Retrospective Of A Boomer (part 4 of 4)

It sometimes seems like a dream, Right? Timothy Leary,

LSD, “Voices in the Sky,” In Search of the Lost Chord,

Haight-Ashbury, flower children (I wasn’t one but wished

I had been...I opted to be a hippie. Mind, they aren’t the same.);

lost in that murky realm between childhood and

a notion of lust and desire; wrestling hope and uncertainty;

alcohol, music, brilliant successes to dismal failures,

Vietnam disrupting the post-WWII “American Dream” 

of Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, the Cleavers,

Norman Rockwell, and The Saturday Evening Post. 

Yet...there were race riots, Kent State, police brutality,

non-violent protests, War on Poverty, voting rights;

anti-establishment, racial equality, First Amendment rights,

women’s rights, “I have a dream,” and “... give peace a chance.”

The 1960s were too big, too much for anyone to grasp.

Some of us found a corner or a niche or a room with a view

and watched events unfold from everywhere we were not;

bemused, confused, excited by the chaos, many were rebels

in search of a cause, faced with the decision of either jumping

into the rough and tumble or crawling back into the womb,

alienated and disillusioned about what to do 

or where to go, just as we watched in the final scene 

of The Graduate, Benjamin and Elaine 

riding the bus to who knows where, 

and I and thousands of others were suddenly

brothers and sisters riding along with them.

From: A Meandering Search for

Innocence, Time, and Love

Unpub. MS p. 44

For Now (The American Dream #5 of 5)

A Warning

The American Dream?

It is hope, an opportunity to dream

in terms of possibilities,

then the freedom to make it happen.

Sadly, border walls, bureaucratic bungling, 

evil people—vicious, self-righteous, and malevolent— 

disinterested in right and wrong;

the heart of society is torn out to line 

someone’s pockets, then walking away 

with blood on their hands, smugly believing 

they have done nothing wrong, 

done for the greater good.

The Donald T’s are destroying more 

civility and social order everyday.

A polarized society has blunted 

the pursuit of the American Dream, 

but for all its conflicting perceptions, 

for all its mythic assertions,

hope embodied in the Dream 

is indestructible, as hope always is, 

but Norman Rockwell and Donna Reed 

are now barely a glimmer.

From: Searching For Donna Reed,

Norman Rockwell, & The American Dream

Unpub. MS #5 of 5

Searching For Donna Reed (The American Dream #4)

This is a frustrating, maddening, and joyous

mixture of history, values, and imagery,

some true, some mythic, often irresistible.

It was America, in success and failure,

was it not, laughing and battered and crying,

who, in 1969, landed two men on the moon,

twelve years after the shock of Sputnik.

Yet, how many people and performers 

still entered venues and bathrooms

through specially marked doors?

While growing up we were influenced

by the various family sitcoms of the time,

wishing our family was like that TV family.

Of the many programs on 1950s television,

I couldn’t say if one was more true than another;

each had its charm, but the Donna Reed show

was emblematic for all the family sitcoms.

Sadly, excepting Amos n’ Andy, whiteness prevailed.

Looming was nuclear apocalypse, but what

did we understand about that?

It was of such monstrous proportions and 

destructive power too terrifying to imagine

that we just didn’t give it much thought.

My mother put two gallons of water and 

come crackers under the sink, just in case.

I asked her, Just in case of what?

After a month or so, she took it all out.

In the midst of this we loved and married. 

My wife and I graduated from college

and had great careers.

We raised two wonderful children,

owned a nice house on a quiet urban street.

The kids moved on as they were restless to do.

We got divorced; the world didn’t end.

Not exactly a Rockwell painting

or dreams unfulfilled.

We simply did the best we could

to make life worth living.

From: Searching For Donna Reed,

Norman Rockwell, & The American Dream

Unpub. MS #4 of 5

From Where It Came (The American Dream #1)

I vaguely remember people

during the late 1950s to the early 1960s

talking about the American Dream,

usually on television,

sometimes teachers and neighbors,

or read in the Saturday Evening Post.

Norman Rockwell’s paintings reflected 

something of what people really did and believed,

from summer time, to holidays, to the Four Freedoms.

I wanted to be like those people in his paintings,

strong, happy, and contented—and also live 

the life of the Hardy Boys or Walter Mitty— 

until President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963

and Rockwell’s heartbreaking 1964 painting 

of six-year-old Ruby Bridges being escorted 

to school by federal marshals.

It was the terrible things 

people did to one another 

now made very public,

very present, that awakened so many.

It was nothing new for many Americans.

For them it was the same old bigotry, 

the same racism, the same meanness 

and violence they had lived with for generations.

And still people kept coming.

But being the fifteen-year-old kid that I was— 

white, middle class, naïve— 

I ignored the dissonance of nearly everything, 

yet I was vaguely ashamed, feeling like I lacked 

the courage of that six-year-old child.

From: Searching For Donna Reed,

Norman Rockwell, & The American Dream

Unpub. MS #1 of 5