People often ask me if ever get tired of writing about
politics? Well I don't actually tire of writing about the greatest mystery of
human behavior, the political, I simply need a break from it once in awhile. So
with that as a plan I thought I'd take the time to write about another side of
the human experience, which in so many ways is equally important. I am speaking
of course of the human need to reminisce about the past.
Based upon the scientific data gathered to date, we humans
are the only earthbound species that can commit to memory our racial and
cultural history. Naturally, that memory capability includes the history each of
us personally experienced.
Back in 1992, Stephanie Coontz, a liberal college
professor published a book entitled: "The Way We Never Were: American
Families and the Nostalgia Trap." A major part of her work in this well
researched book, was aimed at disqualifying what she called the 'American Myth'
of the Donna Reed/ Ozzie and Harriet Nelson touted lifestyle of the late 1940'
to early 1960's. It never existed she claimed.
To be completely honest I have to grant some limited disqualification to the way we tend to remember that era, but I completely disagree with her general conclusion. First of all that 'myth' was constructed around White families, which clearly did not include my family (Black and Colombian). And of the White families who would qualify, I seriously doubt if the wives came down to make morning breakfast wearing their prom dresses and a string of pearls as, Ms. Reed and Ms. Nelson made a habit of doing on TV.
However, what the esteemed professor failed to recognize (because she didn't live in that era), was that we never believed many people
actually lived such a lifestyle. Instead, we regarded the portrayed Middle Class
White household as an 'ideal', a template, for the family state we wanted to
achieve - be we Black, White, dark beige or whatever color.
So at that time, we crafted our family structure toward
that renowned dream state of the American Lifestyle - regardless of where we
lived. And as we toiled at their jobs and daily lives, we held dearly to the
dream: someday, we were going to live like the Nelson's and the Reed's, in a
split level two car garaged home in the suburbs with two perfect children. That
vision, with some variation, was the primary American Dream.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
(From Charles Dickens' novel "A Tale of Two
Cities.")
Any society is no more or less than its children, for they reflect the past and the future. And the best that we can do for our children, other than housing, feeding and educating them, is to afford them the space and time to be - just children. And for the most part, that is what my generation's parents and society did. We can do multiplication in our heads, spell, write script and, most important, read proficiently. I think most would agree those accomplishments were meaningful and not too shoddy for a generation whose parents lived through the Great Depression.
To set the record straight from the deliberate social-agenda historical distortions of the sociologist, we did not live in ghettoes as some would like the present world to believe, we lived in - neighborhoods. And those of us who resided in city apartment buildings did not refer to them as tenements, instead we knew them as our - homes. These distinctions are important to fully understand the healthy state of our minds and families at the time - and the whole truth as it should be known.
I was born in 1939, and as the aptly descriptive opening
of the famous Charles Dickens' novel, this time also was both the best and worst
of times. It was just ten years after the Great Depression, and in Germany
Adolph Hitler and his crew were about to begin a five year nightmare that would
engulf the entire world.
From another prospective, at this same approximate time
some of the world's best motion picture classics were being produced, and
classic radio was just hitting its stride. In general, Americans felt good about
themselves and the prospects for their futures and more importantly, their
children's futures..
Discovering My Youth
My retentive memory began to take effect
between late1942 and early 1943. My first cognitive memory was of a young
neighbor lad named Rudy, of approximately the same age as myself, doing a
run-skip imitation of a horsemen while shouting out something that sounded like
ho, yo sliver. What's that I asked? And he said it was the Long Ranger. I was
later to learn that what he meant was The Lone Ranger, and I had discovered - Radio.
It did not take very long for me to discover -
as a kid - that more than music came from the radio, and a whole new world of
excitement opened up for me. From then on I began to notice, with ever
increasing frequency, everything around me. Most notably, I became conscious of
- change.
Yes, I began to see that the world did not stand still,
and tomorrow would be different from today and today from yesterday. And I began
to understand the significance of the fact that, should I wish and protest as
loudly and violently as I may, I still couldn't control any of the change
except, possibly, in the space I stood in at that very moment. And as I was soon
to learn adults who had to go out and earn a living, like my mom and dad, didn't
have that privilege. But as a child that space was especially made for me,
because you see - I was a kid.
Exploitation Can Sometimes Be A Good Thing
Don't ever let anyone try to fool you into thinking
aggressive commercialism is solely a thing of the present or recent past, for it
was there in force in the far past. That's right, back in the 1930's to late
1940's the advertising world's sales juggernaut made its powerful debut during
the Golden Age of Radio. And the target of choice back in those 'good ole' days'
were - children.
We kids used to get 'premiums' ( little toys, miniature
books, puzzles and prizes) inside boxes of breakfast cereals we begged our
mothers to purchase, and they were usually tied to some comic book or radio
adventure hero for kids. In fact, that was the reason the Lone Ranger concept
came into being.
These 'buy-me's' were packed inside the cereal boxes in
cellophane packages that were blown up with air. So it took awhile before the
moms began to notice that the voluminous 'toy packs' displaced a lot of the -
supposedly - contained cereals. Added to the fact that sometimes we had to
collect box tops to buy a particular offered toy or gadget: for example by
sending in two box tops and twenty five cents.
Keeping in mind, that twenty five cents was usually a
kid's weekly allowance, the profits began to really add up for the cereal
companies. Think about that for a moment: one million kids mailing in a quarter
would come to two hundred fifty thousand dollars - and you know there were more
than one million kids in the country at the time.
In time parents and educators complained about the open
exploitation of children, and a few compromises were made by the manufacturers.
For every box top offer, approximately three freebies were given in the cereal
boxes - without the large cellophane packages. In the end, we kids came out
ahead on this one.
Box Top Adventure
Came By Mail
I was raised in New York City's borough of Manhattan in
the famed district known as Harlem. And between the ages of 4 to 10, I knew the
postman's schedule as well as he did. In those days the mail was delivered three
times a weekday and once on Saturday.
That's right, we received mail three times a day and I
made it my mission to try and be there for every delivery by the mailman. What
made me such a diligent 'mail-watcher' was my need to get my anxious kid hands
on the constant deluge of incoming breakfast cereal premiums and membership
offers that I'd sent away for.
I belonged to an ever growing list of very important
organizations. For instance, I was a Dick Tracy Crime Stopper, a J. Edgar Hoover
Junior G-Man, a member of Captain Midnight's Secret Squadron, and one of counter
spy David Harding's most trusted agents. Hey, I had the badges and certificates
to prove it, and I took them all seriously. All of us kids did.
In fact, only once did I question a premium offer, and
that concerned the - Lone Ranger Atomic Bomb ring. Let's think
about that for a minute. Of what possible connection could a fictional character
out of the 19th century old west possibly have with a 20th century atomic
weapon? We kids couldn't figure it out either - but we all got one. For kids,
these were times to savor.
I would venture to guess that, judged by today's ultra
rapid maturation through childhood, such youthful goings on must seem silly and
boring to today's kids, if not downright ridiculous. But in those bygone days
kids were truly kids.
We were 'little people' who formed lasting neighborhood
friendships that seemed to transcend cultural, ethnic and racial differences -
often despite the protest of our parents and adult family members. When we
constructed friendships back in those days, we formed a bond by sharing just
about everything material we had: comic books, toys, candy and childhood
secrets. And for six hours a day, five days a week, we experienced a 'kid
community' by going to the neighborhood school, which in those times, second
only to one's home, was the safest place a kid could be. It really was!
The Golden Age of Radio
All of the youthful diversions I mentioned were made possible by the advent of a sort of 'magic carpet' of the airwaves, - Radio. That classic medium, rightfully described as "The Theater of the Mind", now referred to as Old Time Radio (OTR), by most accounts saw its heyday between the years 1929 to 1949.
That's right folks, radio's golden age was
essentially limited to two decades. As television entered homes in the early
1950's, radio as the main source of electronic public communication began its
rapid descent. By 1954-1960, the time of the birth of Rock and Roll", OTR (with
the noted exception of a few programs) was for all intents and purposes
deceased.
I remember with great sadness searching for
the radio listings in the newspapers every day, and noting that the columns were
becoming smaller and smaller, while the TV listings grew ever larger. Then one
day, like the neighborhood iceman - they simply disappeared and were no more. It
was that damn ' time and change thing' again.
What OTR gave us as children of the era, was
the ability to exercise and explore the limits of our imagination. That meant
long before the learned prejudices of our parents and neighbors could set in, we
saw the world of people as they really were - real people in imaginary roles.
And having that freedom we learned to accept them, via 'mind images', not as
society portrayed them, but as we 'visually heard and viewed' them in our
amazing imaginations.
"The Green Hornet" had his trusty aide, Kato,
a Japanese American (until Pearl Harbor attack and he magically became
Philippino). "The Lone Ranger' was partnered with his 'faithful Indian
companion', Tonto. There was also "Life with Luigi" about the comic trials and
tribulations of an Italian immigrant studying for American citizenship - the
legal way. And of course there was the "Goldberg's.'
Also, we could not leave out the comedy show,
Amos and Andy. Despite the uproar about them today, back then they were regarded
as just very funny Negro guys with equally funny friends and family: the likes
of which we saw in our neighborhoods every day.
I have no doubt that many of the actors who portrayed these character roles, may well have borne personal racial, cultural, and social prejudice and pains of their own: and I state this with particular reference to the Black actors. After all, these talented people were not hatched in a laboratory or delivered to earth in flying saucers by aliens. After all, these talented people were not hatched in a laboratory or delivered to earth in flying saucers by aliens.
These faceless actors too had parents and
families where those prejudices were ingrained through the generations. But on
radio, we couldn't see human faults or sense feelings or racial color, only the
magnificence of the characters they played. In other words, the medium
of radio allowed us to celebrate our differences. After all, our
greatest strength as a nation was the ability to laugh at ourselves.
Electric Trains, Model Airplane Engines and Chemistry
Sets
We lived in dangerous times for kids back
then: danger was all around us, but we weren't aware to what extent. This of
course was long before the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) came into
being, when we rode our bicycles and roller skated without safety helmets.
Again, think about it. We kids back then had
electric trains that operated on real electricity - not batteries. We had to
plug the operating transformer into a wall socket - and it got worse. When I was
a kid, up until they made the big conversion, that wall socket delivered Direct
Current (DC), not the safer Alternating Current (AC) we have now. A zap from AC
would, in most instances, simply knock you back. The same from DC could and
often did kill the hapless victim.
By the way, we also had model airplanes with
mini combustion engines attached to high-speed very sharp propellers, and
priming the engine could be a very tricky and sometimes hazardous affair. From
time to time a finger or two was sliced open, and many a screaming, bleeding kid
was rushed to the hospital to be patched up. Still, a few days later, there he
was back in the park with his friends with the same model airplane with its
powerful mini engine. But having been the painful recipient of the 'learning by
doing process', this time he was a lot more wiser and careful.
Then there was my ChemCraft Chemistry set;
from the Porter Chemical Company of Hagerstown Maryland. You see, up until I was
about 4, I'd become so impressed by the doctor who made house calls (they did
you know), that all I wanted to be was a doctor. Always at the top of my gift
list was a doctor's set. Yes, I wore them out that quickly.
That was until my older sister, Jaunita, encountered some difficulty finding one for my fifth birthday, so in desperation she purchased for me a chemistry set. I wasn't too crazy about this 'thing' at first, and it sat unused for almost a month. Then on a sick day at home from school, with virtually nothing to do, in desperation I took to - the set. I was hooked! I'd found Nirvana and my mother's home, kept scrupulously clean at all times, never quite smelled the same again. Like it or not, she had a budding young scientist on her hands.
There are many people walking around today
who are lucky to be alive. I would have been a terrible doctor - it just wasn't
me. Quite simply, I had no talent for it. But 27 years after opening that
chemistry set, I was employed at a company in Long Island City as a chemical
technician, enrolled in night college, and my life's work and destiny took
flight. I would eventually become - a chemist.
As to chemistry sets in today's world? Well no sane
manufacturer will even think about producing a chemistry set, and company
lawyers won't let the insane ones think about them either. In our litigious
OSHA-fied society, they'd be crazy to do so. Such a product would be a lawsuit
in a box - waiting to happen.
So like for so many of my generation, the times were good
for me. I didn't electrocute myself with my electric train, or cut off the tip
of my finger starting my Glo-engine model plane, nor did I blind or blow up
myself with my beloved chemistry set. Was my generation just lucky? No! We were
instead - very fortunate.
Saturday Mornings at the Politically Incorrect Sexist
Movies
At the beginning of the movie industry in this
country, Saturday mornings were a dead time. This was because most Americans
were busy earning a living, or not, depending on which end of the Great
Depression they happened to be. Movies, if one could afford to see one every so
often, was an adult indulgence taken advantage of on occasional evenings and
weekend nights.
Therefore, in the quest to profitably fill up
this dead time in movie houses, someone got the idea of developing a special
time for kids with a heavy dose of the fare they liked best. So was born what
was to become a staple of children well into the late 1960's: as concept, Saturday Morning at the Movies, was born.
For about three to four hours each Saturday, my
parents got rid of me to a place they could trust - the movies. But just to
clear up any misunderstanding of what filled our heads from this joyful
experience, let it be known that there was not a hint of the 'politically
correct' in anything we viewed on the movie screen.
In these inexpensively made B-films. westerns
and serials, men were men and women were girls, and the girls (heroines) were
always knocked unconscious at the beginning of the fight scene - usually by
tripping over their own feet and hitting their heads. In the westerns the good
guys wore white hats or rode white horses, and the bad guys wore a lot of black.
At the end of the western films of my day, the
bad guys always lost - period. And with the exception of the horses used in
westerns, the detective and general adventure movies applied the same bad guy
discipline little variation. And rest assured, there was none of today's
psychological analyzing of the bad guy's motives, childhood background, talk of
rehabilitation or Miranda Rights. In these 'morality plays' the bad guys were
captured by the good guys and sent off to long prison terms, or they were simply
shot dead on the spot by the good guys if they resisted - period.
Sometimes I think to myself that it was
absolutely amazing that we came through all of this violence and constant moral
bombardment. But we made the trip to adulthood without the intrusive presence of
psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists and politically correct overseers
looking over our shoulders. So in spite of these lacking components of our
upbringing, we went on to become the mentally sound and stable people we see in
the bathroom mirror each morning.
Think about all of that gunplay and the fist-fights we lived through on the screen, the overt violence of Heckle and Jeckle and Tom and Jerry cartoons, or listening to Gangbusters on radio. Yet despite this abundance of violence acted out before our impressive young eyes, ears and minds, the vast majority of us never had the slightest urge to actually kill anyone except in wartime combat for our country. Incredible, isn't it?
Television: The New Kid On the Block
With the advent of the 'alien' refrigerator and
the mystery of 'did that light go off when the door closed', I was barely able
to withstand the loss of our family icebox and our street's iceman. The icebox
had been a trusted 'after school' snack friend, and the iceman an icon of
neighborhood stability. When both faded away it did shake my world a bit; it was
that change thing again.
Please don't get me wrong, I loved early
television. The problem I had with it, however, was that this new medium didn't
constructively tweak my kid's imagination the way radio did. But I did enjoy
Captain Video, Tom Corbet Space Cadet, Sky King America's favorite Flying Cowboy
( and only flying cowboy), Wild Bill Hickcock, Captain Midnight, Gene Autry, Roy
Rogers and especially "The Adventures of Superman."
The stories I heard on radio sent me in my
dreams to a world of thrills or imagined adventures - and occasionally a terror
or two like listening to "The Shadow" often did. The point being they made a
lasting impact, but most of the shows I saw on television left my child's
imagination bankrupt. No dreams or nightmares ever emanated from what I viewed.
This important point should have been an early warning sign to parents and
educators alike. Unfortunately, it wasn't.
My generation was reared by our families and
the extended familial environment of our neighborhoods. The generations after us
would be reared by the perpetual baby sitter - the television set. Look at the
difference: back then we had no Columbines or teenage suicides, and the
explanation should be as clear as the picture on your HD - TV.
Yes, There Was A Dark Side
I would be the last to say that everything
during my generation's Golden Era was great. In fact, some of it was quite
nasty, sordid and at times, despicably horrifying. Thousands of Black people
were lynched in the south, Jewish people were discouraged or restricted from
entry to certain hotels and other commercial establishments. There was also the
murder of 14 year old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi, where the White
perpetrators were set free at trial. Also of note up until 1969, in 17 states,
laws remained on the books preventing Whites and Blacks from marrying. And of
personal emotional impact to me, the Ku Klux Klan and a racist city mayor
prevented me and my friends from seeing actor George Reeves of "Superman" TV
fame, when he appeared live at New Jersey's famous Palisades Amusement Park. No,
the 1940's and 50's wasn't fun all of the time - even for kids. But we got
through it despite the occasional run-in with a resident evil within our
society.
...But We Survived Didn't We?
So here we are, like it or not, back to
politics - as if we ever left that arena. Everything in America nowadays is
politics. There is no escaping it. Yes we did survive the trials and
tribulations of the times and - we are no longer kids, but now the
'older generation' - which is supposed to be the wiser one. And that
earned burden carry's with it a responsibility. But far more important, we also
did something else. We survived ourselves.
We made it to the moon and "We The
People" went on to invent television and the VCR. And at the same time,
we envisioned a future for our children and ourselves that rest assured
.....didn't look anything like what's out there now. But look at what we've
accomplished, for as sad as it was on the occasions of two space shuttle
disasters, both crews were racial and gender integrated.
Now we are looking at the real possibility of
either the first Black or first woman president of the United States of America.
And as a cruel fate would have it, they have both arrived at their first best destines -
at the same moment. Then again maybe it was not by chance alone, but as a test -
a test of us.
In of 2006, I attended my high school's 50th
reunion, and there remade contact with all of the other survivors from my class
and time. Considering what we'd all been through I though we looked none the
worse for the supposed wear of time. But I did, however, take note of something
telling. Just about everyone remarked the same thing at one time or another, in
some fashion during the evening: "I never thought I'd accomplish as much
as I did."
So what about this social and presidential
primary 'clash' of two valid firsts? Think about it. If either one wins the
Democratic primary, without a humiliating forced capitulation of the other, taking into account what each represents in their own right
of color and gender - we all win and America takes one giant step forward.
Well I for one would like to feel that since
our generation has accomplished so much, we should lend our accumulated wisdom
to the 'younger generation'; mainly to help them over this seemingly impossible
sociopolitical bump in the road.
What I am trying to say is that we of the
'older generation', should contribute to the solution, and not
be part of the problem. The first step, painful as it may be to
some, is to let go of long held subconsciously buried quests for revenge of past
wrongs, or contemporary misconceptions and long held suspicions.
The task is not impossible if we put our
collective minds and hearts to it. That's what Americans are good at -
accomplishing the impossible. For after all was said and done we made it to the
moon - didn't we?
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