I am not much for reminiscing. It seems that for every pleasant memory that bubbles to the surface there are fifty memories that I dread just waiting to hop out. Remembering a good time isn't worth if if it is just a segue to a bad one.
However, I recognize that I am who am I am as a result of that past. Everything good that is in me is linked to that past. I have a bit of an unusual background as a kid and I recognize that I was not raised like most people.
One set of experiences that I had as a young person is so rare as to perhaps be unique. When I was young I was a politician. I was the youngest member elected to a county governing body in Virginia when I first took my seat on the Board of Supervisors. When I was 31 I was the youngest chairman of a county governing body in Virginia. When I was a teenager I met and worked on campaigns with a group of some of the most impressive people that I have met in any walk of life. The were the older black leaders--country people who fought to integrate the schools and for their children to have opportunities to be hired in jobs that required one to wear a tie to work.
I admired these people. Old, tough, cagey, kind, generous and most of all--wise. They were always willing to heap advice on me and I was always happy to listen. From the personal--"Ain't no need to hurry up and get married while you young. You end up with a young wife that don't know what matters. Wait a little while until women get old enough to know that what matters in a man is can he take good care of the children. Now you are like your Momma. You know how to look out for little ones."
Or on self control, "Now Steve I'm not saying that he don't deserve for you to pop him in his mouth but if you do you will look like a fool. And that man is a fool. And only a fool is going to let a fool make him look like a fool. Now Steve, you ain't no fool. Don't smack that man no matter what he says."
On staying out of some political fights that entailed more risk that reward. " Now Steve, I love honey but you don't see me go sticking my hand in a bee hive."
And on the most important question of living an ethical life--"Now you just get up in the morning every day and do that which is right. Now I did not say that if you do that which is right everything is going to work out good for you. Sometime all that doing good is going to reach up and bite you in the hind parts. But that don't matter. You just do that which is right."
And on the ultimate justice of this Earth, "Boy, ain't you read the Bible? Look at Revelations. I tell you right now, in the end the good do win."
I spent a boyhood listening to old codgers..Grandpa and his cronies were endlessly interesting to a young boy who was often bent on mischief. I learned alot. Maybe some of it was not all that wholesome, but that is the way of the world. During my adult life, I have often offered the opinion that we need to listen to those folks carefully. America's greatest generation is leaving us..People who survived the Great Depression, who lived "The Grapes of Wrath," not just thinking it to be a cute story, the generation who drove evil back from the doorstep of the earth, who fought a tide of inhumanity that very nearly consumed us all. They have something to say..and it is important. We repay them poorly by not learning from the lessons they lived. Those who cannot recall history are doomed to repeat it. Don't believe me? Study the history of warfare in what it present day Afghanistan. Four or five empires broken on that wheel. I guess we have a tendency to stick our hands into the fire. Doesn't make it smart. The Baby Boomers are getting up there, They have a different brand of wisdom to offer, Children of war, folks who lived through the sixties, saw the birth of civil rights, and the death throes of America's last golden age. While it is not wise to live in the past, it is very unwise to ignore it. Wisdom and common sense are not things that many people are born with, but a gestalt of a million little things learned as you go through life.
ReplyDeleteI commented to a lady at the county fair the other day, that where I come from there was an entire building, a large one at that, dedicated to home preserved foods...today, we have an entire shelf dedicated to home preserved foods. Folks this country is just a fews days of disaster away from food riots..it does not take much to collapse our fragile system. It is hard to starve someone who has a whole room full of food laid by. Those folks knew how to do it and why. So do I. Do you?
That is just one example of hard won lessons that we as the race of man are letting get by us. Bottom falls out, how many folks can get dinner that first night. Easy, right? What about next week or next month? Hmm..I ought to found a college of practical arts. Not to sound sexist, but how many young ladies out there can make their own clothes, and bake a few days worht of bread while they are working on that, all the while have this winter's meat curing and getting ready to smoke. How many young men can provide that meat, or the grain to grind into flour to bake..all the while producing enough extra to make a few dollars to keep that pretty, talented young lady supplied with the cloth to make her pretty dresses, and his clothes for that matter? Robert A.Heinlein, and old country boy, Naval officer, and the Dean of Science fiction opined in "Time Enough for Love," That specialization is for insects, and proceeded to enumerate a full page of things he considered necessary skills for any human. It is a good list, and a good book to read. -Lloyd