Global Warning....I spell for shit. I don't know why, but I'm sure it was my third grade teacher Mrs. Jackson's fault, but I'll get to her later. Everything's her fault. But since Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead, I get to say whatever I want about her.
I was driving south on 495 with my daughter Annie on Thanksgiving day. We hit the road fighting at around 11:15, and then I remembered that Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant gets played on the radio every Thanksgiving at noon. I told Annie I wanted her to hear it, but she was pissed at me about something and wanted Radio Control so she could hear the same five songs that they play over and over again and frantically changed the station just in case she missed one of those songs, but I stood firm. I was going to hear Alice's Restaurant whether she liked it or not. But she showed ME, and put her ear plugs in to listen to one of the five songs she might have missed because I wanted to share an experience with her.
I'm an historian...it's in my DNA. I am fundamentally incapable of experiencing anything without attempting to figure out its roots. I'm not PROUD of this fact..it's just the way I'm designed. Alice's Restaurant is a classic....very funny and at the same time very profound. And I would have loved to listen to it with my daughter, but hey, there might have been a Rhianna song on at the same moment.
Despite what the stats say, I'm not a Boomer. But my older siblings are Boomers. I was just a kid who managed to walk directly into moving traffic, drank Drano, and ran through glass doors while my older siblings were busy being Boomers. I was just a witness to their anti-war hippie antics. I worshiped them (my parents made me) and learned a lot on the sidelines.
My brother Michael was just at that age during the Vietnam War where he had a number. Ask any man in their sixties about their number, and about the experience that Arlo Guthrie talked about in Alice's Restaurant, being called up by the military to check if they were fit to fight, walking around some compound with dozens of other men naked, scared shitless, and examined by military doctors. My parents' ardent fight against the Vietnam War might have been personal-their son was not going to go there-but they were actually right. And every person who was responsible for engineering that war hopefully is rotting in Hell.
But I will tell you, as a wide eyed young bystander, what those years were like for me. I was a kid, but I remember seeing a young John Kerry at an Anti-War Rally in Boston Common. I have a weird memory snapshot of him. I remember an Anti-War Rally at my own house, where our livingroom was packed with teenagers wearing black armbands, and my father had to take a phone call from some angry adult who called him a Communist. Yikes! A Communist! That was worse than being called a pedophile at that time! And Mrs. Jackson yelled at me in front of my Third Grade peers, and told me my brothers were "hippies,' who wore "Love Beads." And I couldn't even do a cursive "S" to her satisfaction. Bitch.
I wanted so much for my daughter to listen to Alice's Restaurant. It's twenty five minutes of a guy, with a guitar, so funny, telling his story about the still unresolved irony of young people being asked to fight wars that old people create (SO not my words!) I got a really awesome education growing up (despite Mrs. Jackson). My parents fought for what was right....my other friends' parents were never as brave....and I got to listen to The Who and Joni Mitchell, when everyone else was listening to Donny Osmond..
And as an historian, I will tell you that not much has changed. We need to listen to Arlo Guthrie a whole lot more.
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