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THE ROOM MATE
In Massachusetts where I was born, our history books look at the great oil disaster as the real end of the United States of America. When nuclear bombs were exploded in the oilfields of the Middle East, and thus much of the world's oil supply became radioactive there had to be an alternative to the huge gas guzzling and energy devouring machines which made up the fabric of the modern life of the citizens of the United States of America. Our history books noted that the governor of Iowa, faced with crops that needed to be harvested, decided to take advantage of the section of the Thirteenth Amendment that states:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Iowa had thousands of convicts in its prisons each of whom had indeed been duly convicted of a crime, and hence were being punished for their crimes by time in prison. However, since these convicts HAD been "duly convicted" the Governor asked and the state legislature quickly passed laws which allowed prisoners who had been sentenced to time in prison, to be leased by the state to certified entities like commercial farms and other business entities. Thus in just a few months many inmates who had been used to being in air conditioned prisons where fitted with steel collars around their necks, and steel wrist and ankle cuffs also, and were leased to famers to harvest, plant, and care for crops on their farms. Soon their permissible duties were expanded to other work needed to support and facilitate farm production. In time other businesses and activities were added to the list of what could be the work of these convicts. In a period of a few years a new slave society reappeared. A lack of oil, and a supply of convict human labor was the magic that created this new slave society. Eventually almost all fifty states passed laws allowing anyone convicted of a crime to be placed, after suitable indoctrination and with suitable security measures (read slave training, and steel collars and cuffs) and being kept in chains and in cages and working to help free society return to the quality of life that a lack of oil seemed to have doomed. Although the Supreme Court ruled Unconstitutional making every crime a life without parole sentence for almost any criminal violation, the states had gotten around this problem by allowing extension of periods of months and years for all sorts of slave infractions. For example "Swearing at a Guard or any Freeperson with authority over the involuntary servant" was punished both by strokes of the whip (corporal punishment also came back into vogue along with involuntary servitude) and six months extension of the original period of servitude. Malingering also was punished by strokes and extensions, and it was allowed that repeat offenders would be subject to both more strokes and longer extensions. Therefore for most persons convicted of even minor offenses, unless for some reason a judge would suspend the sentence, which was very rare especially for teen and twenty year old males, the offender might as well consider himself a life slave.
My home state is Massachusetts, and along with Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine are the only states that have not passed laws virtually enslaving anyone convicted of a criminal offense. Even though these laws were NOT passed in these states, workers and citizens did realize that if they did NOT work hard for VERY reasonable wages, that the business owners might start putting a lot of money into legislative races, and that even the liberal voter base of these states might find themselves overwhelmed by slick political advertisements and a conservative landslide in one election.
My family and I were a bit aloof from all this political manipulation and upheaval. We had been quietly wealthy for generations, and although most of our wealth now was ownership of lands and interests in banks and in the revenues of long term leases for the large amount of land we owned from the early period of the state's history to this very day. We now did not own all this land in our name of course, but the land was owned legally by a series of land ownership trusts which had enough layers of obscurity that our family's name was rarely involved in the ownership issues. With this background I followed generations of traditions and attended Deerfield Academy for my early education, and then applied, and was of course accepted into Williams College in Williamstown, MA for my collegiate years. I knew that I would receive an appropriate degree and eventually would either receive an advanced degree in business, economics, or perhaps law. Even though my life was pretty well organized for me, I actually found nothing wrong in following the generations of my ancestors into this comfortable life. We lived in very comfortable houses, but not in showy estates. With this background, you will understand why I was a bit surprised when my roommate information was given to me and I found myself to have a roommate who would came not from one of our New England states but from Tennessee. My family thought about quietly changing this clear mistake in some lower level functionary's work, but I said that perhaps it would be interesting for me to be exposed to someone whose life was so different than mine. After all, Tennessee was a slave state, and my roommate was from a family of wealthy slave holders. Before the reintroduction of slavery they had been farmers of a very large farm operation, but under the involuntary servitude laws, their farms became large plantations, and the slave labor allowed them to supply both food and other crops like cotton , which even those of us in "free" New England used and needed. And I suppose we suppressed knowing that slaves were making the food and natural raw materials for our comfortable lifestyle. I arrived at my room in the dorm, but at Williams, each dorm room was actually a two room suite. The outer room was set up as a "public" room, and had desks for studying and also a couch and easy chairs. The desks had all the connections that a young man of means would want to keep in touch with his friends and family on the ubiquitous social media. I was busy putting my clothing into my closet off the bedroom, and claiming my half of the space in the bathroom for my shaving gear and my soap etc. for my morning grooming. I had just finished with these tasks, and was looking around the room when my roommate came into the room with an opening crash of the door and an exclamation of "GOD DAMN SHIT PISS" and "FUCK!!!" "I think I'm going to put a contract out on Pops for sending me into this hell hole of uncivilized Northern Siberia. Why the Hell you don't have the decency to have some slaves or servants around to do some grunt work rather than making a civilized gentleman act like a common slave dragging his own shit up the stairs." I stared speechless in amazement. This six foot, over two hundred pound mass of muscle and noise had to be my roommate. He put down two suitcases which though large did not look overly taxing for a young man who obviously worked out and seemed perfectly healthy. He looked at me, and I admit that just his sudden, dramatic, and noisy appearance had knocked me off my routine of polite and gentile introductions. I finally stopped my almost open mouthed shock and awe, and moved toward this mass of masculinity that could make two of me, and extended my hand. "Franklin Emerson Wilson Wilkinson," I said smiling politely, although I was actually intimidated and nonplussed by the chaos his appearance at the room had engendered. "Beauregard, Jackson, Thomas Masterson the Sixth." he intoned as he put out his hand. Beauregard, Jackson, Thomas Masterson the Sixth, I thought. What does anyone need a name as long as a sentence, conveniently ignoring that my full name was equally long? What I said was, "Well, Beauregard, Jackson, Thomas Masterson, the Sixth, do I need all those names just to say hello?" "Shit no, I just gave you the whole nine yards to tell you what a pile of crap I have to carry with me. All those names just mean that a whole batch of my elders, and certainly a ship load of ancestors expect for me to learn here in this bastion of Northern learning, and bring back some superior Yankee knowledge to us poor benighted folk in the South." He said that with such an open smile, and walked over to me a put his hand out. "I even requested a roommate who could teach me all the best qualities of the Yankee way of life, and you were listed as the 'Scion of one the oldest and most distinguished families of the State of Massachusetts,' and perhaps the entire free North, and so you are not just some little scared freshman whose family has never been to college either, are you." Again, Beau, as I decided I would call him, was so open, and so clearly enthusiastic, how could I continue with my irritation.. "Well Beau, you are absolutely correct and why don't you just call me Frank, "Frank, I like you already. I was afraid that someone with the degree of ancestry like the school indicated your family has would take one look at meÉ.. just a child of a bunch of generations of farmers."
I was prepared to be irritated by the obvious deprecation of his obvious wealth and position; however, he was just so enthusiastic, I just could not carry out my patrician superciliousness. "Do you have more luggage to bring up?" was my next gambit for a normal college roommate getting to know one another senerio. "Hell yes, and I was looking around for some boys to help me, but apparently the servants assigned to help us get settled in have sneaked off." "Well, sorry to tell you, but the college does not employ a number of servants to do this task. Roommates usually help each other, and there is a welcome corps that the admissions office has put together to help. I will give them a call, and soon you will have a bunch of guys from the fraternities and other upper classmen who just are interested in welcoming all incoming freshmen." "They Want to look over us to see if we might be potential members is my guess." was Beau's easy reply. Again, I needed to remember that under that "good old boy" faade there was indeed a very intelligent and perceptive young man. I suspect he had the "good old boy" act down to professional quality, and I would need to always be aware of that. I reached over to make a call, but Beau stopped me. "I think I might just bring up my college crap myself rather than have me and it rated and made a subject of discussion." Again, I had evidence of Beau's true high perception and intelligence, and also how aware he was that he could play the country boy when it was to his advantage. As I was thinking, I suddenly realized Beau was looking keenly at me, and I was uncomfortably aware that he was learning more about me than he had revealed about himself. Shaking this perception off, I just said "Beau, "I am not too weak a northern Yankee that I could not help my roommate settle in. Let's go down to wherever all your luggage is, and begin to bring it up." Once again Beau was muttering. "If Massachusetts had the sense to get their criminals out of their state provided hotels and out working and helping free citizens there would be plenty of happy and useful convicts servants here helping all of us." As we walked down the stairs I said to my new roommate. "It's true we really have a disgrace with the percentage of our citizens we have locked up in prisons and jails, but consider how much physical fitness we will gain by doing it ourselves." Beau laughed, "Well let's go get our physical fitness while those criminals sit around using YOUR tax money to live in luxury." "I am not sure that I would call the living conditions inside our prisons and jails luxury. I suspect if you ever have the unfortunate chance to spend even a night in one of these places you might change your viewpoint."
By this time we were at the curbside, and I could fairly be sure of Beau's car. I was a very impressive BMW sports utility vehicle. Of course Tennessee license plates also helped. Beside this impressive vehicle were three fraternity brothers who were there to offer their help for incoming freshmen to get their possessions from vehicle to room. I have always suspected, and my father conformed that although the brothers DO provide help, their ulterior motive was to check out incoming freshmen as potential members of their frat. To preserve fairness, representatives of each fraternity were allocated to teams so that every frat could inspect each potential member. I knew enough that an expensive new car would indicate an incoming freshman could pay the house fees and frat dues and help keep the chapter financially viable. Not that the character and values were not also important in selecting a freshman (read politically correct statement, not really to be believed). I personally reflected that a full team had not come to help me. Actually almost none of the frats came to help me as my family had not become organized for several generations, and as I have hinted in my family tradition was as important as that song about it in "Fiddler on the Roof," and so I probably also would be probably offered few, if any, bids to become a member.
Beau immediately showed that he would be interested, and shook all their hands, and indicated that he thought that the brotherhood of a frat could be something in which he was interested, although I noticed he never actually said he would probably join.
Well Beau's even casual indication of interest in joining a frat caused his baggage to be quickly picked up. The frat boys there even called some others to come over to help and so his considerable baggage all moved into our room in one trip. Beau shook all their hands and took their cards. When they had all left Beau disappointed me for the first time. He looked at their cards, and casually dumped them into a trash can by his desk. Beau looked over at me. "My Daddy and I discussed my joining a frat before I came up here. In terms of job connections, my life job is already set. I will take over our plantation. No job interview is needed. And I know just how to swing a paddle to sting like hell. It is one of the corporal punishments for slaves that does not have to be recorded and sent to the Slave Control office in Nashville like a flogging. and I do not see any needed for some frat 'brother' to get off swatting my very generous but very well formed gluteus maximums." My face must have registered my disapproval, and I would come to appreciate how accurately Beau read faces. "Don't give me that look of disapproval. I will allow them a chance to convince me, but their sales talk will have to be great."