drove straight down from our home in Compton and gave my uncle a merciless beating, and afterwards warned him if he touched her again in such a manner he'd receive a beating worse than death.
My uncle never laid another hand on my aunt.
********
Dad grew up in a brutally tough neighborhood in Chicago as the only Russian Jew surrounded by anti-Semitic Germans and poles. From his earliest childhood he was bombarded with terms like kike, sheenie and Jew-boy and gang beaten or mauled by older bullies. Worse, his two sisters were spat upon by these same bullies and called Jew bitches and Jew whores. By the time dad reached puberty, and had spent time in the same boxing gym that spawned a champion named Barney Ross, and became a champion amateur himself, Dad found all these attackers and pummeled them into bloody submission.
In high school, where he starred in sports to such an extent he played at the university of Illinois and later for the Detroit Tigers, dad was still on a crusade of protecting his sisters and shoved some of their offender's snoots in urinals while ambushing others in parks and administering them beatings “they'd never forget, beatings they'd think twice about before they ever decided to spit on or abuse a girl again.”
Growing up in Compton, a blue-collar town with not a few rough-necks and rowdy families destined to produce future criminals to do time in prison, there was a clan that lived two doors down from us, the Merrit's,
The Merrit's were transplants from Oklahoma, a brood of five boys and a girl, and just for the hell of it, their youngest boy, who was six, spat on my sister Susan, who was five and 5 years younger than me, and sent her home crying one afternoon while mother was in the kitchen and I was out playing ball. When dad got home later that evening, he dragged me over to the Merrit's and knocked on their screen door while the boys lounged about on the yard full of jalopies and tires and various debris. When the wife came to the door, dad asked to see Blackie, the father, who worked on the oil rigs at Signal hill in Long Beach and considered himself a tough guy.
The wife said, “Blackie's having a beer, Franklin, get off our porch.”
“Either you get him or I come in after him,” Dad told her.
When Blackie came to the door with a sneer, dad ripped open the screen door and snatched Blackie by the neck and hurled him off the porch onto the lawn and pounced on him, hammered him twice with punches and then turned him over and shoved his face in to some dog turds and told him to “pray for your life.” While doing this, he addressed the Merrit boys, who stood rather shell-shocked: “Any of you little bastards as much as look at my daughter from here on out, I'll kill this sonofabitch and you'll all starve to death.”
He let Blackie up and we returned to the house, and he told me, “this is what we do when people mess with our women.” And from that point on the Merrit boys steered clear of our family and were polite when they ran across us. Today, my Dad would go to jail for such action—the very same place Donald Trump belongs, because no woman or girl should have to worry about any man putting his hands on her without their consent when it comes to sex or romance, and no man should ever expect to strike a woman physically for any reason without expecting to go to jail—or receive the kind of savage and unforgettable beating my Dad gave any man who inflicted pain on a woman.
“Any man treats a woman that way's not much of a man,” Dad said. If he was around today he'd want to do what a lot of men want to do to Donald trump—beat him to a pulp and throw his ass in jail...this very same despicable coward who leads his followers in chants of putting Hillary Clinton, a woman, in jail.
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