On November 22, 1963, I was in my high school General Science class 16 miles south of the Texas School Book Depository. Today, I drive by Dealy Plaza on my home from work. There are always lots of tourists standing around, talking, pointing, taking pictures. As I pick my way through the intersection, I see the grassy knoll, the wooden fence, the railroad overpass, and the curb storm drain where the final shot was delivered, 44 years ago. Whew…it still seems like a bad dream, but it was just the beginning, and it goes on today.
The truth lies. Facts deceive. Pictures distort. Sounds hide. Thoughts rage. Our reality is tenuous, the way we change what we see and how we hear and even what we smell, as time passes, or emotions blur our senses. History is fraught with events or quotes or even images that we would swear were true, actual, factual. When we look at them later or more closely, or from a different angle or under different light, what we thought we would bet our lives on, turn out to be less than the sure thing we believed we would never forget.
In the TV series Mad Men, Donald Draper is confronted with the lie of his borrowed history in the Korean War (a police action that has yet to be officially ended), by the upstart Pete Campbell, in front of Bertram Cooper of Sterling-Cooper Ad Agency (played brilliantly by Robert Morse). Young Pete rants and blurts out the facts, thinking that it would somehow destroy his nemesis Draper. Cooper simply says to him, “Who cares? A man is who he is when he walks into a room.” Even that quote is probably paraphrased, and the program was shown only a few weeks ago. History cares. We care, but the realization is that appearance is everything, possession is 9 points of the law, that even morons get their way, when speaking from the bully pulpit.
My point is that we can only rely on what we believe to be true right now, on a second by second basis. And we hope that those beliefs are somewhat similar to what we believed yesterday. If they aren’t, can sanity survive? On that day long ago in Texas, I think I believed that the world was becoming evil, that some people were no damn good, and that heroes would help justice prevail. My transitory beliefs have shaded back and forth over the decades, around the central themes of justice, hard work, and extreme caution.
Heroes, criminals, victims, witnesses. The roster of people in each of those categories has changed in number, identity and definition many times over the past 44 years. The hero list is the only one that seems to diminish as we get older. It would be too easy to get into the cynical persona of many who comment on the ways of the world. As I get older, and move into what we call the new 60’s generation (just had my 59th birthday), I have added a new list to the first four: Morons. These are the ignorant and arrogant cynics whose logo appears to be the ‘Whatever…’ brand.
As I prepare to move into my Fourth Score, there are many observations that have helped me in my desire and belief of better things to come. One is the wisdom of experience, and another is the gift of aging in a world that provides medical progress for the unavoidable pitfalls of growing older. It sounds trite but the Internet, and the entire sphere of the new communications society that it has spawned, is another. This new technology provides unprecedented access to information, and something I thought was gone: community.
We are not alone. While only ‘entertainment’ movies, music, literature, and (dare I say it) even TV, sometimes provide clues in the society that there are others out there like us, that believe in good, justice, and even heroes. Even though those heroes are sometimes us. Crash, Grand Canyon, The Closer, Mad Men, Mars Rising, By the Rivers of Babylon, Long Road Out of Eden, Taking the Long Way, are but a very few of the cultural reflections that people still care about good stuff.
Oswald did it. Sirhan did it. Princip did it. Ray did it. Whitman did it. These events were witnessed by dozens or more and every year more and more information comes out about the seconds or minutes that each event occupied in the fabric of history. TRUTH? The Truth? The truth? I later had occasion to go by another site on the way to and from my daily activities. As I walked across the South Mall in Austin, Texas, I could help but be moved by the irony of the vision I saw every day for a few years.
Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free is the verse (John 8:32) carved above the front (south ) entrance to the UT Main building. Looking up past this about 300 feet above is the parapet from where Whitman shot. Both locations give me the sense of being a target should the fabric of time be torn slightly enough to put me at the time and place of theses horrendous events. My favorite counter to this feeling is the endeavor in our lives that we should all act like Jackie Robinson with a lead off of second base: look in all six directions at all times, Phil Rizzuto can make a play from almost any place.
