My Redacted Life: Chapter One (Cont. 7)

It was Day Two of my civilian life, November 13, 1970 if I remember right, and I was home. My mother and I had met on the steps of our country store and shared our greetings. We weren’t an overly demonstrative family, but she made it clear that she was glad to see me finished with military life.

As she put it in her eloquent and feminine way, “I was always so goddam afraid they would send you back over yonder.”

We went inside where my father sat on his stool behind the store’s counter. It was his throne, and none entered his domain without recognizing his rule. He nodded my way and said, “Make it home all right?”

That’s the German equivalent of a scream of joy.

You remember a lot of things about your father as you grow old. Strange things. I think back often to how it must have been growing up in the deep woods of Arkansas in a tortured home life that would end in a separation and bitter estrangement.

His father had been hired out as a youth to a farmer in the German colony of Golconda, Illinois. Part of the money he had earned went to the education of brother who became a highly respected PhD, at the University of Iowa, teaching and studying about rural sociology.

Granddaddy got to keep some of the money, and later narrowed the choices of how spend it to purchasing a small flour mill in St. Paul, Minnesota, or buying a sizable chunk of timberland in the wilds of Arkansas.

On such decisions ride the gods who dispense the vicissitudes of life, laughing all way.

Of all the stories Daddy told me, the one that stands out involved a band of gypsies who stopped at their isolated homeplace wanting to swap a jug of milk for a wagon bow. “For your babies,” they said.

“Got no babies,” my grandmother said, threatening them with a broom and chasing them away.

They left, according to my father’s telling of the story, walking and singing,

“Up the road,

Down the road.

Here we go.

Got no baby.

Got no wagon bow.”

Don’t know if it’s true or not, but it’s a hell of a good story. Anyway, that’s the man who met me. He didn’t ask much about my service career. He never wanted me to join, but realized I had no choice. Having been called “A dirty Hun,” as a child during World War One, he didn’t consider military service any of his business, or mine.

He was a hard-headed, but mischievous man. He suffered the bitter prejudices of his day, but never refused a genuine plea for help from anyone in need, no matter the color of their skin. He was never cruel and never cheated a customer. He forgave many a credit bill for a family headed for Detroit and a better life. They would often offer him their plot of family land in payment.

He always refused. “What would I do with it?” Anyway, a lot of families who owned land went broke during the Depression.

He was a product of his time and place. He thought Franklin D. Roosevelt deserved a place as an addition the Holy Trinity. A “Blue-Dog Democrat,” his whole life, I am afraid that he could never have accepted an African-American as president. I suspect he would have changed political parties because of it, as so many of our people have.

That day, though, we didn’t discuss such things. He was most interested in the route I had taken home and how much traffic I had encountered. He had simple interests in a brain that whirled like a Cray computer. An eight-grade dropout, he could work algebra problems in his head without knowing algebra. He could envision and build a house, barn, or conveyor-device to load firewood without benefit of paper or pen. He could add long columns of figures, even those written in his tortured writing, without a single mistake.

He read the newspaper each day and was fond of comic books. He liked most white people okay, and all “colored” people it seemed, as long as they kept their place. He wasn’t fond of preachers or loafers. He could grow anything and butcher an entire hog with less effort than it takes me to mow a lawn.

He always kept a cow and a calf in a barn behind the house. It gave him pleasure, and it also provided an opportunity to enjoy a shot of Old Yellowstone after a long day in the store. More than one, though, and he faced the wrath of the tiny terrorists to whom he was married. Our mother was much the source of his strength and whatever success he enjoyed. He was a lucky man in marriage, a bit of good fortune I was later to enjoy myself.

Oh, I wish he had enjoyed an education. He might have helped with a cure for cancer. I regret that he suffered from the prejudices of his generation, but I’m glad that it didn’t make him mean as it has so many others. I wish at times that he hadn’t been so set in his ways, but then I think of others who got rich doing the same thing he did for a living and couldn’t have done it without pushing the boundaries of decency.

Is short, they gave him to us as we found him and that’s all I can write about. We could have done worse.

That day, we sat and talked for a long time about traveling, about traffic, about crops, and about fishing. If the weather held out he said, “We might just give it a try on Sunday.” I said I would like that.

Pre-Fishing Days

Morning Thoughts: April 8, 2018

I dreamed I saw John Lennon last night. Alive as you or me. Says I, "But John, you're a long time dead." "I never died," said he. Yes, it was a dream and I apologize to both Alfred Hayes and the memory of Joe Hill. It was a dream, after all.

It continued when John Lennon looked at me said, “Quick, tell me my killer’s name.”

I thought, but couldn’t. My mind was as drifty in dreamland as in real life.

“No,” he said. “You can’t. But why?”

I kept staring.

“The press,” he said. “The press made a pact not to print his name. They just called him John Lennon’s killer and such. Now he’s forgotten to history.”

“I don’t understand.” I said.

“You will,” he said. “Remember the ‘Monsters From the Id’ who fed on the very attempts to destroy them?” He winked and continued, as he began to fade, “Now go and give peace a chance.”

On my awakening, it dawned on me. We are our own monsters. It began when we gave maliciousness a name, a brand, and an excuse for irrational statements. Perhaps the press can save us by taking away those aggrandizing supports. Consider how it would sound to hear or read the following.

“The President of the United States of America said today that Mexicans are rapists and murderers.”

“The President of the United States of America today said all ‘negative polls are fake news.’”

“The President of the United States of America said today that ‘the overwhelming amount of violent crime in our major cities is committed by blacks and Hispanics.’”

“The President of the United States of America said today that ‘maybe we should have a rating system for movies.’”

“The President of the United States of America said today that ‘millions of people voted illegally in the last election.’”

“The President of the United States of America said today that, "I learned more about war in military school that veterans do in the service.’”

“The President of the United States of America said today that ‘with [hurricanes] Irma and Harvey devastation, Tax Cuts and Tax Reform is needed more than ever before.’”

“The President of the United States of America said today that ‘James Comey lied and leaked and totally protected Hillary Clinton. He was the best thing that ever happened to her!’”

Wouldn’t that put things in a different light? It would apply Occam's Razor to our president's current bondage with Vince McMahon, and force comparisons to the likes of Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Truman, and Eisenhower.

Wouldn't that make sense? Or is it just me?

Morning Thoughts: December 7, 2017

Do we, as Americans, learn, or only remember? The last man I knew who was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 died this year. His name was Kay Matthews and he wouldn’t talk about it. No wonder, it turned out to be a day of tragedy and horror, in epic proportions. In total, 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 were wounded the day Japan attached our country.

Like most all veterans, Kay came home from the war and led a successful and productive life, his as an attorney and later a judge. He was still practicing law until a little over a year ago. His was a great generation in many ways, I’ll be the first to admit.

I wonder how it must have felt to a generation that was just emerging from the horrors of the Great Depression to have awakened almost three weeks from Christmas, 76 years ago, to hear the news that the Empire of Japan had just carried out a surprise attack on American military bases in Hawaii. I still know people who were young then and can recall what they were doing at the moment they heard the news. Their stories range from the numbness of shock to total surprise.

My generation has similar stories to tell about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Later generations can empathize from their witnessing of the attacks on the Twin Towers. There are things we will always remember, but will we learn from them?

While still numb from the news of Pearl Harbor, Americans learned the next day that Germany had declared war on our country in an act of solidarity with Japan. World War Two had entered what would eventually come to be its final phase. The American contribution to the successful Allied war effort spanned four long years and cost more than 400,000 American lives. Other countries counted their losses in the millions, with most of their cities devastated.

National resolve, uncommon effort, and the leadership of people like Franklin Roosevelt brought our country out of the war as a world leader.

The end of the Great Depression and World War Two sometimes seemed comforting to me. It said that America can prevail. What seemed to be the beginning of the end to the ravages of unbridled racial prejudice in the country was uplifting as well—that is until the country elected a mixed-race president. Like a 1950s science fiction monster awakened by nuclear gamboling, the horror of racism ravishes us anew while gaining strength from the tacit approval of the powers ruling our country.

I’m afraid, and this my opinion only, that we are now seeing planned and powerful attacks upon the very values and institutions that provided the strength for America to achieve the moments of greatness that it has in the past.

I hope not. Any thinking American must hope not. The signs, though, aren’t encouraging. As recently as yesterday, our current president announced plans that could result in the complete destabilization of a fractious part of the world, one that Americans fought and died for in World War Two. That destabilization could very well mean the end of the planet as it currently exists. This end, unfortunately is supported by a fanatical religious sect within our own country that sees a worldwide conflagration as an integral element of their religious fulfillment. This conflagration would usher in, according their beliefs, the beginning of what they imagine as a glorious eternity.

A rock-solid belief in a heavenly and blissful afterlife—for the chosen—seems to be a common doctrinal cornerstone for religious sects bent on the annihilation of worldwide harmony and peace.

The Galilean must be weeping.

The sect represents a small, but united and politically powerful, segment of our society. Its members contribute little to the well-being of our country, but command an inordinate proportion of attention and media coverage. Those who resist them are being systemically reduced in strength, even including the right to vote or have their children educated. Many Arkansans pay no attention at all. They are more concerned with the hiring of a new football coach.

I find my optimism being eaten away like the foundations of a lighthouse located on a wild and uncompromising sea.

Lewis Thomas, in his classic Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony warned that during the second movement of that work, he could hear the bomb bay doors opening to initiate the end of the world. Anymore, I’m afraid to listen. I’m afraid that I, personally, might hear “the eternal footman snicker.”