This
is not the America I grew up in, back in the 1950s and 60s. It just isn’t. What
happened?
I was a
white kid from the suburbs. I had a dad who went off to work each morning, and
a mom who stayed home all day until I started first grade. Even then, her job
was part-time, 9-2, so she was always home for us. Always.
We played in
our yard at first, and as we got older played in the other yards, too. There
were almost no fences back then, just one yard spilling into the next. This
meant that adults all could yell at us, and protect us, and they did, and we
took that for granted. There was no anger or malice towards them telling us
what to do, what not to do, or when told to go home.
If there
were predators and serial killers and lone nuts, we never heard about them. My
parents didn’t own guns, nor knew anyone who owned a gun. There were no
burglaries or break-ins in our neighborhood. My once-a-week paper route to
deliver 100 copies of an advertising flyer that took me two nights to complete,
took me several blocks from home. My parents simply had no concerns about that.
There weren’t any drug dealers standing openly on street corners, nor gangs
conducting drive-by shootings. The only public demonstrations came from Negroes
demanding their rights. Later, the Vietnam war brought out a different type of
protester.
On Sundays
we always went to church, dressed in our finest clothes. Our neighbors went to
their churches, too. It was what people did back then. They spent the rest of
the day at home, because stores were closed. There really wasn’t any place to
go.
My Catholic
school required we wear uniforms with school ties, and say the Pledge of
Allegiance each morning, and a prayer to start the day, and another one before
lunch. Public schools also began their day with the Pledge. No one ever met the
principal, yet all were scared to death of being sent to him.
Doors
weren’t automatic yet. People actually held them open for each other and smiled
and offered a greeting to total strangers. Gas station attendants wore uniforms
with ties, and offered to check the oil and the tires, and washed the windows,
too. Mom had to actually go inside a bank to conduct her business She was
always greeted with a smile, and given a calendar every year.
Our
pediatrician came to the house for emergencies and this was considered normal.
Whatever was wrong with us could be cured by whatever he carried in his black
bag.
My dad’s one
car had a large steering wheel, no power steering or brakes, an am-radio, long
fins, and a really wide back seat that could seat three adults and me
sometimes. There was no cruise control, there were no child locks or air bags,
no automatic locks and windows, no heated seats that moved in six different
directions, no back-up cameras, and no satellite-based maps. The tires had
white walls, and the fenders had flexible steel curb finders for ease of parking.
At night,
during the winter months, we would be allowed to watch television until 7:30
p.m. which definitely was bedtime. That Walt Disney’s show ran from 7-8 made
zero difference to my mother. Bedtime, was bedtime. I have no idea what shows
were on the other two channels. Our little black and white swiveled on four
legs, but wasn’t the finest piece of furniture in our living room. The ads were
sure different. No feminine hygiene products, bra ads, or male sexual
performance aids. No one swore, or
exposed a wrong body part.
I am sure my
dad grumbled over the politics and stories displayed in the newspaper. It
wasn’t a perfectly idyllic time, but it sure seemed like it. We weren’t
involved in war anywhere in the world. The Russians weren’t a threat, and no
one had heard of Vietnam. We elected new leaders when their terms expired. We hadn’t
begun to shoot them yet.
After the
JFK assassination, things seemed different. I have come to look upon that event
54 years later as a simple and direct coup d’etat. It was smoothly carried out
almost perfectly, covered up, I believe, by one lie after another to the people
by the very govt sworn to lead and protect them.
Assassinations became routine: JFK, RFK, MLK JR., Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, James Meredith, civil rights workers, George Wallace, the list is endless. Blacks started marching and protesting and burning down portions of cities, usually their own neigbhorhoods, while looting them clean, complaining about their rights. Police oppression and use of force, routinely it seemed against black citizens, finally resulted in the turbulent summer of 2020, made worse by the pandemic.
Prayer in
school disappeared, as did respect for our flag. School environments became
looser. Students started being more individual, less compliant, and less
respectful, to themselves, and everyone else. Classroom disruptions became
routine, as did assaults on teachers and staff.
Automation
seemed to come on in a rush, and the friendliness seemed to ebb out of our
society one step at a time. Suddenly we didn’t need elevator operators,
doormen, gas station attendants, bank tellers, checkout cashiers, toll booth
operators, or telephone operators.
Food could
be obtained without leaving our cars, and so could cash. We could buy liquor in
a drive-through lane, and soon pay phones disappeared too. Comic hero Dick
Tracy’s two-way radio wristwatch gave way to devices that told time, played
music, provided weather updates, and gave driving directions and the news, all
in one. We slipped away increasingly from human contact with all this automation,
this ease of living. We gave up something that is hard to put a finger on.
We have
driverless cars, electric cars, solar powered cars. There are trains without
engineers, ships without crews, and trucks without drivers.
Our schools
have devolved into near-disaster centers. Only a handful of students seem to
excel, to want to apply themselves, despite having much-dedicated staff at
their disposal. Dress codes for staff and students are all but extinct, and
this attitude shows up, poorly, in daily relations and accomplishments by both
parties. The Pledge of Allegiance, made optional by the Supreme Court in 1943,
is being all but ignored. Some students choose not to stand for recitation.
Forget praying, in classrooms, on athletic fields, at commencement exercises.
Police
officers routinely are assigned to schools, and not just for traffic control.
Schoolyard fights now result in student arrests and court time, instead of the
shake hands and get on with your lives approach we once favored, which worked.
Drug dogs work the hallways and no one thinks this strange. Too many high
school graduates, certified in May as having been educated to a certain level,
require remedial classes in the most basic of courses as they begin college.
What happened?
Crime seems
ubiquitous, although folks reading this will cite downward-spiraling stats that
indicate otherwise. Road rage is a common daily occurrence. Drivers wave at
each other with just one finger instead of the whole hand.
Guns of all
types are absolutely everywhere, and there is no shortage of ammo. No shortage
of people who are convinced they fully and clearly understand our 2nd
Amendment. Worse, there is no desire, no indication of compromise at all on
this deeply divisive and vicious issue, of whom, should allowed to have what.
When did we decide the answer to gun violence, was more guns?
Our national
social fabric is ripped nearly to shreds. E Pluribus Unum is a fading fantasy,
a relic of yesteryear. In its place is every single cause one can dream up, with
a group following, each demanding their right to be heard, and none of them
interested in opposing opinion.
Our three
branches of federal government, once so eloquently designed to both mesh and
counter-balance one another, have all but disappeared in their individuality.
Congress adamantly refuses to work on a bi-partisan cooperative basis, and
instead each side takes a stance, rigidly digs in, and nothing gets done. This
leaves presidents with no choice but to issue Executive Orders to pass laws to
get much of anything accomplished. This is basically the opposite of what our
Founding Fathers had in mind, wanted, designed. Their greatest fear was a
return to Monarchy, but that indeed is basically what we have been operating
with for too long now. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, unable to remain neutral,
spends its time reversing previous decisions, almost all in favor of Big
Business. Our country has stalled as a result. The rich have gotten incredibly
richer, and the poor have gotten incredibly more poor, and the supporting
middle class has all but disappeared.
We are a
nation founded upon, dependent upon immigration, always have been and always
will be. The Lady in The Harbor weeps as she holds her increasingly dim lamp,
aghast at a process once so treasured by so many, and now reviled by those
already here.
What
happened?
