This is Now...That was Then

 Like it or not, knowingly or unknowingly and for better or worse, we often emulate our parents. I would like to think that I have my father’s “common sense” and integrity. From my mother I developed my religious and political ideologies. (Believe or not, there is a “Christian Left” and I am sure that Jesus would be down there with the OWS crowds.)

One other attribute that I share with my mother is the desire to keep things. Over the years she has collected and saved wide variety of things: ranging from rocks and pinecones; to newspapers and magazines; to personal papers like school work and shot records. In an effort to organize my mother’s basement a large box of ephemera relating to my early years was shipped off to me.

I don’t intend to catalogue the entire collection here, but I will focus on one segment that I feel is quite relevant to my blogging endeavor. The box contains a hodgepodge of my earlier writings. There is a biography I wrote in my junior year of high school about my father. “The Uncommon Common Man.”   A “string book” (a journalistic portfolio) of my articles for the school newspaper: “Lancers Drop to West” “Intramurals Begin on Friday” “Tankmen Start Strong” “Hunting the Wylie Coyote”.  

The most significant tranche is the collection of journals that I began keeping as a high school sophomore for English. I enjoyed writing them so much that I continued to “hand in” my journals to my sophomore English teacher during my junior and senior years... It was a way for me to escape from problems on the home-front. Admittedly I have been somewhat spotty on my “Prairie Ramblings” postings so I was curious to see what I wrote about way back when.

  

Here are the first two entries of my journaling career:

“Friday 09.07.73

I’m wondering if Mother Nature knows that school has started. All summer we had very little rain. The 1^st weekend of school what does it do? Rain of course. The next weekend the same thing. I hope we get a good weekend soon.  

Sunday 09.09.73

In Saturdays Johnson County Scout they published letters to the editor on whether Nixon should release the “confidential” tapes. Wikipedia on Watergate Tapes

Most letters were in favor of him keeping the tapes. That stands to reason, since most residents are Republicans.

There was one letter that made me real mad. The man said that Nixon shouldn’t turn the tapes over to the FBI, CIA or other responsible government agencies. I am now wondering if Bob Haldeman is a government agency. I always thought he was a man. Unless I’m wrong, he was fired from the White House staff for alleged criminal activities.

My father and I were talking about this last night, he said he heard that all 12 hours had been listened to.

Sunday again.

I had a lot of fun last night at the football game. The most fun was after the game. We went to Pizza Hut in Metcalf South and had some pizza. They screwed up our order and this confused the waiter. A lot of my friends were there so I had a lot of fun talking with them…”

If I have trouble coming up with fresh ideas I guess I could always dip into this freshly uncovered trove of entries. I have to be honest with you though, there is your average male teenage angst about girls and parents, but you have to remember that this was the early 1970s and things were handled (or not handled) differently. I wrote about illegal events (teenage beer consumption) using whole names and there was no ramification. She told us that spelling and punctuation didn’t matter. We could write about anything and it that she would treat it the same way a psychiatrist or priest would.   A far cry from the zero tolerance policy of today.