I'm not sure why--maybe because my mom's birthday would've been this past Monday--but something last night sent me thinking back. Then again, maybe it was the Mustang and the news that Heartland Classics sent the car off to the exhaust shop for a new exhaust system, meaning it's almost done.
No--what actually started it was a conversation with the cashier at the gas station in Strasburg. They had a couple customers pour slushees and get out food and found out, those aren't acceptable with Link cards--for good reason. But instead of putting stuff back, it got left in a corner and caused a mess. So I told them and they were able to clean it up. Later, at the Casey's in Taylorville, I stopped for a tea and to use the restroom and someone had not flushed, left the seat down, and sprayed half the bathroom. I told the guy and they had to clean it again.
When I was a kid, the first job I had was working for my dad in his warehouse. I realize now some of the work I was given was 'make work'--or it was stuff that needed to get done, but there was never enough time to do it....including scraping tar off the office floor and cleaning the roofers' bathroom...which is quite possibly the worst thing I've ever done in my life, and a good motivator for keeping my grades up.
Anyways...THAT got me thinking.
When I was little, my dad had a guy who supervised his warehouse, did some light work. His name was Henry, but I don't think I ever knew his last name. Henry should've retired long before 1972. I think he'd worked for Economy Roofing going back to the beginning with my grandfather and his brother, Don, in 1926. Yup--he'd been there 46 years at that point, but that's not what I remember about him really.
What I remember was that he was born in 1878 and joined ER when he was nearly 50. Do the math and you'd see he was managing the warehouse as a 94 year old. Of course, I also know now my dad may have kept him because of loyalty--belief in ethics/integrity/loyalty in business was important to him. And still--that's not the biggie.
You see, what I remember is that Henry was a veteran of the Spanish-American War, that he'd fought in the Philippines as a young man. Here we are in 2015 and I have a memory, relatively fresh in my mind, of a man born at the end of Reconstruction, alive when men like William Sherman walked the streets of America, who fought in the last "big" war of the 19th century. I remember him--and his war two centuries ago.
And that got me thinking--what really changes? We went to the Philippines to toss out the Spanish, same with Cuba and Puerto Rico. The war was defended in the papers (Hearst especially) as necessary for American security and prosperity and sent men into a guerilla war in the Philippines and suffocated an indigenous rebellion in Cuba--basically installing despots that ruled Cuba until Castro led his communist rebellion, creating an American enemy where that had never been necessary. Puerto Rico? Well, it's still a commonwealth, sort of free, sort of a possession.
Look at today. A war in Iraq to defend our security (and assure prosperity via oil) that's gone on far longer than the government said it would. Did Henry think about the Philippines the same way soldiers today think about their tours in combat zones? Did he accept it and enjoy it--a glorious experience, romanticize it? I don't have answers. Only questions. What did he think of Vietnam?
Seventy or eighty years from now--will there be a little boy who meets an old Iraqi or Afghan vet and has a memory, just a single image, that sticks with him into the 22nd century?
No comments:
Post a Comment