In a Word: Black and White

I miss black and white. I just re-read Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun for the first time since high school, and it brought me back to those crystal-clear teenage years when decisions between right and wrong, left or right were as simple as … well, black and white.  

All the answers were right there on television, most of the time literally in black and white. My dad was Archie Bunker, and he and his blue-collar friends wanted to beat up hippies. Blacks in our town waited to join the riots in Watts. Out-of-town college students were tearing apart campuses (except for that poor young girl from Kent State, and older kids from our refinery town just seemed to disappear (by the way, my dad was very kind and caring, and his friends never beat up anybody. I kind of doubt if anyone from our town – black or white – really wanted to start a riot).

In those years during and immediately after the Vietnam War, young people knew that war was bad. We saw the photos of a young girl scorched by napalm and Buddhist monks igniting themselves in downtown traffic. Thankfully, few draftees returned to small-town Southeast Texas because we’d heard they all became child killers and dopers … our English teachers had us read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness -- which gave birth to the 1979 movie, Apocalypse Now -- just to prove how easy it was to succumb to the evils of the jungle.

Saddest reality is of those soldiers coming back to the United States alone to “welcomes” of spit and taunts. An entire generation of veterans mislabeled, abused and neglected.

Vietnam was a “living room war” during the ‘60s and ‘70s, and its images and casualty scorecards on the evening news haunted my childhood (fortunately, we always seemed to kill more of them than they did of us). I dreaded the day that my first trip away from home would take me straight to the Hanoi Hilton (my imagination skipped all the middle steps and took me straight to prisoner-of-war). I was scared to death and scared to die.

Johnny hit bookshelves two days after the start of World War II in 1939, but it’s set in the earlier 20^th century during World War I. The book was banned in 1941 following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, although Trumbo wrote that he wasn’t aware of it, and it was “out of print” during the Korean conflict of the early ‘50s. I first read it in the early ‘70s after Trumbo added an addendum to the introduction, where he outlines an equation for figuring the impact of casualties in Vietnam: “40,000 dead young men = 3,000 tons of bone and flesh, 124,000 pounds of brain matter, 50,000 gallons of blood, 1,840,000 years of life that will never be lived, 100,000 children who will never be born.”

Yes, Johnny Got His Gun is that kind of “let’s take this outside” (except that we’re pacifists) book.

Johnny focuses on Joe Bonham, a critically wounded, young soldier, who wakes up in a hospital to the step-by-step reality that he’s lost his hearing … and his arms, and his legs, and his mouth, nose and eyes. He is unimaginably alone, and his story is written in a saddening and thought-provoking, stream-of-consciousness ramble that only a desperate insomniac can appreciate.

Just a relevant as ever, two points disturbed me as I re-read Johnny Got His Gun.

·         Somewhere between a quick victory in Gulf War I and the tragedy of 9/11, America re-gained its identity as a confident, collaborative nation. Unfortunately, we also made ourselves prime targets for the mindless sentiment of songs like Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” and the hate-breeding machismo of Toby Keith “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.” Disagree? Find a copy of Wag the Dog  with Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman. You’ll love Willie Nelson’s character.

Trumbo has Joe examining the concept of “liberty” and the messaging that sends people to war. Joe considers the opportunities men have to say “no” when asked to run an errand or buy a car, but wonders why no options are available when he’s asked to die.

He asked about those who are ashamed to say “no,” and ponders, “What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It’s just a word like house or table or any other word. Only it’s a special word. A guy says house and can point to a house and prove it.  But a guy says come one let’s fight for liberty. He can’t prove the thing he’s talking about so how in the hell can he be telling you to fight for it?

“No sir anybody who went out and got into front line trenches to fight for liberty was a goddam fool and the guy who got him there was a liar.”

No one deserves our genuine support and appreciation more than military personnel and emergency services providers. However, I was embarrassed when I found myself critically measuring Joe’s honesty against the currently accepted norms that pit patriotism against tolerance, and require “undying loyalty.”

·         Then I became angry … angry with the further bastardization of American values that preys on fear and mock pride to shut down cooperation on reasonable gun laws while children are being killed, to label homelessness and desperation as lazy and unmotivated, to brutalize families for the sake of a homogenous society, and to cast-aside veterans after the parades have stopped and the music has changed.

And all for the sake of a word.

Follow me on Twitter: @FWgib

Junior High Running Advice II

One of the best bits of running advice I ever received was on my one (yes, one) day of football tryouts in 8th grade. I eavesdropped on two coaches as they watched a classmate, Harris White, run 50-yard sprints. Harris was a Black kid whose running style was very relaxed, most noticeably, his palms open instead of fists clenched.

I finished this post on my running blog with a look at my own running style, but here I'd like to think more about Harris and why those coaches noticed him.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND

Port Arthur schools first integrated, more or less, when I was in junior high, some time around 1968-69 (I say more or less because I think PAISD has been under a federal court order to get it right for about 20-30 years).

My dad was a boilermaker at Texaco and had grown up dirt poor in Kentucky; and, as we watched America's civil rights wrestling match on TV, he talked about his Black friends (but Black wasn't his word of choice early on) that he grew up with and worked with. As a result, it never occurred to me to get angry because Blacks were at MY school (in all fairness, right in line with the times and region, we did talk about how those kids came all the way from n----- town to go to our school . . . in Port Arthur, all the way had to be maybe a couple of miles). Unfortunately, a lot of people were angry, and hallways would explode with the bump of a shoulder or a misunderstood look. Although tempered a little (but not much), those kinds of fights continued through at least my senior year (if you were at Thomas Jefferson in 72-73, you may remember All-State quarterback (and moron) Larry Meyer tossing a Black kid over the railing and down the stairwell).

Pretty sad, too. Even those of us who avoided trouble still ignorantly stepped on toes. I remember losing the key to my gym locker and innocently asking one of the Black guys if he could break into my locker for me. His look told me that I could have just as easily been telling him to move to the back of the bus. STUPID! (as a I write this, I'm thinking about Ray Lyons, a chess teammate -- manly men! -- and wonder how I may have treated him)

BACK TO HARRIS WHITE AND THOSE COACHES . . .

Ken Jenkins works out with me some evenings at the Y. He's an assistant principal at the alternative high school in Irving ISD, and we've talked a lot about the integration of schools when we were kids. Ken's Black and grew up in a small town near Corsicana, Texas. He's a few years older than I am and was on the first integrated football team at his high school. He's shared stories that are torn from the Remember the Titans script about mixing Black and white athletes. Ken ran track at TCU (I think) about the same time that Jerry Levias broke the color barrier in football at SMU.

He told me that white fans soon warmed up to the idea of having Black players. Most had never seen football played that way. Their team had figuratively gone from 0 to 60 over the summer, from farm boys playing three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust to wide-open FAST football. I believe now that's why those junior high coaches noticed Harris White. They'd never seen an athlete move so quickly and smoothly and so relaxed.

A SIDE NOTE . . .

The first game of Ken's season was against an all-white school, and he fielded the opening kick-off. His return of the kick-off for a touchdown probably is what swayed a lot of those East Texas fans. Unfortunately, a white cheerleader ran onto the field and hugged him after he crossed the goal line. Both were in the principal's office Monday morning.

The funniest part of that game is the first play from scrimmage. Ken was the running back, and the coach called his number on that play. Ken said that when he heard the play, he stepped out of the huddle, looked in shock at his coach, pointed at himself and mouthed 'ME?' I believe everyone in the stadium understood his question, including the opposing defense. Ken never said how far that play went.

FOLLOW-UP

I'm a REALLY slow runner; but if I ever see Harris again, I'd like to thank him for a relaxed running style that makes me at least feel like I'm running fast.

I'm not sure if Harris played football in high school. He was really fast, and I'm pretty sure he ran track. Thomas Jefferson's football teams (in Port Arthur, before I offend anyone) were REALLY bad in the early to mid-70s, so I kind of doubt if his speed had been tapped.

Monday Morning Coffee Pot Conversation

Nobody ever meets you at the office coffee pot on Monday morning and asks, 'Hey, what didn't you do this weekend?' But if I am asked, I have two biggies this weekend.




White Rock Marathon
The 2007 White Rock Marathon ran this morning. No mistake: I am in no shape to run another marathon (I'm still working back up to my 30-minute beginner's level), but in last year's Christmas card update -- because I couldn't think of anything interesting that I'd done during the preceding year -- I asked '2007 White Rock Marathon?'. Pfffttt! I have plenty of time, and how hard could it be to dedicate a few hours on the weekend and 45 minutes or so every day (for those of you who've never run a marathon, this kind of training is what leaves you walking somewhere around mile 17 . . . but I've put that behind me).

But, like the fool I am, since I'm not sure if I'll get Christmas cards out this year, I'll go ahead and ask here: '2008 White Rock Marathon?' I've got plenty of time.




John Fogerty
John Fogerty, formerly of my all-time favorite band Creedence Clearwater Revival, played Nokia in Grand Prairie Friday night; and, not paying any attention since I saw it posted a few months ago (Pffftt! I have plenty of time), I forgot to follow up on tickets and a babysitter.



Creedence Clearwater Revival was my first shot at 'rock 'n roll fan-dom,' and the band's album 'Cosmo's Factory' was the first non-country album I ever bought (Groves Pharmacy, lured to the dark side of 'hippie music' by one of those display racks right next to the pharmacist's counter, way in the back of the store). I'd always listened to the Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Charlie Pride albums and the like that my dad had and the Cajun and Gospel music that he played or my sister's left-behind Jan and Dean and Beach Boys albums. I think the only album I'd ever bought of mine own as Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison.

I sold my dad on allowing me to listen to CCR by playing the country-ish 'Lookin' Out My Back Door,' which was later covered by Buck Owens ('Dad, how much country could you want?'). My dad's early '70s rule was that no hair could touch the ears or my collar, but the photo of John Fogerty, at left (above) on a Harley, was everything I wanted to be. Long, full hair, flannel shirt and bandana, leather motorcycle chaps (probably covering a worn pair of Levi's) and boots. How much cooler could you be (hmmm? Except for the bandana and chaps, that's what I look like most of the time now)?

I've stayed a fan through CCR going from four members to three (I think it was John's brother Tom who left the band), then Fogerty's Blue Ridge Rangers album with 'Jambalaya,' and on to 'Centerfield.' Can't wait to hear his latest, 'Revival.' I've heard it's great.

But I sure wish I could be at the coffee pot tomorrow morning. maybe even sporting a flannel shirt and motorcycle chaps, and . . . well, maybe not . . .