I have reached the point in my life where I realize, and reluctantly accept, there are more miles behind me than there are ahead. And while that reality sometimes stresses me, I also realize there’s nothing I can do about it. I will tell anyone who asks my plan is to live forever, and so far, it’s working but as the laughter subsides, we all know it’s not true. Woody Allen once said: I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. I guess we all realize the end comes eventually to all. Sadly that end also comes much to soon for a great number of people. As much as aging hinders many of my dreams, I don’t resent growing old. Too many have been denied the privilege. The rear view mirror is very small when compared to the windshield. The view forward is much more interesting and diverse than what lies in the dust cloud lingering behind. Even knowing that doesn’t keep me from comparing the two, and in that comparison, I come away thinking what the past provided was much more pleasant than what the present and the future holds in store. I remember life in the 50’s growing up in a small New England town. I had no concept of socio-economic status. My dad worked in a textile mill for most of his life. 3 shifts. 7–3; 3–11; 11–7. The house rules were different depending on which shift he worked. 7–3 was a normal day with normal day time activities. 3–11 changed only because dad wasn’t there when we got home from school and mom ruled the roost at night. She was a stern task master, to say the least. 11–7 was the hardest because we had to be quiet at night as dad napped before going to work and went to sleep for a good part of the day when he came home. We lived around that schedule for all the years I was at home. Playing little league baseball meant dad wasn’t there for the games one out of three times. Much of what we did for entertainment was self-created. After all, this was 1954 and I was 10. We didn’t have anywhere near the entertainment distractions available today. We played tag. We played jacks. We played hop-scotch. We played pick-up-sticks. We played cowboys and Indians or soldiers at war. We made bows and arrows out of sapling branches. We made kites out of newspaper and glue and tied old pieces of cloth for the tail. We rode bicycles and played catch. In the winter we would go sledding down a street the police would block off at the top and bottom with bales of hay. We’d run and jump on the sled to gain as much speed as possible. We’d have other kids stationed at several places along the hill and they’d jump on our backs as we came by to see how many we could carry before careening out of control and rolling over, laughing all the way. We’d build snowmen and snow forts and have snowball fights. We’d go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood by ourselves. Mom would make the costumes. Back then there was a fishing season that opened in April and kids would actually miss school that day to go fishing with their dads. It was that big a deal. There were 5 police officers in our town and we knew them all. If one of them caught us doing something dangerous or borderline unlawful, he’d call us over and explain the situation, all while we were shivering in our shoes praying he wouldn’t tell. We stood there silently and all said “Yes, sir.” We’d never…..ever… think about talking back. Same way with our teachers. They were the teachers. They ruled the classroom and we all paid attention to the rules. No talking; No note passing; No nothing. Raise your hand. If you were one of the anointed ones, you got to wipe the blackboard and clap the erasers. Oh, there were the occasional miscreants, but they were quickly put back in line. We had the occasional bully. He would push us around on the playground and try to steal our stuff. He had a particular dislike for me, for some infraction, real or imagined, I had committed. I remember one day, after an unpleasant conversation with dad at the breakfast table because of an infraction which was not imagined, as he was discussing the punishment which was awaiting me after school, when Frank the bully started in on me on the playground before school started. My 13 year old anger and fear over my upcoming punishment boiled over and Frank the bully became the unlucky recipient of that anger. He pushed me and I ran straight into him, knocking him down and began pummeling him with all the strength my 13 year old fists could muster. He started to cry and a teacher came out and pulled me off him. Interestingly, two things happened as a result. Frank the bully never came near me again and the teacher, while admonishing me for fighting, and who was very much aware of his bullying tactics, just kind of smiled and sent me along to class. It was never mentioned again. Well…. except for a few days of hero status that comes with such an event.
As I grew and high school became the center of my life, many thing became clearer. There was a world out there I had little knowledge of. Television was still in its infancy and when my dad could finally afford one, family entertainment went from physical to visual. I fell in love with Annette. Couldn’t wait for the next episode of Spin and Marty and decided maybe I should take another look at Darlene. The Texaco Star Theater; Your Hit Parade; I Love Lucy; Father Knows Best; Howdy Doody with Judy Tyler as Princess SummerFall WinterSpring; Ozzie and Harriet; Ed Sullivan; Burns and Allen; The Colgate Comedy Hour. More entertainment coming through the ‘boob tube’ than one can possibly imagine. It was supposed to be society’s undoing. Well, so was Rock and Roll, and somehow we all survived that as well.
But the point is, life was just so much simpler. And so much happier. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. We didn’t care. If we needed to look up a subject for school we went to the library. If you were fortunate (and could afford it), and had a set of Encyclopedia Britannicas or the less expensive Colliers, you got saved the long walk to the library. The girls took typing and home economics classes. The boys took shop and mechanical drawing. Can you imagine such today? The things we didn’t have were not even things we could imagine in our wildest dreams. Smart Phones? The internet? Electric cars? School shootings? Mass murders? Police officers ambushed an killed? Planes crashing into buildings? Presidents assassinated? The US Capitol Stormed by rioters? Men landing on the Moon? Buildings being bombed? The Super Bowl? Cloned sheep? Soy Turkey? Learning there is more computing power in an iPhone 6 than there was in the entire computer system that put John Glenn in orbit. All the computing was done by a task force of black women mathematicians using slide rules and adding machines.
But the world changed for me when I joined the Marine Corps. Here I was, this innocent 17 year old kid from a small white bread town in New England who had never seen a black person except for what I saw on TV. I joined the Marine Corps right our of high school in 1961. Mostly because my grades weren’t good enough to get me into college on a scholarship and my parents couldn’t afford tuition. I rode a Greyhound bus from Boston to South Carolina. 4 Days on my own for the first time ever. When the bus stopped in Port Royal, South Carolina, we got off for a break and stepped off that bus and into the Twilight Zone. What I faced as I looked around scared me to death. I had no idea what world I had just been dropped into. The first sign I saw as I looked ahead said ‘Men’s Room — WHITE ONLY’. I vaguely knew of segregation, but the concept was alien to me. We didn’t have that in my school. Well, we didn’t have any black families living there either, so there’s that. The sign over the drinking fountain said “WHITE ONLY”. Other signs said “COLORED ONLY”. I was honestly bewildered and uneasy. While inside the confines of Marine Corps facilities, there was no segregation, it was evident everywhere else. After Military Police School, I was assigned to several places across the globe and never again saw what was in South Carolina. But at the end of my enlistment, I was sent to Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point outside of Havelock, North Carolina and racism, once again invaded my brain. As an MP at the base, we were sometimes assigned to ride with North Carolina Highway Patrol troopers as they made their rounds in places frequented by Marines from the base. I recall, and probably will forever, one incident where the trooper driving approached the giant dirt parking lot of a bar/nightclub in the sticks of a surrounding town that was well known as a hangout for black Marines from the base along with the civilian population. As he entered the parking lot, he sped up and headed straight for a group of people standing outside doing nothing but talking and smoking. He never let off the gas as they scattered to escape the cruiser bearing down on them. He drove through and left the parking lot laughing all the way, and saying things like: “Did you see those n******* run?” We drove back to the base and he let me out at the Provost Marshall’s office. I walked in and told the captain on duty what happened. He said: “Did he hit any of them?”. I said no. “Then what’s the problem?” I grew older that day. I grew sadder and wondered where my place was in a world that let’s that happen. I lost much of my innocence and even more of my happy white-bread upbringing memories and wondered about the world to come. I still wonder.
Are we any better off today after all? Yes there have been advances in technology and medicine that saves life and allows people to live longer, healthier lives, but there is also social media and ‘influencers’ and the ability to post a message that can circle the globe in, literally, seconds. I know there is one You Tube where I’ve watched videos and learned how to replace the headlight assembly on my Ford Explorer, or how to make an interesting woodworking project. But there is another where disinformation spreads faster than a plague and there are no controls over what gets passed along as the truth, when, in fact, much of what is posted couldn’t be further from it. And the hate. The hate doesn’t go away. The problems we as a nation are facing in the immediate future are more frightening than anything this country has ever seen……… and we have seen a lot. The pandemic never came close to spreading the poison now blowing across every hamlet and city of this country. That poison is hatred and we ought not turn our backs on this phenomenon in whatever form it takes. We have to find out what the anatomy of hatred is before we can understand it. We have to make some attempt to put it into some understandable form. What we do know for a fact is any kind of group hatred is extremely dangerous and much more volatile than individual hatred. Heinous crimes have been committed by groups and it’s all done, of course, in the name of their version of what’s right. Politicians no longer see members of the opposite party as just the opposition. Remember the days of civil campaigning during election, where candidates could disagree with their opponent with courtesy and civility? Those days are sadly gone. They now see them as the enemy. And not just the enemy. They see them as evil…… personally evil and not worthy of consideration of any type. They disagree with each other not because there are flaws in the opposing presentation, or there are better ways to resolve the country’s issues. They disagree solely because they have come to believe the poison rhetoric that party leaders have spread across the political landscape to the point where they can’t stand the sight of them. Where they are accused of the most vile and immoral conduct one can imagine………. All without a single piece of evidence to back up the claims. The lies and the disinformation have ripped the fabric of democracy into such shreds it is no longer recognizable. Never mind their opponents are right. Never mind the lies and disinformation that gets spread over the truth and completely obscures both the issue and the message. These are evil people and they must be wiped from the face of the planet. Do you have any idea how many fringe groups are actively advancing that philosophy and live it every single day? As of 3 days ago, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are monitoring 73 groups across 27 states who have made credible threats against political candidates; various religious groups and organizations supporting causes and lifestyles they vehemently disagree with. Can anyone ever imagine a scenario anytime in our history that would actually bring democracy to its knees and threaten is very existence like the events of January 6…… and how the effects of that are still running through America’s veins and poisoning the very ground beneath its feet?
When I was young, I couldn’t tell the difference between dictatorship or democracy, but I knew that being born in the United States of America was the best thing that could happen to anyone lucky enough to muster it. Now, I’m not so sure anymore.
