It’s been cold where I live for the last several days, not
Minnesota cold, but Arkansas cold. It’s caused me to think. My eyes teared at
times.
We’ve spent the cold weather in a 100-year-old farmhouse, for
reasons associated with the care of a dependent mother-in-law. The house, her
childhood home for a time, was heated for the first 85 years or so by wood heaters.
Insulation didn’t exist, nor did underpinning. Double-paned window rattled as the
winter winds, and frost, swept through them. One can only wonder.
For those who might worry about us—yeah, there might be a
few—don’t. We had the place insulated and, at least partially, sealed-in years
ago. A nephew, now a highly successful business owner, and I installed central
heat and air, and, worrier that I am, left a large gas heater in place for emergencies.
We’re fine.
But what about those who aren’t? Do we owe them anything?
Some of my friends now say we don’t. I respectfully disagree. My beliefs,
training, and education have convinced me that America will never be greater
than the poorest town in the Arkansas Delta. We can talk about the need for the
“takers” to fend for themselves and not depend upon the “doers.” But, I’ve
never heard of a cold, shivering, hungry, three-year-old demanding that she or
he be allowed to “take.” They’re just cold and hungry.
Abraham Maslow would, I think, tell us that once that child
was warm and fed, it might progress, mentally and physically, toward a state of
being a “doer.” Until then, it will only dwell upon being safe. Wait a few years,
give it a gun, and see what happens. What? Oh yes, I forgot.
Excuse me. I’m listening to this as I write and I had to stop
for a moment. It is breathtakingly beautiful, and deserves full attention.
Where was I? Oh, on safety, comfort, and self-reliance. I
just thought of one the best quotes I’ve read in the last ten years ago. Many
folks, especially the writers of editorials in our statewide newspaper, love to
quote H.L. Mencken. He was, at various times, a newspaper reporter, linguist,
editor, magazine publisher, gadfly, author of books, and chronicler of American
life. Raised in an upper middle-class family, he was also a cruel and cynical
racist and anti-Semite who supported Germany’s role in World War One and once
wrote a comedy piece about the actual hanging of an African-American man. It is
still published, to the delight, I fear, of some Americans.
He could also write just about better than anyone else ever
did. His most famous utterances fill pages. His works bear reading for their
literary brilliance more that their content, although any one of us can use
them, much like the Bible, to harvest much that nourishes our embedded
prejudices.
My quote? Oh, it is not by Mencken but about Mencken.
Alister Cook, in a preface to a collection of Mencken’s works wrote that, “Everything
Mencken wrote was from a warm place and on a full stomach.”
I’ve done much in my life that good people would classify as
vile and vituperative. I admit to it and spend a good deal of my time now
trying to atone. I think, though, I’ve done some things right. I served my
country, unlike the Current Occupant. I obtained two college degrees, one while
working two part-time jobs while attending school full time, and one by working a full-time job while attending
school part time. I’ve been employed or in school since I was eleven years old. I’ve been
married to the same woman for over 44 years. I’ve never served jail time nor
overspent my income. I think I can best describe my standing among my peers as “a
semi-knowledgeable, but harmless old fool.”
Once, I was verbally chastised for telling a friend that I
paid my taxes willingly for I believed, as did Oliver Wendell Holmes, that “they
buy us civilization.” Do we lose our civility when we allow ourselves to despise
paying them for the common good, or as the Galilean might put it, “to feed our
sheep?” I’m, for one, afraid we might. We’ll see.
I entered the professional world with no experience, a general
degree from a state-supported institution, and with the much-despised image of
a Vietnam Veteran. Truth is, though, I started ten rungs up the ladder from an
African-American brother or a white sister, either a Harvard Graduate with
impeccable credentials, who might have started at the same time.
I was a white male from Northern-European ancestry, you see,
the sociological equivalent of beginning from a warm place on a full stomach.
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| Taker? |
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