1970. Dubuque, Iowa.
I was there for a management trainee course at Interstate Power Company. It was their theory that training college faculty members would make them better understand the business world. They had arranged for me to stay for several weeks at Loras College, in Keane Hall, a great brick, blacksmith-of-a-building on top of the bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, and downtown Dubuque.
I was 38, a natural animal of an athlete who had tripped on the tennis court and cracked a bone in his wrist. I was an uncoordinated natural animal wearing an ace bandage. Down the hill from Keane Hall I could see the uncoordinated athletic field; at the time, just green grass and a brown cinder track.
"I believe," I said to myself, "that if I start jogging, I will feel better when I am fifty." I began jogging; one lap runnng, one lap walking, four times, stopping just in time to avert a pathetic death at 38.
I kept jogging for seventeen years, wore out my knees, gave them time to quit aching, took Glucosamine Chondroitin, and have been walking ever since.
Ever since, I have decided I should have a beer. In 1970, I decided I should have a beer and dinner. Someone at Interstate Power recommended a fine pub. "Goddam hippie!" someone said when I walked in. I had a beard. I stayed, anyway, even though it looked like I might have to call my broken wrist into service just to get out. When Luis came to visit me, later--he with a goatee--we were serenaded by patrons bleating like billy goats when they were not saying something about goddam hippies.
I recall, a few years later, on another visit to Dubuque, that all the young construction workers wearing hard hats had long hair and beards. "Goddam hippies!", I thought. I did not bleat.
There was a lot of Cold War behind that bleating. A lot of World War II, and its hair-trigger continuation during the Cold War. The Nazis had been the enemy. We allied with Russia to stop the Nazis, but Russian Communism was an uneasy ally. We raced like looters to occupy Berlin, and ended up dividing it with a wall.
People like Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the John Birch Society, were convinced that Russians and Communists had infiltrated our own government. Robert Welch, Jr., the founder of the John Birch Society, called Dwight Eisenhower, "a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy". Ike! The hero of the War! Our Republican President!
A Welch of another stripe, Joseph, listening to Senator McCarthy spew that nonsense, said to him in a public hearing, "Senator, may we not drop this? . . . You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
We have heard that twaddle since, from Michele Bachmann. After saying that Barack Obama was "Anti-American", she said she wanted the news media to investigate Congress for other "anti-Americans". On MSNBC, she said, "What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America. I think the American people would love to see an expose like that."
I walked around downtown Dubuque, for a time abandoned by new malls and new housing up at the top of the hill, but now being reclaimed by a wiser generation. "How many times do we have to go through this? And why? Are people like Our Belle, Michele, complete fools, or just partial?" I do not think Our Michele is incomplete. She might just be on the hunt for red meat, like Joe McCarthy.
Now, again. Newer wars. Necessary and unnecessary wars. Not completely unlike trying to save French colonialism in Southeast Asia, or oil in the Middle East.
As during the Vietman War, we discover that our own government does not tell us the truth. Thousands of our neighbors and billions of dollars have been poured into Iraq, and now Afghanistan. Libya. While we were at weary war, the greed of our financial geniuses on Wall Street and down at the corner bank brought down our fiscal house.
We need somebody to blame. We blamed the Communists, earlier. Michele Bachmann and the Tea Party are still blaming them. When we are afraid, we look for somebody to blame. Blame Ike! Blame Obama: say he is Kenyan, and anti-American! Blame the Mexican woman who cleans your house! Blame French Fries! Blame free trade! Blame Muslims! Burn the Koran! Do something bat-crap crazy!
In 1967, while in Bavaria, Germany, trying to learn German, I went to Munich for the Octoberfest. The room I had been told I could use was taken I slept on a plank leaned up against a wall in a construction site. Long before dawn, half-frozen, I trudged to the train station to get warm and to buy coffee. Turkish immigrants, who had come to Germany as "guest workers", were smarter than I: they slept--or tried to sleep--in the train station. They were being harrassed by young, drunken, German men.
We need someone to blame.
2011. Minnesota. Everywhere.
I was 38, a natural animal of an athlete who had tripped on the tennis court and cracked a bone in his wrist. I was an uncoordinated natural animal wearing an ace bandage. Down the hill from Keane Hall I could see the uncoordinated athletic field; at the time, just green grass and a brown cinder track. "I believe," I said to myself, "that if I start jogging, I will feel better when I am fifty." I began jogging; one lap runnng, one lap walking, four times, stopping just in time to avert a pathetic death at 38.
I kept jogging for seventeen years, wore out my knees, gave them time to quit aching, took Glucosamine Chondroitin, and have been walking ever since.
Ever since, I have decided I should have a beer. In 1970, I decided I should have a beer and dinner. Someone at Interstate Power recommended a fine pub. "Goddam hippie!" someone said when I walked in. I had a beard. I stayed, anyway, even though it looked like I might have to call my broken wrist into service just to get out. When Luis came to visit me, later--he with a goatee--we were serenaded by patrons bleating like billy goats when they were not saying something about goddam hippies.
There was a lot of Cold War behind that bleating. A lot of World War II, and its hair-trigger continuation during the Cold War. The Nazis had been the enemy. We allied with Russia to stop the Nazis, but Russian Communism was an uneasy ally. We raced like looters to occupy Berlin, and ended up dividing it with a wall.
People like Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the John Birch Society, were convinced that Russians and Communists had infiltrated our own government. Robert Welch, Jr., the founder of the John Birch Society, called Dwight Eisenhower, "a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy". Ike! The hero of the War! Our Republican President!
A Welch of another stripe, Joseph, listening to Senator McCarthy spew that nonsense, said to him in a public hearing, "Senator, may we not drop this? . . . You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
We have heard that twaddle since, from Michele Bachmann. After saying that Barack Obama was "Anti-American", she said she wanted the news media to investigate Congress for other "anti-Americans". On MSNBC, she said, "What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America. I think the American people would love to see an expose like that." 
I walked around downtown Dubuque, for a time abandoned by new malls and new housing up at the top of the hill, but now being reclaimed by a wiser generation. "How many times do we have to go through this? And why? Are people like Our Belle, Michele, complete fools, or just partial?" I do not think Our Michele is incomplete. She might just be on the hunt for red meat, like Joe McCarthy. Now, again. Newer wars. Necessary and unnecessary wars. Not completely unlike trying to save French colonialism in Southeast Asia, or oil in the Middle East.
As during the Vietman War, we discover that our own government does not tell us the truth. Thousands of our neighbors and billions of dollars have been poured into Iraq, and now Afghanistan. Libya. While we were at weary war, the greed of our financial geniuses on Wall Street and down at the corner bank brought down our fiscal house.
In 1967, while in Bavaria, Germany, trying to learn German, I went to Munich for the Octoberfest. The room I had been told I could use was taken I slept on a plank leaned up against a wall in a construction site. Long before dawn, half-frozen, I trudged to the train station to get warm and to buy coffee. Turkish immigrants, who had come to Germany as "guest workers", were smarter than I: they slept--or tried to sleep--in the train station. They were being harrassed by young, drunken, German men.
We need someone to blame.
2011. Minnesota. Everywhere.
.
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