Women and African Americans

I’ve always had this fascination with World War Two and the subsequent birth of the American Dream. After the war, there were powers-to-be among the military, political, industrial complex that wanted factory production work to continue. This focus on innovation, mass production and the growth of a consumer society all lent itself to exponential growth in the fifties and sixties. Good for some but as this book points out, it wasn’t fortuitous for women or minorities of any flavor.

The GI Bill and other government programs hyper-charged the growth of the middle class among millions of returning veterans.  It foresaw the advent of mass housing production and expansion out from the cities to the suburbs. Innovation in technology and communications soared. But for all the wonderful opportunities that were a part of this radical change in American society, two main groups of Americans were often left by the wayside; women and African Americans.

While I was aware of the role of women and minorities in the massive industrial growth during that period, I didn’t know about the hardships and prejudice both parties suffered during the war.

The book explains: ‘From the fall of France in the summer of 1940 to V-J Day in August of 1945, more than seventeen million Americans, or fourteen percent of the population, served in the armed forces of World War II. For millions more at home, a booming wartime economy produced a remarkable prosperity that ended the Great Depression, sparked a postwar economic miracle, and made the American Dream of suburban homes, shopping centers, and modern kitchens a reality.’

But during the war years, the challenges of housing, continuing segregation, universal child care and other domestic issues also dominated the American way of life. Reporters found that with more than twenty-five million men, women and children crowding into new centers of the war industry, the fabric of American life had unraveled.

The war emergency strained a tenuous racial balance to the point of violence. The social turmoil produced by the war also placed unprecedented pressures on family and home life. In the absence of social and governmental support, working mothers and their children bore a disproportionate burden. Not quite the picture painted by the newsreels seen at the movies or the image of John Wayne that I grew up with.

Advertisements in newspapers and magazines talked about life after the war assuming it would be for everyone. Yet after the war, African Americans found that those opportunities promised often disappeared and women in general were relegated back to the kitchen so men could get their old jobs back again. Masking much of that disparity for woman and African Americans was the economic growth brought on by pent-up demand over the years. I grew up during that economic growth and it seemed all wonderful to me, especially the vibes from out West.

Southern California seemed to be epicenter for the new America that came about after the war. Millions flocked to its golden beaches, lush mountains and deep valleys. Industrial and creative jobs attracted young families, each seeking their own version of the ‘American Dream.’ It was roughly twenty years of exponential growth benefiting many but also still excluding others.

The euphoria of ‘happily ever after’ lasted for, perhaps, twenty years before cracks began to appear in the American dream. Behind that façade of the iconic ‘golden state’ were the growing civil rights upheavals and women’s rights movements. The decade of the Sixties blew the lid off that happy smiling white couple and exposed the underbelly of inequality and injustice. Throughout the Sixties great strides were made to recognize the equality of women and African Americans and gays.

While the older generation of women and African Americans had to endure a return to inequality after the war, it was later generations that reaped the reward of their endurance, hard work, and persistence. It’s not perfect now nor will it ever be. But things have changed for the better for new generations of women and disadvantaged groups of people.

My two adult children work in areas of business where women compete equally with men for job opportunities. People of color have made tremendous strides in areas long denied them. While there is still a long way to go, it’s a far cry from the blatant segregation and inequality thrust upon their forefathers before and during World War Two.

While they’re still too young to fully appreciate the sacrifices made by past generations, I do believe my grandchildren will someday come to recognize what their grandparents and great grandparents did to make it a better world for them to live in. It’s a mindset I hope they will pay it forward for future generations.

My Back Pages

Southern California speaks to me. Sharon and I have been going there for more than eighteen years now. In my senior years, I’ve grown soft on snow and cold and anything that even hints of winter. I like to swim in January, hike the mountains in season, toe the Pacific, and go bouldering in the high desert when I can. If I could, I’d be a Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello style surf bum circ.1965 if only in my imagination.

Southern California suits me in more ways than one. I like the crazy, creative, eccentric, unapologetic far-out types that seem to inhabit a lot of my regular haunts there. Sharon has found a cadre of fellow artists willing to try new painting techniques and share both their success and failures with her. It is her ‘new thing’ and it suits her to a T in the desert.

Yet for all that California has to offer, it still isn’t Minnesota. A lot of folks have a special place in their hearts for where they were born. My affiliation runs deeper than that. It was born of an early morning below-zero paper route, a high school steeped in military tradition and a lake that mimicked the ocean if only in my imagination. It was hard times and healthy living. It was the first tinge of make-believe romance and the emotional rollercoaster that tender love gone south entails. It was growing up in a world shaped by basic values and an appreciation for hard work. It was dreamed-about opportunities limited only by the extent of one’s imagination.

Minnesota was where I found stability and a healthy foundation upon which to lay down my roots. It was where we raised our children and now watch some of our grandchildren grow. It was a hundred million other impressions that nudged and pricked and scratched and broke through my memory bank. That was then. This is now. California has captured a large part of that creative environment that I need to exist in now.

About a decade ago, I started my new career as a writer. Minnesota became the birthplace for that effort. It was four focused years that produced four novels, four plays, four screenplays and dozens upon dozens of treatments. It was home for my first two produced plays. Soon to be my fourth.

On the flip side of that success, Southern California has become a great playground where I can ignore creeping age and continue doing fun things snow-bound seniors can’t do back home. It is warm winter nights that nurture creative thoughts and ideas bursting on paper. It is ocean and mountains and out of the way places that Minnesota can’t offer a soul still unearthing a fractured imagination. It is a playground for those of us still in total denial of life’s fading curtain.

Yet for as much as I love California’s fast pace and changing emotional scenery, it is still Minnesota that brings me back to reality. Both places offer Sharon and I wonderful friendships, a boatload of memories and creative ventures. But Minnesota also offers us something else. History that is all good.

I was born of the tundra. And though I avoid the snow and cold as much as I can, it is still in my blood. I don’t know where I’ll write my final draft whether it be in the surf or in the snow. But it doesn’t matter. There really is no contest.

Minnesota is a good place to be from and a good place to be.

A Crescendo of Quiet

Far from the crystal clear pools of Palm Springs and its emerald green golf courses lies another world. Less than an hour away, it’s a world of vast nothingness peppered with the sad remnants of past lives and male exuberance. It’s a place where stillness thunders louder than the wind and God did some of his finest paintings.

Joshua tree and its surrounding communities embrace another form of existence; all of which is surrounded by endless horizons. The area is a mecca for aging rock stars, artists and modern-day bohemians along with ordinary people all in search of a new beginning.

It’s the place where people go to get lost and be forgotten.

The high desert of the Morongo Basin is like a modern day outback of more than 9.5 million acres of public land in the California desert. Its home to old walking trails first used by Native Americans between seasonal encampments then followed by Spanish explorers and finally 19^th century gold seekers and pioneers.

1.7 billion year old rocks compete for attention with the ancient land mass of Rodinia and King Clone and 11.000 year old creosote bush that began its life during the retreat of the last Ice Age.

Reminders of past human lives are everywhere. Abandoned mines litter the area with their relics of past hopes and dreams scattered about the ground. A restored railroad depot stands alone with its tracks still leading nowhere. Ramshackle old cabins planted amid miles of sage and scrub brush, sit isolated and lonely in the desert. The evidence is all here if you can look past the dust and dirt and castles made of boulders to imagine all the past lives that once past through this place on the way to a better life.

This is a playground where grown men come to play cowboy and young boys come to play soldier.

Pioneer town was founded fifty years ago as the perfect backdrop for early television westerns and grade B movies. Gene Autry led his assorted group of Hollywood wranglers to recreate a true replica of an old western town just three hours from Hollywood and Vine. Up the road, young boys learn the art of war amid 935 square miles of rock and dirt. Between Pioneer town and Twenty-Nine Palms (the Marine Corp Air Ground Combat Center) lie all the ingredients for growing up very quickly.

Much like the high altitude cerebral vacuum of the San Jacinto’s, Joshua Tree is the perfect setting for letting your mind wander and bumping into thoughts and ideas and feelings that you never knew were lurking there.

 It means nestling into a large boulder, resting your head on its warm pillow of granite, looking up at the pure blue flawless sky and listening to your surroundings. The stillness will batter your eardrums with a quiet so loud that all you can do is retreat back inside your head for peace and serenity.

Where's Waldo 1,2, & 3?

The high desert is a cornucopia of images, lifestyles, attitudes, ambitions and dreams from a plethora of characters; real and imagined. It’s where you go to lose yourself and perhaps find the unexpected. It’s where the ghosts of past rock and roller stars still play their mournful ballads for no one to hear but the wind.

And it’s where writers go to ask ‘what if.’

Growing Old Without Underwear

Palm Springs can be hot a great deal of the time. That’s why I love it there. There’s also a freedom of thought and expression that extends far beyond Palm Springs proper. It can be found in Idyllwild, the artist community high in the San Jacinto mountains, among the hermits, musicians and malcontents of Joshua Tree and over on the coast to the seaside poets and bums of Laguna Beach.

This freedom of expression can be found in the visual renderings of imaginative minds, the music of dreamers, the mauling of vernacular vestiges in the name of art and the casual clothing found most everywhere. It’s a casualness I’ve embraced much to the chagrin of some others.

Each morning during the winter months, I put on my swimming suit or a pair of shorts with mesh inside, my flip-flops, a t-shirt and I’m set to go. On chilly mornings, I’ll wear a fleece until it warms up.

If I have to go out in public, a clean t-shirt will suffice. For more formal affairs like dinner or events, I will acquiesce and don more semi-casual attire. It works for me. It fits my lifestyle in the desert.

I don’t shave everyday. It takes about two to three days for some semblance of a shadow to appear on my face. Most of it is gray so it’s practically invisible at first anyway. Until the back of my head starts to resemble the great waves on the North Shore of Hawaii, I don’t think I need a haircut.

It’s been suggested, more than once, that perhaps early senility has set in or as someone close to me likes to say, “I’m losing it.”

Am I the only male that thinks shaving every day and wearing underwear are two grooming rituals that can be ignored every once in a while assuming the environment is as I’ve described it? My gay friends need not answer that question.

Or do I have to acquiesce to the proper rituals of male grooming that the other half thinks is so important? In a nutshell, if I’m working at home in my office and not in public, do I have to shave and wear underwear just because it’s the proper thing to do?

I have a middle-age friend who loves to bring his male friends up to his mountain cabin a couple of times a year for a ‘guy’s weekend.’

They have water balloon fights, fly kites off the mountainside, ride Mountain bikes recklessly through the woods, and in short, act like kids for the weekend. Is this stupid or just men being men?

Women would say one thing. Men could defensively say another.

Perhaps we’re talking about the idiosyncrasies of old men or just men in general. I mean,

what is a man cave other than a modern refuse for men to hide from women and just be themselves (or as women would say, just be stupid)

But not all of us see it that way.

Women have a plethora of concerns for their husbands, partners and significant others as the aging process becomes more apparent. The list can go on and on.

Women worry about their men getting old and acting it. They fret about them not shaving every day. Not getting a haircut when it’s needed (their determination, not his) Not dressing appropriately in public or semi-public for that matter. They worry about their man’s personal hygiene.

For those more insightful women, they worry about their man not having a lot of male friends. Not to mention a myriad of other complaints from a lack of interest in anything remotely akin to her interests to just plain old boredom. Women seem to think they handle aging better than men. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. I guess it’s all in the eye of the beholder.

A lot of my blogs deal with or at least edge alongside the concept of growing old. I like to ponder what it means to get old. And I often wonder if I’m kidding myself with my interest in popular music, new adventure travels, living abroad, athletic endeavors, getting more involved in my grandchildren’s lives and a myriad of other activities usually left for the younger set.

Is it the Peter Pan syndrome raising its young head again? Or something more ominous such as denial of the inevitable aging process? Are sore muscles and stiffness the inevitable results of a life well lived or simply a lack of exercise and activities? Am I kidding myself when I say you’re never too old to grow young again? And don’t fade slowly into the dark. Instead leap boldly into the brightness until it burns you up.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that this whole writing thing of mine is a culmination of many goals and desires first initiated during my lost years. It’s spawned a desire to re- connect with old friends, revisit and examine my past and to do so while focusing on my future and adjusting for the reality of my life as it is.

From “Snow White and the Seven Seekers” to “Looking for Susan’s House” to “In the Company of Old Men,” this vision quest has become an important part of my life and I’m not about to let it go.

This attitude or delusional meanderings of mine seem to have struck a cord with a lot of folks who read my blogs. So either my readers find something of interest here or they’re just curious what my problems are? Or maybe they simply like to look at the old pictures I post?

The fact is I don’t want to grow up if it means looking and ending up like a lot of the old men around me.

The whole point is of my argument is this:

So what if I wear those shorts with no underwear? So what if I don’t shave everyday? So what if I continue to listen to classical music (meaning music of the 50s and 60s) while still opening myself up to newer forms of musical entertainment?

I would argue that as long as I’m staying involved and active and using my mind every-day for something other than mindless chatter at the coffee shop or listening to talk radio or feeling sorry for myself, it’s time well spent.

For a lot of folks my age, long range planning means “What’s for dinner?” I’d like to think that I can see a little further out than that.

So with my clothing or lack thereof, I’d like to believe that I’m not letting go. I’m not falling apart but simply focusing on other things of greater importance in this world in which I’ve chosen to live. Welcome to my world, it’s nice in here… it really is!

Despite the challenges of old age and calcified ambitions that sometimes have to be pried loose from the rigid assumptions of past generations, I intend to continue this quest of mine to discover, examine and write about whatever it is that interests me.

And wear my Southern California attitude whether in Minnesota or Colorado.

With or without underwear.