We Should Be So Lucky

Today is my mother's birthday. Ninety years old. She is in remarkably good health. Truly, she doesn't seem ninety years old. Ninety is the new seventy? But any way you cut it, ninety is a long time. In fact, it is 46% of the lifetime of New Albany; 38% of the lifetime of the United States.

I am most thankful for her good fortune. Selfishly,I am thankful that my sister and I have inherited a measure of good genes. But the marking of this birthday causes me to think of all the events my mother has lived through and witnessed in her life so far.

My mom was born in Indianapolis and moved to Georgetown in the 1930s, then to New Albany in time for the '37 Flood. I've never gotten a sense that The Depression hit her family as hard as it hit many others. My grandfather was a vacuum cleaner salesman during The Depression. He offered a product which would not seem like the item you can't live without during hard times, but apparently enough people wanted one to keep the family of grandmother, grandfather and five girls solvent.

Mother reached adulthood in time to earn her credentials as a member of Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation (a term most members of that generation would balk at). My dad was drafted in December 1940, secure in the knowledge that his one year hitch would allow him to come home at the end of 1941 or just after New Year's in 1942. Events intervened to change his and my mother's plans. He ended up being discharged from the Army Air Corps in 1945, after the Japanese surrender. In the meantime he and my mother married later in 1942. As a "single" war bride, mother lived with my grandparents until the end of the war.

It is this large chunk of time, from the '37 Flood to the end of the war, that has particular relevance to discussions about New Albany's future. It really has a lot to do with the future of our nation and our world, as well.

As many accounts of the '37 Flood suggest, the region pulled together to help weather the flood. Of course, much was lost in this flood but one thing which was not lost, was the sense of commonality, the sense of being in something together and bearing a responsibility to help others through it. Regrettably, that sense of shared duty is problematic nowadays. It flickered to life after the terrorist attack in 2001, but was quickly extinguished with the cold water of duplicity and defining duty not as sacrifice, but an opportunity to shop. "Take that," you Muslim horde, "I'm buying one for me, AND one for my daughter."

The notion of shared sacrifice at home is as much the story of World War II as the actions of the overseas fighters and world leaders.

In both these events, and I could cite many others instances, the national, (it is national but it trickles down to the local level) personality trait that pulled us through was maturity. Maturity is the acceptance of the fact that often, as Augustus McCrae in Lonesome Dove said, "life is rich with hardship." We can't shop our way out of a jam. We won't move civilization closer to perfection by leaving our problems to the ingenuity of future generations to solve, as many are trying to do now with property taxes, climate change and the growing subservience of individuals to corporate interests.

What has changed in these ninety years to atomize our interests? 1918 was not necessarily a year when brotherhood was the rule of the day. Shortly thereafter, an orgy of self indulgence for some came to an abrupt halt as the wheels came off our economy. The manner in which that crisis was addressed and the way we pulled together as a people to face the next major hurdle of the war is what defined that generation as "the Greatest".

The way we, as a people, slather over the salacious details of celebrities' lives, ignore the inequities of our society, deal with the rest of the world as lesser beings and delude ourselves into a mindset which has as its voice the chant, "USA.USA.USA." calls into question our maturity. If we were faced with the perils that faced the "Greatest Generation", I'm afraid we would try to trade Beanie Babies for food and, of course, we'd be speaking German.

During this period of narcissistic immaturity, New Albany has deteriorated from a regional economic engine to a sputtering bedroom community for Louisville. New Albany, along with cities across the land, lost its trolley system in the late 1940s as auto and tire companies colluded to get away from the old trollies to the newer buses and personal automobiles. This set the stage for the suburban migration and the internal weakening of our city's economy. As manufacturing was shuttered in this country and shipped abroad, the template of locally-based industry
was devalued and replaced by a chimera of world markets brought to our shores. It was sold as a two way street promised to lead to a leveling out of wages. Ask the displaced auto worker if his work as a Wal-Mart greeter is leveling his wage structure. Probably it is.

My mother has quoted her mother as saying, "sometimes I think you can live too long."
My only response is, "What's the alternative? There's plenty of time for that. Later."