The Pants That Won the West

It wasn't until high school that I learned that communism is a system of economics, not a system of government. I tried to write the story from the perspective of a 10 or 11 year old boy in the 50s, the way I would have written it at the time if I had written it at the time.

I agree that elementary school is no place for democracy, which is why the principal should have issued the order instead of trying to make it look like it came from the kids. Those people were being paid by the taxpayers to mold us into good citizens, and this was certainly not the way to do that, not that anybody cared except me. The kids quickly forgot about it, and I suspected that our parents were in on it from the start. Looking back on it now, I'm not so sure about that. When my mother first read my story, she claimed that the only reason she bought those perma-press pants for me was that somebody told her that's what all the kids were currently wearing. She wondered why I had gotten so mad at her, and now, decades later, she finally knew.

Long hair and blue jeans are about the only things of value we salvaged from the 60s. The sexual revolution went off the rails when they brought the gays on board, and the lessons of Vietnam seem to have been  forgotten. I don't know if abolishing the draft was such a good thing after all. Military service was kind of a rite of passage in those days. Whether you went or didn't go, you were never quite the same afterwards. I don't think  kids today have to face anything like that, and look how they're turning out.

I'm surprised that the blue jean thing didn't make a splash in your school. Maybe it did and you weren't paying attention because something else was going on in your life. Back in the 70s, I read an article about it in Reader's Digest. They didn't mention the student council aspect of it, so maybe that was only in our school. They did say, however, that there was a big push all over the country to eliminate blue jeans from the American scene. The reason it ultimately failed was that we all grew up and took over the country. Looking back on it now, I can see where it was part of the Master Plan all along. Blue jeans were the pants that won the west, and are as much a part of our heritage as the six shooter and the saddle carbine. I can see them now, in their smoke filled rooms plotting against us: "First we go after the blue jeans, then the guns, then the cars. After that, there will be nothing left of the American heritage worth fighting for and they (meaning us) will just lay down and passively allow us to clamp on the shackles." Good thing we stopped them when we did!

Speaking of heritage, I'm sure I mentioned before that the Bible is an important part of our literary and cultural heritage. Whether or not we believe in it religiously, I don't see how we can ignore it when we talk about morality. That would be like talking about politics without mentioning the Constitution. I know you don't believe in that either, but it's there, like the elephant in the closet.