The last I saw my childhood friend Jack Fitzgerald (known then as John) was the summer of 1960, as he headed off with our mutual friend Dan Bryant to work the fishing boats in Alaska.
I lost track of Jack, but stayed in touch with Dan through our mutual friend Denny. When I was bewildered by the culture of academia as I entered a PhD program at the University of Maryland in 2003, Dan recommended two books, one of which is still on my shelf: Literature Lost. Written in 1997, it described the wholesale takeover of English departments by the left, what we would call the Woke. Dan confirmed the reality and extent of the madness I encountered returning to campus after 40 years.
Dan died a decade ago of interstitial lung disease. It took so long for the Canadian socialized medicine system to see him that by the time they got around to it the disease was beyond treatment.
Dan, however, had kept track of Jack. One way or another I had his email. He is now a regular reader of this blog.
Children’s knowledge of their parents’ affairs is very spotty. I knew little beyond the fact that Jack’s parents were liberals. His mother Lois was a PhD candidate in psychology (I think) and would occasionally invite us neighborhood children in for conversations and some sort of testing. That was and the relaxed days before there were restrictions on human subjects research. It was kind of fun. Father Ken worked for the county as I recall.
Whatever their backgrounds, Ken and Lois, and hence the kids, loved music, especially folk. That’s the subject of today’s recollection. Jack and his brother Paul would often sing “I’m looking over a four leaf clover…” To the point that Paul, getting bored with it, would sing “I’m looking under a four leaf clunder…” Whatever in the world that meant.
They had a lot of Burl Ives records. I appreciate him all the more now, having seen what has happened to popular music in the seven decades since. Burl Ives had simple songs, silly songs, and songs that represented a time and place.
The depression of the 1930s spawned a lot of bums. Men who lost their jobs or never found one and wandered the country from end to end. Folk singers of that era such as Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger wrote a lot of songs about them. The songs had political overtones – the plight of the bums could be blamed on the rich city people, the bankers and so on. I recently wrote about Mr. MIT, who gushed his love for Woodie Guthrie’s simple farmer but would by background and social class have been much more closely related to the man who per the lyrics robbed said farmer “not with a six-gun, but with a fountain pen.”
At any rate, everybody in my youth knew songs about bums. “Hallelujah I’m a bum” is one my mother sang to me when I was a baby. Mr. MIT’s favorite “This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land” doesn’t directly indicate what type of person might have authored it, but the idea that the land belong to everybody stands in contradiction to the notion that the plutocrats (that’s you, Bill Gates in North Dakota) have a total right to buy it all up. Or that the government (that’s you, Mark Rutte in the Netherlands) can make arbitrary rules to force farmers off the land.
Which brings me to a song that popped into my mind a couple of weeks back, upon which I sang it a couple of times. Eddie loves The Big Rock Candy Mountain and sang the refrain over and over again, to the point that I pulled the words down from the Internet so he could learn it properly.
Oh, the buzzin' of the bees and the cigarette trees
The soda water fountain
Where the lemonade springs and the bluebird sings
In that Big Rock Candy Mountain
On a summer's day in the month of May
A burly bum come a hikin'
Down a shady lane, through the sugar cane
He was looking for his likin'
As he strolled along he sang a song of the land of milk and honey
Where a bum can stay for many a day
And he won't need any money
Oh, the buzzin' of the bees and the cigarette trees
The soda water fountain
Where the lemonade springs and the bluebird sings
In that Big Rock Candy Mountain
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
The cops have wooden legs
The bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmers' trees are full of fruit
The barns are full of hay
I want to go where there ain't no snow
Where the sleet don't fall, and the wind don't blow
In that Big Rock Candy Mountain
Oh, the buzzin' of the bees and the cigarette trees
The soda water fountain
Where the lemonade springs and the bluebird sings
In that Big Rock Candy Mountain
This is the backdrop as I think about the collapse now looming. America has changed radically in the nine decades since the Great Depression. At that time there was a spirit of generosity, a willingness to share with the down-and-outs because, as the song went, “There, but for Fortune, Go You or I.” Here is the panhandler’s anthem, “Brother, can you spare a dime?”
My grandfather Josiah Scott Brown was a doctor, an orthopedist. My mother, settling his estate in 1968, added up close to a million dollars in unpaid bills - bigger by far than the inheritance he left. I am quite sure that he felt it was his obligation to the Hippocratic oath and as a good Presbyterian not to refuse to take care of people even if they couldn’t pay.
Private charity was a much bigger deal during the Depression and during my childhood. Churches did not see that the connection between helping people and saving souls somehow conflicted with the separation of church and state. Denny, John and I attended Castro school with children from the Chung Mei home, run by Baptists for Chinese war orphans. Churches actively helped match childless couples with unwed mothers. My grandfather arranged for one such unwed mother to share our house in Berkeley until she delivered.
I fear what happens when governments, which have taken over so many missions that used to be handled by private charity, run out of money. The citizenry is not accustomed to retail level, person-to-person charity the way it used to be. Neighbors in the cities are not nearly as much like one another as they were.
On a positive note, I am delighted at the way Ukrainians are responding to those fellow citizens who have been injured, lost breadwinners, lost their homes and been forced to move by this war. A huge number of people we know through Toastmasters, Oksana’s music lessons, the children schools and so on are actively involved both in helping and soliciting money. Oksana twisted my arm this morning to make a donation for a charity to buy a car. The fact that I have known the lady lawyer handling the collection for more than a decade gives me confidence that the money will be well used.
That’s the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the men are strong, the women put their good looks to good use in stoking our generosity, and the children are happy with songs of long, long ago.
This brings back many memories. As a child, my parents taught me to know the difference between a “Bum” and a “Hobo” and to tell you the truth one was going to come back (which was unwanted) and the other was passing through (very desired). I can recall sitting under the shade of the mulberry tree eating sandwiches with the Hobos who had come in on a train a few miles from our house and the lack of charity from homeowners along the way, had forced them to wander further from the train tracks, into our neighborhood. I recall many a Hobo telling me about riding the rails as they received their sandwich and a glass of water and then bow their head for a moment in silent prayer and reflection of gratitude. After they had eaten, they returned the glass to the porch and made their way back to the tracks to catch another train. The Hobos always wanted to do something in return for the food, pull weeds out of the flowerbed, fix a fence, or hang a door. My mother didn’t want them to do this because she would feel obligated to give money to compensate beyond a sandwich.
As I got older the local women created a network to watch out for each other. Often my mother would make an amazing meal and pack it up for some family where the wife needed some help. We would just end up with boiled cabbage and potatoes. I never understood this as a 4-year-old until my brother was born, my mother nearly died, and she lay in bed trying to recover. A group of women came over to clean the house, cook some meals, washed clothes, help with the baby, and so on. No one complained, or said what is the government going to do? There was no church involved. It was just neighbors watching out for each other.
Years later after my time in S.E. Asia with the military, I moved to an area with a large LDS (Mormon) community. They had a church social welfare system, and they were never afraid to knock on my door to tell me they required my help either at a farm to hoe cotton, process oranges to juice, or roof someone’s house in need. I was with my neighbors and it was an interesting way to get to know them better. Most of them never needed the church welfare but many could tell you stories of how people benefited. I understand all those farms and factories are now closed. Closed by the government.
Now 5 decades later in life and I see an army of homeless veteran, homeless beggars on the street, and virtually every hotel and bed & breakfast full of noncitizens, refugees, parolees sleeping comfortably, well fed, well clothed, safe, and provided entertainment from the public trough. The government has pretty much shut down true charities, people feeding the homeless in a public park are arrested for doing so. The world seems to be upside down on its priorities.
If you are Bill Gates, Bill & Hilary Clinton, Bono, George Soros you create a charity and only seem to get richer. The people you target to help get worse off over time. But government endorses these charities, gives them a place to be experts in fields they are unqualified and provides them awards, and accolades.
I am sure it is me. I just don’t get it.
Goodness, I recall as a child in 1945 when bums would be in the neighborhood. My mother would make sandwiches as they came knocking on the back door. They always asked to do something in return for her meal and tea. But we had little ourselves but much more than the bums. My Dad took a job well below a college grads standard and was grateful for the work.
The social safety net was via churches and unions/social halls. The operators of those facilities knew the people and simply ignored the down-and-out addicts. They worked for the poorest trying to get them back on their feet.
Then the government gradually took over, perhaps starting in the 60's. The faceless people passing out the dole could care less about the ones being helped. My parents would never accept anything from the government as a matter of principle. Now people actively work the system to gain as much as possible from the government. The government doesn't care about people, so those using the government don't care either. That leads to a segment trapped in perpetual poverty with children attending marginal schools because the government really doesn't care. The loss of self sufficiency in so many is tragic. Many have lost hope and live on the streets addled out of their minds. All from a society that thinks that is being kind - let government take care of it. Government doesn't care about people, only people care.
Meanwhile we have groups who have nothing better to worry about than words used. Constant redefinition designed to minimize the impact of minutia. We obviously have too many idle hands. A group of academics envisioning a better society eager to destroy a working one for a utopia that cannot happen. Perhaps we deserve a good economic collapse worldwide. The harms will happen to the least of us, but all will be set back for a period.