Ton 2.0 brought his son home today. Another healthy squaling man child for the Clan Ton. I didn’t go see the boy in the hospital. Not my scene these days, but we left for his place shortly after we got the call and let ourselves in we when got there. We did the typical shit one would expect, drank up his best bourbon, fornicated on his kitchen table, took care of his pets, cleaned up the house and cooked a shit ton of food.
There are things that matter more then life to Clan Ton. I learned these things from my father and his father like they learned them from theirs. Well them and our uncle’s, brothers and what not. When my father brought me home to present me to his father I was laid in a bed with a Confederate flag, an 1858 Remington, a King James Bible and some sliver dollars. I still have that photo. But these are things we value, the Old South and all it stands for, freedom and fire power, hard money and the hard ways of the Almighty.
So when Ton4.0 made it home, my boy brought him to me. This small 8 pound bundle of fragile perfection. Full of potential and promise, not weighted down by failure, regert or tye burdens of life. I held him up, said the same Bible versus we always say and laid him down on my son’s bed. Dead in the center of our stars and bars, silver dollars, King James Bible and our forefather’s Remington.
Of course I Tonierized somethings. I bought the boy some fireworks, a bottle of whisky, a Ford hat, a Harley Davidson onesie, a Henry lever action .22 and a gift certificate for a free pit bull tattoo. Of course the gift certificate is fake, but Ton4.0’s mother has more of a sense of humor then I figured.
These things are symbols, they all mean more then the surface image and they are all traditions. A firearm is more then a tool, it’s your sovereignty as Man. Silver is more then hard money vs fiat dollars. It’s wealth based on reality and the opposition to magic thinking. If the Old South has an official dog, the pit bull is it. Loyal, relentless and called the nanny dog for generations.
Some traditions need to die. Plowing with mules makes no damn sense. With any luck Ton2.0 is the last vet from my family. Sometimes new traditions come about. My father and grandfather rode Harleys, same with me and Ton2.0. A goodly amount of having traditions is to reproduce the kind of men and women your family is proud of
I do have a point besides bragging about another grandson. On occasions I hear men bitch about the lack of traditions. Society moves on and change is one of life’s constants, but you have only yourself to blame for allowing your family traditions to die. Only yourself to blame for not creating some. My boys will learn their family’s history, they’ll learn to ride fast, shoot straight and always report the truth. They will know how to hunt, how to fish, and what their forefathers intended to leave behind before yankees fucked shit up. These things are timeless and you can take them where ever you go. I won’t be around to teach my son’s or grandsons these things but I have full faith in Ton2.0 that our family and our traditions will be projected into the next generation
