Thanksgiving Would Show Up Again

How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - Pause to Reflect

With the events of the last week, I think it is time to take a moment to reflect  on how attitudes and rhetoric have changed in my lifetime.  The basic fundamentals that I was taught of respect, compassion and kindness to my fellow man seem to have gotten lost.

My parents were not particuarly religious but as far back as I can remember we got dressed up every Sunday morning for church.  I don't think they attended a church before and once I turned sixteen they stopped taking us.  As dysfunctional as my family was my parents did a great job of teaching us to respect the beliefs of others.

My Mom was a great reader and paraded us to the library every week.  When she went to work books were her method of keeping us out of trouble while she was gone.  The Library in Muskogee was a magical place with its endless series of beautiful wood bookcases, a little merry-go-round and a mezzaine floor of glass blocks.  There was an unforgettable smell of polished wood and slightly musty paper when you walked in the door. There was a whole world to explore in those books we carried home each week.

I think I was about ten or eleven when I discovered a shelf of about twenty or thirty books, each on a different religion of the world.  Funny how I can still visiualize that shelf in my mind as if I was looking at it today. That shelf was my summer reading program and I read them all.
Many of them were on the different branches of Christianity but there were also books on Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism.  That was the time I realized that even though they had different names the basic thesis was that they were basically the same.

Man has an inherent need to believe in a higher power.  Each religion has similar rules to live by teaching forgiveness, compassion, kindness and respect for not only our fellow man but for all the animals and the planet we live on.  Sure, we have had a lot of religious wars through out our history probably caused by small groups with fanatical reasons. Every religion of the world has gone through it's time of fanatical beliefs and perhaps every religion you don't believe in looks fanatical from your point of view.

When my parents left it up to me to attend church I began going to different churches with my friends.  There were ones I didn't like too well but growing up in the Episcopal church I was used to a little pomp  and circumstance.  At college my best friend wanted to go to synague on Friday nights and wanted someone to go with her.  She and I took Hebrew classes from the rabbi to understand the service.  Luckily I took Latin in high school which helped with the beautiful midnight Christmas masses at the Catholic church.  Friends of every religion have been apart of my life and I respect all their beliefs even though they may differ from mine.

I only had one relative in Muskogee, an amazing uncle by marriage.  He was well into his late fifties or sixties at my first remembrance of him.  He was a newspaper reporter with fascinating stories about my Dad in Kansas City during the 1920's - not ones Dad wanted told.  Uncle Tom could read seven languages, composed music, painted and read everything printed on paper. He lived in a little house by the railroad tracks I referred to as Uncle Tom's cabin and walked to work as he never owned a car. He never cared about worldly possessions and was an atheist.  Kindness, compassion and a love of learning were his attributes.

Our country was founded on the basis of religious freedom. That is the right to believe in a God or not believe in a God. Our founders were not all Christians, contrary to popular belief and gave us the right to choose our religion.  Our Statute of Liberty says "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free".  This is what America should be, what we need to be.

In this time of un-Christian rhetoric and hate it is time to pause and think why should we be afraid of letting people in great need come to our country.  The two phrases my parents used a lot keep coming to mind.  "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."   and 
"There but for the grace of God, go I"

How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - Summer of 1961

Of all the summers I have lived through, the Summer of 1961 stands out as one of the most fun, rather carefree and enlightening. It was that summer of being fourteen and turning fifteen and graduating from the ninth grade.  The time when you are too young to date and too old to play with dolls.  Rather reminds me of a song about how lovely it is to be a women but still in braces and can't walk gracefully in high heels.

How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - 9th Grade

With the slightly cooler weather this week I pulled out my green and white Muskogee Rougher sweatshirt.  In the little town I live in it gets lots of comments usually referring to my being an Okie from Muskogee. I was stopped in the little local grocery store by a man who asked if I was from Muskogee. He said he grew up there also but had graduated several years after I did.  We chatted about how much fun we had and I did remember his Dad as one of the more famous names from the weekly stock car races.  It is always a warm, fuzzy moment when you realize what a small world this really is.

I recently heard John Irving, the author, discussing his theory of developing characters for a book.  He said that by the time a person is thirteen or fourteen they have developed their character or personality characteristics.  Wow!  That is scary when I think back about my class in the 9th grade at Alice Robertson Junior High. 

My memory is pretty good but looking through piles of scrapbooks and old yearbooks from Alice Robertson Junior High provided most of these little stories about my interesting class.  There had been inklings of what was to come in the 8th grade.  Seems like my class was so disruptive during assemblies that the entire class was banned from further assemblies.  Sulphur bombs had strangely appeared in front of the principles office on several occasions.

I always thought as a cheerleader that we did a pretty good job of cheering the teams on.  The AR Warriors always seemed to have a great team.  The two years before us they only lost one game and that was to our cross-town rival, West Junior High.  The team of 1960-61 had a perfect record, they lost every game.

Surely the basketball season had to be better.  They did win some games but did not take loss lightly.  After losing to the team in Sapulpa it seems like a little damage occurred to Sapulpa's gym.  The basketball team then won the record for the longest stay in Mr. Abbott's Blue Room.  For a week they reported there every morning for the day and for a long time could not be seen walking their girlfriends around in the hall.