Going to hell in a handbasket, again.

I don’t want to fight the Vietnam war with you again. I’m going to guess we’ve been there half a dozen times, and we’ll be there again at least as many times more. Anytime we hear that sixties music and see that grainy color tv coverage we will be drawn to the Beaglesonian Institute to fight that war again, armed with the same facts and figures and opinions each of us, thinking we will win this argument again because I think we both think we win the argument every time.

And it hasn’t gone unnoticed by me that we have both mentioned color tvs. I have never heard the theory that the country went to hell in a handbasket because of color tv, but I have often heard that the trouble began when the Beatles got off that plane. Myself I look back to 1958 when General Motors and Chrysler each had five brands of cars and Ford had only four. Seeking to put balance into the universe Ford introduced the Edsel, a handsome auto to my mind then and now, so that each of the big three had five and there was order in the universe.

I have run into some troublemakers who insist that the Lincoln and the Continental, or the Chrysler and Imperial were two models of the same car, but to them I reply, pish posh.

But for some reason the Edsel failed, Ford rejiggered it a couple times, but it just couldn’t take its place with the Olds and the DeSoto, between the Mercury and the Lincoln, balance could not be maintained among the big three, and the country slipped to hell in a handbasket.

Color tv, the Beatles, the Edsel, all at about the same time, and might I add, Beagles and Uncle Ken, the two prophets, leaving the hallowed halls of Gage Park High. We’re lucky we aren’t all breaking rocks in the hot sun while our Russian overloads chug vodka and giggle.

Now see that all makes perfect sense, unlike your theory that LBJ and Nixon lost the war on purpose. I’ve heard this mad theory before, but I forget what reason you give for them doing it, to promote communism because they were commies, to promote big government somehow because they were commies, to fuck with property values and average rainfall in Beaglesonia because they were commies?

Did W purposely lose the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and speaking of Afghanistan, did the Russkies and the Brits purposely lose their wars there too, and speaking of the Brits did they purposely lose their war with the colonies too? Pish posh.

I don’t think I ever lauded Richard I for getting things done. My family moved to Gage Park in 1949 and somehow we always felt we were outsiders (actually I think all people, everywhere think they are outsiders, but that’s a story for another day), and I remember around election time all over the neighborhood those Daley signs appeared in the windows, and I thought all those people must somehow be connected to the machine, be getting jobs or handouts or something, while we weren’t getting anything.

Something about waiting on a train or a bus. Looking up the tracks or street, seeing nothing, looking down, looking back up and still nothing, makes a body mad, you know. And then five minutes later it is still not there, what the hell, why can’t they make these damn things run on time? And now it looks like it is going to rain. Damnit why don’t we overthrow the Goddamn government and put in that Mussolini fellow, or the commies?

You know why the right wingers are always opposed to Amtrak and to any form of public transportation? Because they make commies of us all.

What I was really hoping to get into was the difference between practice and theory, but we still have much of this long hard winter to thrash that out.