Epilogue: Childhood Memories



 

Remember Who You Are

 

During the past few months, I have been involved in a project which is one that everyone should undertake.  It is the process of writing about one’s life and reflecting on it. The three essays which I have put together on this subject focus on a decade of my childhood. The general title is: “Growing up in Bismarck, North Dakota in the 1950’s.” What has emerged is understandably not an impersonal history.

During the writing process, I happened to read a quote by a French filmmaker named Jean Renoir: “The only things important in life are the things you remember.” When I read that statement, my first impulse was to agree with it. It seemed obvious and logical! Our memories selectively choose the events in our lives that are important and stand out. It discards those that are mundane, i.e. ordinary and meaningless. However, looking back at my impressions of life in the 1950’s and considering feedback received from others; I have had to reconsider the ability of memory to retain a clear image of many things that are important. I have instead been led to the conclusion that we – both individually and collectively – over the years,  as we have been swept along by the relentless development of popular culture, for some reason have forgotten and discarded much that is important. I would describe this as a cultural amnesia.

            A great deal of comment about my reflections has come from contemporaries who are apparently as nostalgic as I am about the foundational values of life in the 1950’s as compared with the superficial quality of life today.  Many of them frequent a Facebook page aptly titled: “I grew up in Bismarck.” They  wistfully talk as if they have lost something that was extremely valuable. At least when they look back on those years, they feel that way. A friend of mine, after he had read my first reflection on the early years (1949-1953), said to me, “I didn’t want it to end.” The real question that has emerged for me from my writing project is this: why have we forgotten so much that apparently was so important and why have we accepted so little in exchange? That’s a good question and one that is not so easily answered.
 

            The title of this epilogue is “Remember Who You Are.” Years ago I heard a sermon with the same title. Bishop Richard Grein who preached it began his remarks by telling a story from his childhood. He and a few of his friends including one named Bill used to go out on Friday and Saturday nights and drive around and do whatever happened to present itself. We all remember those kinds of nights. They would go over to Bill’s house to pick him up, stop in front, and honk the horn. Bill would come running out followed by his mother and, as he was climbing into the car, she would call out to him, “Now Bill, remember who you are.” What did she mean by that? She certainly wasn’t afraid that Bill would forget his name and where he lived. She was talking about his sense of self, the place where his integrity resided. She knew – as most mothers in the 1950’s also knew – that if he would remember who he was, the beliefs and values and manners that he had been taught, appropriate behavior would follow. He would not do something that would shame his family. Bishop Grein in his sermon went on to point out that, “the way we address the world in terms of values, relationships, and ethical behavior is in great measure a product of this awareness of self which we call identity.”

            I believe that all of us who grew up in Bismarck in the 1950’s share a certain identity given by that experience. We came to expect a non-violent community that didn’t have armed guards in schools and grocery stories. We couldn’t imagine such a world.  We expected a civil society where one rarely heard any profanity in public. It was also a society where we learned values and ethics in school and in church and in families. We didn’t look to television or movies or music videos to form our character and beliefs. It was a society in which most people only bought things they could afford because they were suspicious and even fearful of debt. Like It, Charge It! (JCPenney) It was not a particularly materialistic world. In stark contrast to today’s situation, the public schools we attended were places of discipline. That was the world in which we lived, a world created, formed, and maintained by our parents who seemed to clearly understand what it meant to be adults. That "understanding" has become blurred today. Importantly, it was a world in which people were taught that they were responsible for their actions, a responsibility that led to accountability. It was a world of security, certainty, and community.
 

            Today we find ourselves living in a much different world. Why did we and so many other people allow that other world to fade away? Of course, it is people through the choices they make which creates the world (culture) in which we live. The world of the 1950’s with its fixed ideas about morality met its demise in the mid-1960’s when new ideas about the relativity of personal choice began to gain popularity. The triumph of this viewpoint is called post-modernism. It means no absolutes. In the church, as this viewpoint gained a foothold, it was quickly discovered that the most difficult thing to do was to get people to accept any authority other than their own needs and wants. Simply stated, in the fifties there were accepted, and respected centers of authority (education, religion, government); in the sixties, the center of authority shifted to the individual. Personal autonomy became the focus. Have it your way! (Burger King) The message was that nobody should be able to tell anyone else how to behave. The writer Thomas Wolfe famously has characterized the people who came of age in the 1970’s as “The Me Generation.” He hit the nail right on the head.   

            The question then again needs to be asked. Why did so many people just stand around passively and allow so much that was decent and important in American society to fade away? That is difficult to answer! Human nature has much to do with it. People go along to get along. They choose the path of least resistance. They don’t want to make any waves. We have all heard the clichés.

 

It’s to preserve a way of life that one knew and loved!

 

               Mr. Fezziwig 

                                             1951 Screenplay of a "Christmas Carol” by

   Charles Dickens

 

            Perhaps the best way to illustrate what I am talking about would be to look at an example from 19^th century English literature. Most people are familiar with the short novel “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. In this wonderful story, Dickens is actually speaking out against recent changes in English society. The Industrial Revolution is in full swing, driving these changes. Business is flourishing, but the labor of people is being replaced by machines. Mr. Fezziwig is a businessman of the old school. He is content with things the way they are. He has a fatherly concern for his employees. He is old fashioned. The new “vested interests” want to buy him out and they make him a handsome offer. He turns them down by saying that money isn’t everything.. Their representative Mr. Jorkins is exasperated and presses him by saying, “Well, if it isn’t for money that one spends one’s life building up a business, then what is it for?” Mr. Fezziwig responds with the above mentioned quote. “It’s to preserve a way of life that one knew and loved.”  We need more people with the sensibilities of Mr. Fezziwig in society and fewer like Mr. Jorkins, although I know that the reverse is the reality.

The Loss of Innocence

            As I have reflected on the differences between the American society of the 1950’s and the “post modern” society of today, one of my favorite vantage points for doing that is through the topic of the loss of innocence in American society. By the phrase “the loss of innocence,” I mean the modern tendency to push young children into adult roles and situations which they have neither the experience or the emotional maturity to handle. Sexuality is the obvious one. Here are a couple of stories which illustrate my point.

        In the year 2000, at a local suburban high school, a girl went into labor in the parking lot. When the word got around the school, seven boys came into the office to inquire if it was their girl friend. A mother who happened to be in the office on some errand, overhearing what was going on, piped up and inquired if it was her daughter, who was apparently attending high school pregnant. My reaction to reading this was to think - what is going on here? Also in the year 2000, Time magazine sent a team of reporters to the St. Louis area to write a story which was going to focus on the subject: “A Week in the Life of a High School.” The school they chose to profile was Webster Groves High School. This article has to be read to be believed! Some of the students have their own apartments because their divorced parents are too busy playing boy friend/girl friend.  An incident is reported in the article in which a young female student goes home and tells her mother that she has had her first sexual experience. The mother’s reaction was “to be excited for her.” Here is the loss of innocence enthusiastically assented to by a person who should have known better. I can guarantee that that certainly would not have been my mother’s reaction if my sister had come home in the early 1960’s with that announcement.

            I don’t know how many girls became pregnant during the class of 1960’s four years at BHS. I can only remember hearing about one. The subject wasn’t talked about much. Our four years in high school were many things, but “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” they were not.
 

Conclusion

 

“Those who cannot remember the past

                              are condemned to repeat it.                                           

                     George Santayana

            1863 - 1952

 

            Both the world and American society have undergone enormous changes since the class of 1960 walked out of Bismarck High School for the last time fifty plus years ago. In many cases, the change has been so dramatic that it is difficult to clearly remember what it was like to live day to day in the 1950’s. Was it really possible to function without cel phones and e-mail and Ipads and Ipods? How did we ever do it?
 

            I suspect that there will be many people who will read my reflections about growing up in Bismarck in the 1950’s who will object to my negative characterization of post-modern society in contrast to the society of the 50’s. So be it! I still laugh when people talk about all the progress that has been made. Technologically, Yes! Socially, in many areas, a loud, emphatic No! In my mind much that has happened has been a movement from system and order to chaos.

If people are really interested in a deeper discussion of these issues, they should find and read a book by Allen Ehrenhalt with the title, The Lost City: Discovering the Forgotten Virtues of Community in the Chicago of the 1950’s. One can also read an article titled “Learning From The Fifties” by Mr. Ehrenhalt which appeared in the 1995 Summer edition of The Wilson Quarterly. For a good comprehensive study of the decade of the 1950’s, read David Halberstam’s The Fifties. From my experience and reading, I have concluded that the pivotal year in the dramatic change of America was 1968. For a discussion of that thesis, read The Year The Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 In America by Jules Witcover. Interestingly, 1968 is the year that statistics about church attendance began a steady downward spiral, a trend which continues to this day.