Wednesday, September 17, 2014

King George Days: When We Were America

Via Susan

 
Mostly wooded, on the Potomac River, Dahlgren Naval Proving Ground the biggest employer, with a fair number of kids who got up at four-thirty in the morning to help their fathers with commercial crabbing on the river.

I beg the reader's indulgence since this is in a large sense a personal communication more than a column for all. It will resonate with many, or some, so I post it anyway.

I am preparing to fly to Fredericksburg, Virginia, for the—God almighty—fifty-year high-school reunion of King George High School. Perhaps we all do it eventually, unless of course we don’t. It is a curious thing, I have learned at previous reunions, to meet after half a century people you last saw when they were seventeen. They seem so little changed.

There was nothing special about the class of 1964, or about King George High, except for those of us who were in it. Our yearbook looked like ten thousand others across America, portraits with acne removed in the photo lab, the basket ball team exactly like everybody else’s, the cheerleaders conventionally glorious, conventional adolescent good-byes in ball-point pen—but without misspelling or bad grammar.

We, largely rural kids of the small-town South, represented without knowing it a culture, an approach to existence, and a devastating principle: You can’t impose decency, honesty, good behavior, or responsibility. They are in the culture, or they are not. If they are, you don't need laws, police, and supervision. If they are not, laws won't much help. And this is why the US is over, at least as the country we knew.

7 comments:

  1. I love reading and listening to someone reminisce. My mom did just that last night reminiscing about riding her and her best friend riding their bicycles back in 1937 from their little country town to London, Ontario- almost 90 miles one way. No fear about cars or kidnappers - just a wonderful time for these young teenage girls.

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  2. I wonder if they knew what they were doing and how long it would take them- I wouldn't either at any age.

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  3. That reminds me of my law-breaking day back in 1964 when I was a junior in high school -- no one got hurt and no property was vandalized because that was just not done - my boyfriend and his friend along with one of my girlfriends and I "broke" into the high school one summer night and went swimming in the pool - I can't remember how we got in, but it had something to do with underground tunnels that were not secured. And we were the "smart & good" kids - Hah! ;)

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  4. I wonder what my mom would say if I told her - I am seeing her this weekend, so I might just check out her reaction. She would probably laugh - my dad is dead now, but he seemed to be such a straight arrow. Is there any such thing in the human realm?

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    1. I wonder what my mom would say if I told her - I am seeing her this weekend, so I might just check out her reaction. She would probably laugh

      Please do and that's great that you see her so often.

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      - my dad is dead now, but he seemed to be such a straight arrow. Is there any such thing in the human realm?

      Not these days, I'm afraid. Back in the Dark Ages, as my mother would say, :) yes.

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