On a heat-dome addled Monday in Tewksbury, MA, Ronnie and Rocinante slid into a local convenance store for fuel and to replenish the ice chest. As Ronnie was interacting with the generously inked and dreadlocked counter attendant, his manager, clearly the owner of this mom & pop operation, looked Ronnie in the eye and said, “Do you have an accent?” Now, Ronnie had just returned from another provisions outlet where he overheard a conversation between associates.
“I think this point of sale terminal is malfunctioning in ‘cash mode.'” she said, “I’m gonna set it for cad-only.'” Now, is that a typo on our part? NO! She said “cad,” but what she meant was “card.” So, Ronnie remains a bit perplexed as to whom exactly has the accent.
Ronnie, responding to the convenience store owner said, “It seems nobody has an accent till they get around people with a different one.”
Truer words.
Anyway, we’re in Rhode Island for this post, and for some reason, Ronnie had experienced some sleep irregularities. Not the norm mind you, but it happens and when it does some wild dreams get remembered (example?). Case in point, Day #2 in Coventry, another invasion of Ronnie’s peaceful sleep cycles… a sort of blathering screed about that mostly coastal postage stamp of a state. And who’s the narrator? That cartoon fat man, a walking testament to the American diet and the utter collapse of television censorship, Peter Griffin. Jesus Christ, is this what we’ve come to? There must have been something weird about that clam chowder Ronnie got from the local grocery? The horror, the horror…
Peter, in a fit of fiery indignation, started in on one of the state’s founders, “This Roger Williams character. A refugee, they say. Fled persecution. Bullshit! He was probably just too goddamn weird even for the Massachusetts Puritans, and that’s saying something. He bought some land, probably with a handful of cheap beads and a bottle of rotgut whiskey, and declared it ‘Providence.’ A sanctuary! For who? For the ‘weirdos and misfits,’ the ‘guys who do a little this and a little that.’ Sounds like a goddamn convention of the criminally insane, doesn’t it? ‘Rogue’s Island,’ they called it. More like Rage Island, or Rancid Island, a Petri dish for every festering perversion known to man…” Suddenly, a voice from the men’s restroom, “Giggity!” Then silence.
He continued, “And the Constitution! Oh, the glorious, blood-soaked parchment of American liberty! While the rest of the nascent republic was trying to cobble together some semblance of order, Rhode Island was apparently sittin’ on the couch like, ‘Nah, I’m good. I’m readin’ the Farmer’s Almanac.’ Good Christ!” Peter was on a roll. “The sheer, unadulterated laziness of it! Not principled dissent, mind you, but pure, unadulterated apathy, only stirred into action by the threat of losing their ‘beer money.’ This wasn’t a fight for freedom; it was a shakedown, a desperate scramble to avoid the inevitable taxation that always follows the grand pronouncements of liberty.”
Peter signaled the bartender for another round and pressed on. “‘Ocean State,’ they crow. Four hundred miles of coastline! Fourteen percent water! As if this is some grand revelation. It’s a goddamn island, you morons! What did you expect, a desert? It’s like boasting your bathtub is full of water. It’s a transparent attempt to distract from the real stench, the profound, unsettling truth about this place.”
In the hazy mist of the dream, Ronnie wasn’t a hundred percent sure to whom Peter was directing his rant, but the outlines of his Afro-Cuban neighbor, Cleveland, began to materialize, a half-empty beer in front of him. Peter, looking skyward in righteous reverie continued, “And the slavery, oh, the slavery! ‘First to abolish,’ then ‘Just kidding!’ A legislative sleight of hand, a cynical wink and a nod to the rum distilleries and the triangular trade. Six point three percent of the population enslaved in 1774, almost double the New England average. Don’t tell me about ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ when the very foundation of your prosperity was built on the backs of stolen lives. It’s the same old hustle, isn’t it? Preach the gospel of freedom while your pockets are stuffed with ill-gotten gains. The hypocrisy, man, it’s enough to make you chew your cartoon arm off.”
“I like rum,” Cleveland said, his deadpan delivery barely audible in the wake of Peter’s fog-horn tirade.
“Rogue Island,” Peter lampooned, “first to tell England to buzz off, last to join the Union. A pattern emerges, doesn’t it? A chronic inability to commit, a perpetual state of adolescent rebellion, always wanting to be the special snowflake, until the big boys threaten to cut off their allowance. It’s not courage; it’s just plain pig-headedness.”
“And the voting! Jesus… the goddamn voting! You needed $134 in property, for Christ’s sake! By 1840, only 40% of white men could vote. It’s a system rigged from the start, designed to keep the unwashed masses in their place, to ensure that the propertied few could continue their grotesque charade of democracy. And this ‘Dorr Rebellion‘… a pathetic, localized spasm of outrage, quickly squashed, leaving the fundamental rot untouched. The Supreme Court, naturally, ‘wouldn’t touch that.’ Why would they? It’s all part of the grand, unspoken agreement to keep the boot on the neck of the regular folks here at the Drunken Clam.”
The rest of Peter’s drinking buddies began to materialize. Peter soldiered on, “then the vampires! Good Christ, the vampires! Tuberculosis, they say, but the rubes, the goddamn rubes, they saw bloodsuckers. Digging up bodies, burning hearts. It’s not just a historical footnote; it’s a profound metaphor for the state of the superstitious soul. When faced with the inexplicable, we resort to primitive rituals, to burning and fear, rather than confronting the cold, hard facts. And a ‘vampire heart’ for a couple of beers? That’s the kind of logic that gets you locked up in a padded room with a straightjacket.”
“The Civil War, the Gilded Age, the KKK burning a school for black children… a relentless parade of entitled ugliness. Industrial might built on exploitation, wealth amassed by robber barons, and the persistent, festering cancer of racial hatred. And the Catholics! The most Catholics! Just another demographic shift, another wave of huddled masses yearning to breathe free, only to find themselves crammed into textile mills and subjected to the same old Capitalist grind.”
Peter was beginning to sound like a Billy Joel song, “Bike paths, clam chowder, johnnycakes… meaningless diversions, crumbs thrown to the masses to keep them from noticing the true horror. And the mob! The Patriarca family, running New England from Providence for forty years. Now that’s the real power, isn’t it? Not the politicians, not the courts, but the silent, brutal efficiency of organized crime. It’s the only thing that makes sense in this goddamn asylum.”
“And the ultimate indignity?” Peter was starting to sound magnanimous, humble, even. “The state’s defining cultural artifact is a cartoon, a crude, blustering, ironically lovable cartoon with absolutely no redeeming qualities.”
Peter Griffin, working at the Pawtucket brewery, lampooning the very place he inhabits. It’s the final, damning indictment. Rhode Island, a place so steeped in its own absurd contradictions, that its best legacy is a perpetual punchline delivered by a cartoon with a metric ton of ironic jokes, none of which are too good to be driven into the ground or, “the bottom of Greenwich Bay you landlubbers.” Say what you will about Rogue Island, it can’t get weird enough for Ronnie & Rocinante… they love it here.
Onward through the fog… Rohlfie
When the Puritans…
Come off too venomous…
You’ve Rhode Island…
For your providence…
Four hundred miles of…
Shore line restlessness…
Meet me and Griffin…
At the Drunken Clam.
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