Three-Hundred-Million Fell from the Eagle’s Aerie

The reference to military behavior brought an incident to mind. Actually, what it brought to mind was a heart-panging wave of nostalgia for orderly conduct, a sense of security and optimism about the future, respect for those I worked with and even most of those I worked for, calling them Sir or Ma’am as casually as I would call EC Shithead or Me Hoe. I really long for that sense of belonging to a community in a way that made it all worth doing because I knew what I was walking toward was a decent future that probably would never include another war, thanks to the recent election of Ronald Reagan and a real sense that the country might be headed in a better direction.

Having graduated from high school almost literally imprisoned along with those embassy workers in Iran (think about your entire high school in countdown mode about how many days the hostages had been there) in an era when middle class rungs were beginning to dry rot a bit. I.e., there was a serious unemployment and stagflation/inflation problem in this country after four years of Carter. Since I was a smart gal in a very small country school, life was dull but the beer was cold and when I should have been reading Calculus and Physics books in my spare time, I was doing what farm country teenagers do. So, my hopes of graduating college first try were not realistic. I was particularly good in Physical Science, with the theories of motion and force described in geometric terms somehow a concept that made sense in my mind, but I really didn’t have the math background to support that first attempt at college. In those days, you could have a second chance in life if your first attempt didn’t work out. I ended up working for a while, going back to college for a while, joining the military for a while, going back to college and then working for a while and retiring. Worked out okay, but it wasn’t a straight shot at all.

But, Carter was right about one thing for sure. My generation had Malaise. I didn’t know it then, because I was really busy thinking drinking beer around a campfire in an old rock quarry was fun and getting the first wave of the cultural shock as it blasted upon us. I think we were in culture shock. Really, I do. We went from miniskirts to three piece suits considered stylish for women. From ruffles on dresses to jogging suits. Hip hugger bell bottom jeans to Calvin Kleins. Hank Williams and Elvis Presley to Kiss and Styx. What a bizzarre shift we saw, us Malaisians.

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Think about it. Born in 1961, I grew up seeing Kennedy killed almost first-hand, though I would not truly remember it if I hadn’t listened to my parents and friends discuss what they were doing on that day again and again. So supposedly I was sitting on the floor playing with something or another, in some sort of fuzzy sleeper thing they used to put all young children in before the advertisers convinced us that even babies need a full wardrobe. My mother was washing dishes around the corner and the radio was playing religious music. (Country Hick Baptist, in case you are wondering what denomination?) My other siblings were in school. The phone rang and my mother bundled me up and went out to tell my father. After a bit, he came to the house and they turned on the television. We had an old black and white Magnavox television that some relative had given mother when they got a newer one. It had legs, which made it furniture, and it also had shelves on one side to gather dust and hide candy wrappers and, later, other contraband as I got older. But, I digress. Of course, I don’t remember a thing about that day, because I wasn’t even TWO. However, it is the thing people talked about at gatherings. Stephanie, you are excused. You do not remember “gatherings.” Most of us do.

At gatherings of family, friends or church family, which in those days really meant something, I think. I knew a lot of women who loved me and whom I loved enough to visit and see from time to time into my adult years. So, gatherings were not the same as meetings, which have an agenda. They were social functions that were either planned around holidays or sometimes they just “happened.” But, when a gathering happened, people discussed things that were happening in society at large and local and regional news. And it almost always led to the big issues of the day, which my particular age group (graduated high school 1980 but would include those from perhaps 1978 to 1982 in the same Malaisian group) watched germinate and blossom into what they are now: Tangled and thorny gardens let grow until they do so much damage it will take excavation to repair.

Race meant line up and see who could get to the light pole in the churchyard first. The girl who lived at the end of our quarter-mile dirt, sometimes gravel, road was black, her mother the widow of a farm worker who’d died, I think. She had an older sister and a younger sister. Then later, there was a baby brother and I didn’t understand how that happens, but when her older sister had a baby, my parents decided they’d better explain a couple of things. That really were not very good at that or I was particularly dense because when I later found out the same man who had fathered the baby brother also fathered the older sister’s child, I realized there was a whole different sort of world my good friend lived in that I never saw.

My father had grown up enamored of the black culture in our community. His father had settled there about the same time the black gentleman from Mississippi who’d taken his plantation inheritance and opted to move to Missouri rather than raise his children in the Deep South. He’d brought family with him, I think the story goes, so he established a church there which my grandparents attended, being from St. Louis and there literally being no one else around. So, even though my grandfather later joined with others in the community to build a little church/schoolhouse that I attended through my school years and occasionally into my adult years when visiting the region, my father was quite comfortable taking one or another of his kids to the black church for a wedding, funeral or just a Sunday service to listen to the music and a “real” preacher.

We visited the families who lived in that little cluster of homes for their gatherings, though pretty rarely. I can remember a big church gathering there on the grounds with a huge kettle over an open fire. Once the oil started boiling the “ladies” would bring the chicken pieces out and someone would drop them one by one into that churning kettle of hot lard and within a few minutes the first pieces would pop to the top, crusty golden brown. Man, I loved that fried chicken and it is rare I get even my own free range chicken fattened in a pen to taste even CLOSE to that. No one complains about my chicken, trust me, but they never had that kind of marvelous feast prepared for them in exactly the way a chicken should be cooked. In a big vat of oil so hot it crisps the outer shell immediately, sealing all the juice and flavor in while keeping all the extra fat out. So, the slight breading added to season and salt the meat really saves a lot in greasy calories that add nothing. Of course, now we bake or saute everything to avoid every gram of fat or carbs that we can. Bleh.

Well, I digressed again. Issues.

Race. It didn’t mean to us then what it does now.

Religion. Ditto. What religion are you? The selection was quite different, with Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, and so on, with PERHAPS Latter Day Saints acceptable as long as they didn’t LOOK Mormon. I never knew one Jew, though my father suggested that the Yerger ancestors were probably part of the Jewish migration to this country, anticipating some problems ahead. In any event, they opened a market in St. Louis, became Catholic and that was that.

Drugs. We had no idea what a real drug problem was.

Sex. We got introduced to X-ratings and porn stars and all the perverted crap Hollywood could come up with in the early days peace and love. By the time I got to college, do you wanna dance had become sex and drugs and rock and roll and a generation lost in space had lost their freaking minds and started overdosing and engaging in some really decadent and perverse behavior on stages and big screens around the country.

Abortion. In 1973, I was eleven years old and the abortion debate was never-ending here in the Bible Belt. Personally, I always felt like a woman’s doctor and she could probably decide without the freaking US Supreme Court being involved, but I didn’t grasp how intrusive and invasion the government could be in this country. And, of course, that intrusiveness turned abortion into common practice, because once the government legalizes something, then they have to regulate and monitor it, so there you go.

Moon Landings. Skip it for now.

Watergate. “I’m not a crook.” Saw it.

Bicentennial! 1976 is the reason I passed by 1977 as a contender for the Malaise category. That whole bicentennial extravaganza was kind of fun, in spite of Carter being elected. And, really, he hadn’t wrecked the economy yet and it was kind of interesting to have a president who seemed so down home country. So, that carried into that subset of generation… I’m not saying some of you 76ers and 77ers can’t HAVE malaise in the same way, I’m just saying you had the glory of seeing patriotism and pride in country for reasons that did NOT involve building blown up or destroyed in front of your eyes. My poor son’s generation thinks that’s normal.

Anyway, I guess in my quest to try to hit the 300th comment on my way back to bed, I failed miserable.

So, the military life was orderly and there were some parts of it, early in my career as a red rope turned radar technician, when I felt great sense of purpose and duty. Those were times when I still thought the country’s military was being used for the good of our nation and the world instead of what I think now. Those were times when I believed things could only get better.

Oh, well, I’m going to sneak back into the bed and put my cold feet on Nick. I forgot my slippers and my feet are freezing now. I imagine this will be my last post for a while, but after this long missive, there might be something new up that I just have to read and comment on. That’s the problem with this place. It is too damn interesting.

I long for Mayberry.