Barefootin' the Park: Remembering Billy Jack
Celebrating a Deathday: Citizen Peacekeeper Billy Jack® died barefoot and kickin' arse on this day, December 12, 2013. While 'tis always sad to lose a fellow lawman — even a bloody unauthorized one like Jack — celebrating his goodly deeds takes the sting from his passing. A tribal-hatted truthseeker nonpareil, Billy Jack was a half-paleface, half-russet-skinned Hapkido master who walked softly, but whose karate-chopping hands and bony feet spoke volumes. His brand of jujutsu justice was called into question by some, but not by Yours Truly Dooley. I had no quarrels with his confrontational skillsets; indeed, whether felling a fringe-jacketed dope blower with a simple arm lock for terrorizing the Freedom School® runaways — "Sa Bang Kuk Ki!" — or executing a flawless, flying side kick upside a corrupt politico's fat head — "Eiiiyahh!!" — Jack was a heroic, zen-minded everyman who served the citizenry with fury and decency. His generosity on behalf of the oppressed earned him a song serenade from hippy dippy piano key pounder Carole King, but her words "Smackwater Jack, he bought a shotgun" belied the peaceable nature of this decorated, ex-Green Beret. Billy rarely resorted to gunfire, preferring to open the proverbial can of whooping arsenic on an evildoer. His sense of right and wrong "trumped" the strict letter of our laws and to those who questioned his methodology, I say: Go ahead and hate your half-breed neighbor. Go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of heaven, if you can justify it in the end. There won't be any trumpets blowing, come the judgment day. On the bullet-strewn morning after, there will be but one tin-eared soldier riding away to that faraway, federally subsidized reservation in the desert sky. Happy Anni-hearse-ary™, Billy Jack. (Joined this March in the afterlife by his wife of nearly 60 years, Freedom School Director Jean Roberts. RIP.)
Celebrating a Deathday: Citizen Peacekeeper Billy Jack® died barefoot and kickin' arse on this day, December 12, 2013. While 'tis always sad to lose a fellow lawman — even a bloody unauthorized one like Jack — celebrating his goodly deeds takes the sting from his passing. A tribal-hatted truthseeker nonpareil, Billy Jack was a half-paleface, half-russet-skinned Hapkido master who walked softly, but whose karate-chopping hands and bony feet spoke volumes. His brand of jujutsu justice was called into question by some, but not by Yours Truly Dooley. I had no quarrels with his confrontational skillsets; indeed, whether felling a fringe-jacketed dope blower with a simple arm lock for terrorizing the Freedom School® runaways — "Sa Bang Kuk Ki!" — or executing a flawless, flying side kick upside a corrupt politico's fat head — "Eiiiyahh!!" — Jack was a heroic, zen-minded everyman who served the citizenry with fury and decency. His generosity on behalf of the oppressed earned him a song serenade from hippy dippy piano key pounder Carole King, but her words "Smackwater Jack, he bought a shotgun" belied the peaceable nature of this decorated, ex-Green Beret. Billy rarely resorted to gunfire, preferring to open the proverbial can of whooping arsenic on an evildoer. His sense of right and wrong "trumped" the strict letter of our laws and to those who questioned his methodology, I say: Go ahead and hate your half-breed neighbor. Go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of heaven, if you can justify it in the end. There won't be any trumpets blowing, come the judgment day. On the bullet-strewn morning after, there will be but one tin-eared soldier riding away to that faraway, federally subsidized reservation in the desert sky. Happy Anni-hearse-ary™, Billy Jack. (Joined this March in the afterlife by his wife of nearly 60 years, Freedom School Director Jean Roberts. RIP.)