Harvard Law School '66
THE CHRISTIAN PATRIOTIC FRONT
THE CHRISTIAN PATRIOTIC FRONT is a secular institute organized after Vatican II under the aegis of the Roman Catholic church but not under its authority.
If you want an analogy, think of the Third Order Franciscans, think Opus Dei. You will still be off the mark but you will be getting closer. Think of the knights-errant of the early Middle Ages. Think of John Brown at Harper's Ferry. Now you are very close.
Brother Scott Speedy, a native Pennsylvanian, took his first vows while a student at West Virginia University. [Despite his early profession, Br. Scott was no saint, concentrating on the distribution of wild oats and chugging steins of beer at a sh-t hole called the Underground Railroad. His cohorts included such future W.Va. luminaries as The Hon. John Perdue, the long term State Treasurer---and the last Democrat left standing in the RED SEA of Republicanism---and The Rev. Dr. Daniel Bryan, one of the most respected elders of the United Methodist church.]
The unofficial motto of the Front (voiced most frequently by its detractors) is that ''ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES ONE A VERY DULL BOY" and, to be honest, Br. Scott's progress within the Front was rather checkered (although like Perdue and Bryan, he was a worldly success) until what is known to the cognoscenti as THE SECOND BATTLE OF BLAIR MOUNTAIN. As every Mother's Son in West Virginia knows, Blair Mountain is situate in southern West between Boone and Logan counties, the place where 10,000 marching coal miners fought a pitched battle against 2500 Logan County Deputy Sheriffs (officially, but actually paid employees of the coal operators.) The battle ended only when the President send in federal troops and for the first time in history America--your country and mine--bombed a civilian population in time of peace. This is to the Mountain State what THE BATTLE OF HOMESTEAD is to the Quaker State.
It was in the second battle of Blair Mountain that Br. Speedy "made his bones", as it were. Here, the capitalistic exploiters had set out to strip mine Blair Mountian and then turn this sacred spot into a garbage dump for the eastern seaboard as these fast-buck-fellows have done all over the Mountain State (including my own beloved Wetzel County which has long accepted garbage from New York City.) Br. Speedy entered late into the ranks but it was his fervant testimony that turned the tide. I know, I was there. I drove him to the hearing. I cheered him on. The strip mining permit was denied. PTL !.
Br. Speedy was taking a well-deserved rest at the Front's training complex at the headwaters of Reader Creek in the outback of Wetzel County when a damsel in distress (if members of the Front have a collective flaw, it is that they are unable to resist a sad story coming from a pretty face) approached him as he was unwinding from a tough day of introspection over a bourbon and branch water. She was from Homestead and her dear, dear grandmother was at THE ST. THERESE PLAZA, in Munhall. And her grandmother was miserable.
Grandma had been a parishioner at St. Maximilian Kolbe in Homestead. The ingrates (her children) had packed her off to the PLAZA, sort of a long stone throw away from the place where she had lived for 70 years. For grandma this was both a train of tears and one of broken promises; the tears because the family had dumped her and because the PRESBYTERIAN SENIOR CARE (which by some theological perversion) manages a home adjacent to another Roman Catholic church, a place that I am told was once a convent.
"My grandmother was told: 'YOU'LL ENJOY A WELL-DESIGNED HOME WITH AN EQUIPPED KITCHEN, WALL-TO-WALL AND INDIVIDUALLY-CONTROLLED HEATING AND AIR CONDITIONING.' It's a pack of lies, Brother Scott, it's a bunch of half-truths. The heating and air conditioning are not individually controlled. They are at best a hodge-poge forcing my grandmother and her friends to supply their own fans, dehumidifiers, and air conditioners in the summer and humidifiers in the winter."
But this was only the beginning of the damsel's tale of the woes of her beloved grandmother. "What's even worse, Brother Speedy is that they run the place like the Capital Unit at S.C.I. Greene is Waynesburg, which as you know is the Commonwealth's 'SUPERMAX' prison, housing in solitary confinement 100 plus of the Quaker State's "worst of the worst". They promised 'COMMMUNITY', and it existed for a short period, but the new adminstration wants to keep all of these elderly ladies confined to their rooms 24/7. They positively discourage them from meeting in what used to be the common room. They removed the benches that were outside so that the women couldn't go outside. There's a lot more, Brother Speedy, and I want you, I beg you to go take a look for yourself.
FROM THE DAMSEL'S LIPS TO G-D'S EAR.
The elders of the CHRISTIAN PATRIOTIC FRONT heard the damsel's plaint about her beloved grandmother and immediately dispatched Brother Speedy to the scene. He went "down low" and quickly made application to be a tenant in ST. THERESE PLAZA and after his references were checked took his beggar's cup and prayer shawl and moved in. There he found that things were worse than he had been told. Clearly, the SENIOR CARE NETWORK (an affiliate of Presbyterian Senior Care) was long on promises and short of performance.
To his chagrin Brother Speedy learned that THE PRESBYTERIANS RUNNING A RESIDENCE HALL OWNED BY AND FILLED LARGELY WITH ROMAN CATHOLICS (a most ungodly concatenation to be sure) were apparently talking their cues in how to operate the place from a book put out in California entitled "23/7: The Story of Solitary Confinement in Soledad Prison." The thesis of this book was that the most effective way to handle large numbers of people was to isolate them in individual cells and keep them locked up as much as possible.
After investigating further, Brother Speedy reported back to Brother Umberto that matters were getting worse. The common room was effectively closed down, the computers there were frequently broken and not repaired. In his opinion, the paid staff was becaming more surly and disrespectful to the elderly. The few men that were there decamped. "I can't take this ELEPHANT SH-T anymore from these Neo-Nazi idiots that run this place. They get some sadistic thrill about shoving these old ladies around. Well, I've had it. If I'd known that this place would be a mini-Auschwitz, I would have gone to Florida with my friends. But I always liked me women, you know Brother Speedy, and the thought of being surrounded by 100 of what were once Pittsburgh's most beautiful and devout women seemed too good a deal to turn down," the man said with a wink.
ELEPHANT SH-T?
"Oh, that's from Fritz Perls, the great psychologist. Taught at San Diego State for a while, as I recall. Like Christianity, Caesar's Gaul, and Freud's psyche, he divided things into three parts. You know--but these people that run this place are obviously unaware--the Father, Son & Hold Ghost. This Colleen, do you think that if she were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict her? But Perls said, you got CHICKEN SH-T. Then you got BULL SH-T. But here at St. Therese's you got ELEPHANT SH-T. I'm too old to fight any more, but I ask you, Brother Speedy, to avenge all of these poor women against these NEO-NAZIS WHO WHAT TO SEE THEM LOCKED IN THEIR CELLS 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK JUST LIKE THOSE POOR WRETCHES DOWN AT S.C.I. GREENE IN WAYNESBURG !!!"
And it got worse and then worse. Brother Speedy quietly organizated FREE RANGE SENIORS under the watchful eyes of the Storm Troopers. Slowly, surely he was building a tenant's union. He make inquiries of SEIU, the one union in Pittsburgh that would assist in the formation of a tenants union. And he kept up his argument with management as they went through the THREE STAGES OF FRITZ PERLS' cosmology.
AND THE MANAGEMENT FILED TO EVICT BROTHER SPEEDY!!! And their lawyer SEAN J. CARMODY OF DEUTCHTOWN CENTER (I did not make this address up) threatened to have have him blacklisted "in other HUD housing properties." And this threat was made within a stone's through of the cemetery that contains THE BODIES OF THE VICTIMS OF THE HOMESTEAD MASSACRE. The spirit of Andrew Carnegie and his gun thugs is obviously alive and well in Allegheny County. But BROTHER SPEEDY WILL "GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT." Over half of the tenants have signed petitions opposed to his eviction. Five of these women have vowed to join him on the streets. Just think of the courage it's taken for these quiet Catholic ladies to rise up in the face of potential eviction and support the only human being in the building who has helped them over the past few years.
LETTERS OF SUPPORT (and filthy lucre) SHOULD BE SENT TO ''FREE RANGE SENIORS'' c/o BROTHER UMBERTO, CHRISTIAN PATRIOT FRONT, 317 FOUNDRY STREET, NEW MARTINSVILLE, W.VA. 26155.
Free Range Seniors are Happy Senior.
H. J. Rogers
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