Let's Hope This Doesn't Get Outta Hand...

“Let’s Hope This Doesn’t Get Outta Hand….” A local resident expressed hope during a time of despair.  I’m reading the news.  I guess most people have heard about the shooting of Michael Brown and subsequent rioting and other shootings in and around Ferguson, Missouri. I was raised there but lived just outside Ferguson. My backyard fence was the city limit. We were sort of sandwiched between Ferguson and Dellwood , two of almost 100 municipalities that make up the St. Louis suburbs. Back in the 1950s there were thousands of families moving out from St. Louis into the new suburban subdivisions. We moved in 1953. Sometimes this is called “White Flight” but much of it was actually pent up housing expansion for young families after the return of the soldiers after WW-II. There was a tremendous housing shortage and a baby boom going on so there had to be this explosion of new housing.  At the same time there was an influx of rural Black families coming up from the South looking for the very same things that those young White families wanted: a decent home, good schools and jobs. We had Cub Scouts and little league parades down Chambers Road.  We borrowed a local farmer’s wheat field for ball games.  Our parents were busy with BBQ and PTA and crab grass control. Most of the dads were gone all day, working in St. Louis. Most of the moms stayed home. The new interstate that cut a swath through the neighborhoods of north St. Louis meant that it was an easy commute if you worked downtown.  Those neighborhoods were irreparably damaged but it was all in the name of progress.  The southern Black families were moving in there anyway so the concept of ‘neighborhood’ was pretty much irrelevant to the city planners.  With the new highways, more White families discovered they could live farther out from the city and still commute to work. The city was bruised and hemorrhaging but during the 1960s, when other American cities erupted in riots and racial violence, St. Louis was mostly quiet.

Back up in the northern suburbs things were going along just fine. The baby boom overwhelmed the school system so there were too many kids in the classrooms but new schools were being built. The dads had other job opportunities. McDonnell-Douglas (later Boeing) had a huge facility over by the airport so many dads didn’t even have to go into the city.  More jobs moved out of the city into the suburbs.  Things were just fine….hunky-dory.

I can recall one year I had a birthday party at the Ferguson municipal swimming pool. This was in a nice, well-manicured park with a big fishing lake with ducks swimming around.  We would go there for picnics or to fish but this swimming party was a little odd…it only happened once and I only went to that pool one other time. I recall my mom saying that the pool was for Whites only; Blacks were not allowed at the pool. This was probably around 1958 or so and is the only example I can recall of ever encountering a segregated facility.  I remember feeling awkward about it and perhaps that is one reason why I didn’t spend time in that pool but I wasn’t much of a swimmer either so it wasn’t at the top of my list of things to do.  Ferguson was all White as was Dellwood and my neighborhood and most neighborhoods as far as I could walk. There were no Black kids in my school and no black families at my church.

Over on the other side of Ferguson somewhere was Kinloch, a historically black community that had been there for generations – probably since the Civil War.  Kinloch was a place unto itself – it was as if a southern Black community was picked up by a tornado and dropped in the middle of St. Louis County. It was not an urban Black community by any means.  People had little frame houses. Streets were sort of paved. Everyone had a little garden plot and maybe some chickens. It had a matriarchal social structure and culture. There were a few ladies who seemed like they ran the place. I know that one lady, at least, carried a pistol. That was a different world…almost a different planet from where we were.

Our street and close neighborhood was unincorporated and patrolled by the St. Louis County Police…but we never saw them.  There was seldom any reason for a police presence. We would walk about a mile to the West Florissant and Chambers road intersection where there was a A&P store and some strip malls. That was in Dellwood.  There was a Ben Franklin store where we would go to buy penny candy. I liked those paper strips with the colored sugar dots and you could get a strip for two cents.  They had lik-m-ade, which was sort of like eating Kool-Aid out of the package. Your face and lips would be brightly colored depending on the flavor you got.  They also had some exotic Dutch candy there that we could get sometimes -- Whoa…weren’t we sophisticated.  Candy cigarettes were always popular. The old lady that ran the store was sure we were shoplifters and would follow us around the store and sometimes she had other old ladies who would do the job for her. We never took anything but she was convinced that we were all little thieves.

Dellwood didn’t have police…they had Cops. These guys had a sort of swagger and attitude that the County police didn’t exhibit. I recall one time they brought my brother home after some sort of horseplay got out of hand. They were not bullies but not friendly, either. One time I volunteered as a Boy Scout to help locate a stray dog that people thought was rabid (right…send the kids out). We met at the Dellwood police station and were given walkie-talkies to report back if we saw the dog. While we were waiting, the Cop decided it was a good time to demonstrate to the assembled kids his ability to suppress and overpower an adversary and he selected me as his dummy.  It was not an enjoyable experience.  I had no encounters with Ferguson police.  At the time, Ferguson seemed more civilized than Dellwood…it had that nice park.

I grew up and moved away from my neighborhood in the 1970s. I was a public welfare caseworker for several years and would come back to visit some of the poorest families in the area. That's when I became familiar with Kinloch and the pistol-packing matriarch. I respected her and I was always treated well.  I moved out of St. Louis in 1976 and I really didn’t give the area much thought after that. I knew that it went through a gradual transition to a Black community but that was happening in a lot of “close-in” suburb municipalities. Some White families stayed and are still there. I know some that are still there. Things seemed to be okay on the surface…different but okay.

The police shooting of Michael Brown popped the cork in Ferguson and Dellwood and some other areas close by. So far, I think there have been two or three nights of rioting and looting and at least two other people shot.  Al Sharpton has made an appearance. People are trying to calm things down but there are small armed groups roaming around and causing trouble and the police are reacting with tear gas and SWAT teams. From the news stories, I don’t recognize the area. We never had a Wal-Mart when I was there. I don’t recognize the street names or the apartment complex names.  Some of the churches where meetings are being held sound familiar. If it was a poor neighborhood, riots and looting will make it even poorer. Businesses will move out and other businesses will not move in.

That local resident’s wish…“Let’s Hope This Doesn’t Get Outta Hand….” has blown away on the wind with the tear gas and the smoke from burning stores.  Perhaps things have been “outta hand” for a while.

The Black Box

I'm writing this just a few hours after learning that Robin Williams is dead.  Bear with me...I am stunned -- this is almost unbelievable.. This is such sad news that everyone is stunned...It's almost a national tragedy. There are countless expressions of shock and sorrow. He was a great talent and will be missed -- missed now when he (and his talent) is needed so desperately.


We only knew him through his public life and his performances. In his personal and most private life he was clearly not the same person. It is very early but it is widely assumed and reported that his death was suicide. He suffered from depression and was not able to overcome the darkness that obscured everything else. And yet he had so much talent. It is a mystery to me how the inner demons can inspire and fuel such great talent and artistry. He is not the only one....there are many examples of talented people who were privately (or sometimes publicly) tormented.


Another similar comedian, Jonathan Winters suffered from bipolar disorder and was institutionalized on two occasions. He is quoted as saying:  “These voices are always screaming to get out...They follow me around pretty much all day and night.”


Winters somehow managed to control his demons. The Black Box of depression consumed Robin Williams. We wonder how this could happen. Surely, we think,  if you or me or somebody had gotten to him today during his darkest time we could have made a difference. Sadly, it doesn't seem to work that way. Depression is private space where a person is totally alone....maybe even in a crowd of closest friends. I have never suffered from that kind of depression. I only flirted with it. I've been depressed, especially after my wife died. Profound grief is not the same as depression but I maybe can see some parallels and a person can die from grief. After a while it becomes almost a steady companion...not a friend but a familiar something that is always there, almost like a shadow but with a voice.


People suffer from grief and seem to get over it. Deep depression is not so easy to escape. There are pills and counseling but medication seems to make things different....not always better. Counseling  might work for some but not others. The Black Box is hard to break out of and I wonder if in depression, as in grief, it becomes sort of a companion -- a familiar presence that a person can almost bond with -- in an unhealthy way.  The strength of that bond might determine the outcome.


You know, commercial airplanes have a black box that memorizes and records things that can help explain what goes wrong or how things happen in flight. We hear about them usually in crash investigations but they are there, on the job, in every flight. Wouldn't it be nice if we had an internal black box that would allow us to inspect our own personal and private "flight" to see where things seem to be going wrong and make a course correction?  Sadly, we don't.


I wonder if a Van Gogh or a similarly tormented artist would give up the demons if it meant the end of their talent.  I have an acquaintance who prefers not to take their medication because they like the slightly demonized self better than the medicated one. So many talented people have succumbed to one addiction or another. Would their stars shine less bright if they didn't have the demons? I would not wish that on anyone....I'd gladly take the slightly dimmer world if it meant they could be healthy and break out of the Black Box.

Shelter From the Storm

          

I was burned out from exhaustion buried in the hail

Poisoned in the bushes and blown out on the trail

Hunted like a crocodile ravaged in the corn

“Come in” she said

“I’ll give you shelter from the storm”.

– Bob Dylan

 

 

 

 

“Come in” she said

“I’ll give you shelter from the storm”.

 

And that she did…and more...

 

 

 

 

 

And that she did…and more.  Missing you. Loving You.

 

 

July 29, 2014

 

 

 

 

The Pursuit of Happiness

If you ever travelled to Europe in the summer you might have noticed a foreign attitude among the locals. Well, yes -- this is Europe and it should feel foreign to Americans but there is something else. There is a relaxed attitude. I noticed it most in Italy. When I travel abroad I prefer to spend five or six days in a single place. I'll take day trips but I won't travel around the countryside much. By staying in one spot you get to merge into the rhythm of a place and see how local people spend the day. I was sitting in a piazza in an Umbrian hill town having coffee and a tourist bus full of Americans arrived. They all piled out of the bus and sprinted down the street to eyeball the local church and an eleventh century fountain. They were shepherded by a tour guide who was Italian and may have been the only real connection to the people of Italy for that day. I saw them later racing back to the bus. Some of them has acquired small parcels in the local shops to forever remind them of their trip to the hill towns of Umbria. Those Americans had managed to turn a vacation into work.

There was an odd feeling of freedom in the air in Italy and I've found it in other places as well. A  social or cultural freedom. The day begins and the day ends. If you don't get everything done today then tomorrow is another day. People go home for lunch. It is not uncommon for folks to take a month-long vacation. It is absolutely okay to have a five course meal starting at 9 PM. 

This attitude is almost unknown in the US. I blame the Puritans. We would feel guilty taking a month-long vacation (even if we somehow earned that much time) and our employer and our coworkers would make sure we felt bad about it. The Puritan work ethic is almost a genetic building block of life here in the US. We are expected to feel guilty if we do anything that isn't deemed productive. We must always be busy improving or producing something. That's one reason why there is such a bad attitude toward people who need some form of government assistance. Retirees feel bad about collecting social security because it is sometimes perceived as being on "the dole". Some new retirees have a difficult transition because they feel bad about not working. They make lists of things they need to do and race through the list so they can make another list. I was one of those retirees. I made a list that would take me through the first year. I completed it all in ninety days and then went out and got a part-time job.

I often travel by Amtrak or take long solo road trips. I frequently run into tourists from Europe or, most recently, Australia. The folks on Amtrak are most interesting because it is a slow way to travel and because they interact with other American travelers. When an American asks where they have been or where they are going you can see the shock on their face as the foreign tourist lays out their vacation plan.  One family said they were taking a circle tour of the US by Amtrak starting in Los Angeles and heading to the east coast and then up to Boston and then a side trip to Montreal and then finally back to California.  If you drive interstates 40 or 44 you may encounter Europeans tracing the entire course of Historic Route 66 in rented vans or small campers. Sometimes they rent Harleys and make the trip. Sometimes they are lost and have to ask directions but they are doing it...usually on their own armed with a guidebook. They see more of the country than most Americans ever will. My recently-met Australian went from Australia to Brazil to see the Aussies play in the World Cup and then went on to the US where he was going to spend some time in Las Vegas, where I met him, and then head on to California before going home. The tremendous weight of self-guilt would keep most Americans from enjoying an extended trip. Lots of Americans grudgingly take their vacation time and sit at home because otherwise they might lose the time.

Americans sometimes like to complain and carry on about the socialist tendencies of European societies. Maybe there are some excesses but I can't help but think that we feel a need to pass judgment on those systems for a socialized safety net. It's un-American! Good Heavens...they have socialized medicine!! Poor folks, they must be slackers,  are living off the government or have some kind of tax-based subsidy!! Whatever happened to their devotion to hard work, duty, thrift, self-discipline, and responsibility, we ask. Being judgmental is one of the key components of the Puritan ethic system.  What on earth was Jefferson thinking when he listed "...the pursuit of happiness" as one of our inalienable rights?