4/11/2020
I’m watching POTUS get pummeled by the far-left press at a news conference and it reminds me of something I did when I was almost 10. Right there at the end of my first decade of life, I was introduced to politics by watching the Democrat Party Convention of 1952. What a donnybrook! I have never forgotten the man I was sitting with when this was going on. His name was Harry Hensley, a neighbor whose daughter Janet was in my class at school. He had suffered a stroke and was unable to do much more than sit and talk. So, I visited him. He really got animated and quite angry with these guys on TV. I seem to recall the floor argument was between Estes Kefauver and Adlai Stevenson, ultimately the candidate.
While working in retail for the first 20 years or so of my adult life, I was told often the two subjects to never talk about was religion and politics. Yet everywhere I worked, from a bank to a shopping mall, those were the two subjects which dominated conversations. Most times, I agree, it ended wrong to talk with the customer on these subjects unless he/she brought it up and it happened to agree with your perspective (I guess I should say you agreed with them.)
Now, I don’t care. Partly because I am far more discerning as to how to have that conversation with a stranger, but partly because I’m very confident and better versed in what I personally believe. This paragraph is being written to explain the SIMH today was “I Believe”—Elvis Presley version. His final, crescendoed words represent just how I Believe—can’t be louder, can’t be clearer.
What I’m going to write about later in this column, is the real education in politics I had thrust upon me at 15, but that’s later. My second decade of life was profound and filled with change and growth, then more change and more growth, etc. I don’t know if I can be brief.
At the leveling out age of 11, I became a Boy Scout. I don’t know what I thought that would be like, but in about two Summer seasons with two Scout camp trips, I had no desire to go ahead with scouting. I really can’t remember what I didn’t like about it, but I remember thinking we couldn’t seem to do enough of the things I liked! At one of the camps, a higher up in Scouting performed on stage, “Casey At The Bat”—his hands holding a baseball bat, his head sticking through a curtain whereon there was a boy’s baseball uniform sewed on. I never had heard it, I was enthralled with the poem, the performance, and the lesson learned: it hurts to strike out!—more later about that.
I had a hard-not-to-like teacher, Mrs. DeCoursey in the fifth grade; and in the 6th I had Mr. Deckard, who happened to be a Nazarene Pastor. He knew my older brothers, he knew my father very well, and he had my attention from the get-go. The greatest memories from my 6th grade are 1.) almost getting a whipping with about 7 other boys from a recess baseball-game squabble, but the best grade school teacher I had, Mr. Deckard spared us; and 2.) The same Mr. Deckard read to us aloud many, many days, as the last subject of the day. It is my personal opinion it is a great teaching tool to read aloud to students. It teaches the correct syntax verbally, for understanding how and why the author wrote. The very next year, I learned a smidgeon of how important that would become to me.
In those two school years (5th & 6th grade) I learned a considerable amount concerning the difference in genders: girls became a mystery to me. Oh, I knew some things, but I did not understand them. I wanted to, but I didn’t. As aging besets me now, I wonder how many possible friends I would still have from that timeframe of my life if I could have been more understanding, more amiable, less competitive: know what I mean?
Thanks for reading, the Elder
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