Dirt Says "Yes Sir" To Me

The Old Man, some days, feels one day older than dirt. When I tire of the TV people and political candidates screaming at each other, I retreat into a nicer world. A world where being genteel was the rule rather than the exception. A world where courtesy governed a lady or gentleman's life....where insults were rare and when they did occur, were met with honor and dignity.

Part of this retrospective position opens the door to memories of the things of this world I have witnessed. So many events that are relegated to history books are fresh thoughts in my mind. I remember them clearly.

The list could be almost endless;

• The assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I watched it play out on television, and remember every detail clearly. The pink, blood-spattered dress on Jackie, the oath of office given Lyndon Johnson on board Air Force One, the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, are all imprinted deeply.
• The day man first set foot on the moon. Bleary pictures beamed back to earth was the stuff of Disney....of Jules Verne, but it was real....man...it was real.
• President Harry Truman's firing of General Douglas MacArthur, and the subsequent comment in a speech to Congress that MacArthur made, "Old soldiers never die. They just fade away."
• The Korean "conflict". "Conflict, hell....it was a war.
• "I Like Ike" buttons. Certainly not popular in the context of recent events in Texas, but in that day, promoted the candidacy of Dwight Eisenhower for President, a pleasant, somewhat soft-spoken man who commanded so brilliantly the invasion of Europe.
• Little boys made crystal radios to listen to "The Shadow, Gunsmoke, and Inner Sanctum.
• Trains belched smoke and had whistles.
• Cars were good for about 50,000 miles and then "burned oil".
• Ration books during World War II for things like sugar, gasoline, and other commodities we take for granted.

I could keep going, but I think you get the picture. We are all, to some extent, chroniclers of history. What we live today is the history of tomorrow. At any point in time, people somewhere will be reading about the things we have lived.

My advice to the young......seek out those who can provide eye-witness accounts of those event you've read about. Listen to them. Enjoy the fact that they have much to tell that fills in the blanks between the lines of the history books. And take kindly the council of your own years, for you are becoming the living history book of the future.