Along the Way: Simple pleasure meets political correctness

Raise your hand if you came from a small town with a courthouse at the center of its agrarian universe and a bench on the lawn where wise men gathered.

And they were called — reverently — the “spit ’n whittle” club.

At the heart of all great communities there is a simple but honorable seat of critical study and opinion, where gritty men in overalls and threadbare tweeds gather to scratch themselves and discuss the issues of the day.

They punctuate their arguments with the blade of a well-worn pocket knife, pointing and gesturing and drawing circles in the breeze when not slicing off a thin piece of wood.

These men are members of an honored and cherished, but sadly disappearing body of elder statesmen — a sort of Supreme Court of Common Sense.

Green Valley has no courthouse square or lawn or “spit ‘n whittle” bench that I’m aware of. But we’ve got plenty of seasoned citizens who’d recognize a pocket knife if they saw one, and who’d know which end of it to use.

Tucson is the Pima County seat but the courthouse there is too pretty and its plaza a bit too toney for spitting or for whittling.

Much of our philosophy in Green Valley no doubt comes from the men we see each morning, sweeping the dew from our golf courses with drivers and fairway woods and irons. Their wisdom is deeply thought out but divided and thinned by the amount of brooding and contemplation they feel obligated to devote to the good of their game.

A real “spit ‘n whittle” club would add enormously to this place.

Where to put such a tribunal bench? Well, the Wal-Mart parking lot, perhaps. Or next to the batting cage at the Triple-Play Restaurant on Duval Mine Road. Or a one of the shopping centers.

“Every community needs a “spit ’n whittle’ club,” said Paul Allen, an old friend in Tucson, originally from Boswell, Ind. “We didn’t have a courthouse in Boswell, but we did have a couple of benches along Main Street (two blocks long, bounded on the east by the blacksmith shop and on the west by a long-defunct movie house.

“Men would stop by the benches, sit and chat for a while and then vacate for the next in line. One was a wizened little gent who, winter and summer, wore several layers of clothing, including a scarf around his neck. He looked like the late Grandpa Jones of Hee-Haw fame.”

My own hometown, Carthage, Mo., has a beautiful courthouse, the seat of Jasper County justice. It was burned down during the Civil War, probably by Yankees, but rebuilt and refurnished with a bench for the “spit ’n whittle” boys.

A splinter group, to which my grandfather belonged, “held up” the Bank of Carthage each morning, standing with their backs against the stone structure, discussing the same issues that the rival “spit ‘n whittle” gang was talking about over on the courthouse lawn.

What would an agenda look like for an authenic Green Valley “spit ’n whittle” congress? That’s easy. There’s always state and local politics. Or which big shot at the state capital or county seat we could get to twist the proper arms and bring a Target or a Trader Joe’s to Green Valley. A hospital would be a good thing, too, except that a lot of people die in those places.

Or how about cars? “Spitters ’n whittlers” love to talk about the old cars vs. the new ones. And the names of these cars: remember when we had DeSotos and Oldsmobiles, Studebakers and Hudsons and Kaisers? Instead of Toyotas and Hyundais, Saturns and Nissans and Volvos?

It wasn’t that long ago we had politicians we could rely on, too, as much as that solid, dependable Oldsmobile in the driveway. Ike and Stevenson, Humphrey and Dirksen and Truman. Good men and true.

Ballplayers were more dependable back then. DiMaggio and Williams, Musial and Robinson and Mays. . .they’d never take a performance-enhancing drug. Are you kidding? They didn’t need one.

Singers you could understand -- Green Valley “spit ’n whittlers” could talk about them. Remember when pop singers actually pronounced words? Sinatra, Rosie Clooney, Dean Martin and the always mellow Nat King Cole?

I don’t know if any “spit ’n whittler” ever whittled anything or simply sliced on a chunk of wood till it was worn into nothingness. Doesn’t matter, because it was the conversation that counted. The philosophy. That’s what “spit ’n whittle” wise men give us.

They don’t carve door stops or Christmas tree ornaments. They dissect the world we live in. They shave away the layer upon layer of nonsense we must contend with to get along in this troubled and confusing age.

Of course, there’d be problems in establishing an authentic “Spit ’n Whittle” Supreme Court of Common Sense. First, the EPA would want to look into the spit. Or the very idea of spitting — on the ground. Germs, you know.

Then there’s the matter of pocket knives. Would they need to be registered? Would ownership require a written affidavit, a 12-hour safety class, permits from federal, state and county? FBI clearance, fingerprints, photographs (frontal and side views)?

How about Homeland Security? Should those folks be brought in? If you carry a concealed pocket knife, might you be one of those persons of interest we hear about in crime stories?

Oh, and the question of what to whittle — our wisemen couldn’t just go out and select any tree branch. It might be an endangered tree. Or the roosting place of an endangered bird. The kind of wood shavings landing on the ground from the blade of a Barlow, a Keen Kutter or an Old Timer knife might be a problem.

If you found an acceptable hunk of wood to whittle, what about the shavings? Would they require recycling?

We haven’t even discussed possible lawsuits. Mercy sakes! Maybe a “spit ’n whittle” club isn’t a good idea after all.

Maybe we should instead hire lawyers to gather on a designated town-square, sit in ergonomic recliners with a nice glass of wine and discuss tort reform and Volvos.

And how much better off we are today than when we drove DeSotos and listened to Sinatra.

Former Tucson Citizen columnist Corky Simpson, the first inductee into the Arizona Associated Press Sports Editors Hall of Fame, writes a Friday column for the Green Valley News