The Past as Baseball

I must confess an affection for college students, not the kind that just want to get “credentialed,” for a high-paying job, but the sincere ones who want to learn. So, I felt remorse Sunday when I talked to a group from Missouri State University. We met in Mountain View, Arkansas, a nice community in a beautiful and historic part of our state. I was to talk to them about planning for rural communities. Their eyes were bright and their minds were eager. I had some hardball facts ready to hurl.

As I say, I felt remorse. It involved at least two aspects. On first base there stands the truth that my generation isn’t handing them a very good place to enter as working adults. We have started the planet to frying and I’m not sure we would have time to stop it even should we want to. Maybe, you will say, the mindset that allows this started way before my time. That’s probably true, but no excuse. We had the time and brains to go about things differently but chose not to.

On second base stands the fact that those young folks will have to survive the after effects of the worst presidential administration in the history of our country. I can only wish them luck.

It’s certainly no excuse, but my generation had a few bumps in our nine innings. The so-called “Greatest Generation,” having lived through the Great Depression and World War Two, were benignly determined that we would have it better. Accordingly they ,spoiled us unmercifully. At least I thought so until a person of impeccable veracity related seeing a family dining in public recently and watching a father spoon feed a six-year-old son who wouldn’t remove his hands or eyes from his cell phone.

“Well then there now,” as Jett Rink said to Leslie Benedict in the 1956 film epic Giant. I guess that would translate roughly to, "it is what it is." As I say, we had a few spitballs thrown our way. First in the lineup, at least for males, was The Draft. Oooh boy.

We complied with it, most of us anyway. Even when they ordered some of us to sacrifice so other runners would advance, we complied, picked up our gear, and headed for the dugout. At least we headed for southeast Asia.

It may have been an illegal war, probably was, from all accounts. It was surely a bad call from whomever was umpiring the game. We went anyway. We may have thought the Constitution of the United States treated us shabbily, but we never thought it a phony document, only one that could be used by phony people. So, into the “valley of the shadow of death” we went. Most came home. Some didn’t. Some never were the same after they got back. Now they tell the ones who are still around that there is another monster associated with the color orange that may be waiting around the next corner.

No matter. We were called. We went. We served. Each suffered in his or her own way. It didn’t matter. At this age, some of us are even proud we served.

The hard part is that our country has never forgiven us for it.

The other hard part was that when we got home there was a man standing on third base, having been born there and now ready to score for the big win.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Donald Trump and I’ve just hit the biggest and best triple that’s ever been hit in the history of baseball.”

Well then there now. I didn’t tell the students Sunday about that. I just told them that, as far as planning for rural towns was concerned, there wasn’t any. I didn’t tell them that nobody cared. I figured that they had enough things to worry about.

Not much to plan for in the rural South