It Doesn't Look Like America Anymore.......Redux

         The following post is from last April:

It Doesn't Look Like America Anymore

         I'm in a rather melancholic mood tonight. This once proud and industrious nation is staggering and punch-drunk. It has rejected its Benefactor having defiantly proclaimed the words of the Victorian poem Invictus "I am the master of my fate: the captain of my soul" and forgotten Benjamin Franklin's words to the Constitutional Convention "I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?"
          I compare my own childhood to those texting their way through their formative years and wasting their young adult lives on Facebook, oblivious to their heritage. I was so fortunate. No, we didn't have much money, and there were temptations, but it was not a tsunami whose power tossed us as toothpicks. We had plenty of time to meditate. A few years ago I returned to the neighborhood that I grew up in in Buffalo and last September I wrote down some thoughts on that visit.


          It wasn't a vision and it wasn't a daydream. It was an awakening of sorts for an eleven year old boy. My guess is that it was December for the giant snowflakes would not have moved me so in the middle of a winter that had already seen many snowstorms come in off of Lake Erie. The year was probably 1961. There must not have been any friends available to pal around with for I was walking aimlessly as the snow was falling fast and sticking. The tree could not have been more than twenty feet...more of a big bush than a tree but it still stood above the flat Buffalo landscape. The ground was barely covered by the fresh snow but those large flakes landing on the bare limbs made climbing the tree...bush...inviting, and I did.
         I sat on the highest limb that would support me. To my right was the apartment complex that I had grown up in, three story red brick buildings placed almost as a maze with plenty of grass in between, perfect for young boys to play football on. If there was anyone outside with me that day they are no longer in my memory. Looking to my right, towards the red brick, gave me feelings of security for almost everyone knew their neighbor. Looking to my left was almost as a frontier. It was just a very large, seemingly endless, open field that I had explored often finding and breaking open the most interesting rocks. Directly behind me was the United States Post Office and the Stars and Stripes flew proudly above even the apartment buildings. Often, when the flag was not raised, we would swing like Tarzan from the ropes until the local police cruiser pulled in and then we ran.
          I pondered the beauty of the snowflakes that day. It was as if I never experienced anything majestic before. I remember gazing off over the open field as if I were in the crows nest of the Mayflower looking off to see if I could spot the new world. I revisited that spot and that tree not too many years ago, almost wanting to climb it again. Instead I stood at its base and tried to put myself back into 1961. I looked to my right and it seemed as if not a single thing had changed, for the red brick buildings looked exactly as they always had. No new buildings had been added nor any taken down. Only one change was immediately obvious, the line of metal trees with clothesline connecting them was gone. I looked off to my left and there was no field whatsoever, only an eight lane highway dug into the ground so that if you looked straight out you saw houses in the distance but if you walked a little bit closer it was if another world existed beneath the surface of my boyhood. The frontier was domesticated, its treasures pillaged.
         Oh there was one more change. Looking behind me, the Post Office was gone along with the flagpole and Stars and Stripes. I had the feeling that the people living in these same red brick buildings did not know each other anymore....just a feeling. Had I climbed that tree I would have had to look down into that abyss of vehicles as hundreds of people came into my life and vanished just as quickly without my even getting to see what they looked like. I didn't feel secure anymore as strangers were to my right with the faceless to my left. There was no flag representing America towering over me, no eagle ready to attack a lurking enemy. Nor could I run home and watch Gunsmoke where the good guy always won. I wasn't lost for I knew where I was. It was America that was lost, buried under the soil that provided the ditch for the highway that took everyone somewhere but no one really anywhere that looked like America anymore.