My Father, the Wars and Capitalism

By TRB

It is an unwelcome surprise when Summer becomes just another season. Will it be a cold or a warm one? Will it be stormy? These are questions we always asked about winter - the evil one, the mountains of snow, winter lightning. I couldn't sleep. Winter was always at my window. The calamity season.

But Summer always came back and it was never at your window: it was in the house. The windows were open to it. Girlfriends were part of Summer, and amusement parks and merry-go-round organs that sounded drunk and Ferris wheels and bumper cars. There was a kind of heat that came from nowhere that clung to you. On some days it was like breathing water.

I was a wanderer, always hitchiking across the country, always flying back. Music corcerts. In the process I was at Monterey in 1967 and at Woodstock in 1969. But there were dozens of music concerts, many of them free, to attend. And there were parts of the nation where you could easily be chased down and assaulted just for having long hair. But I was without supervision from the time I was 16 years old. I learned a lot of things early in my life.

I remember the cops hated us. They were WWII or Korean War vets and their chief complaint in life seemed to be "I risked my life for some hippie like you?" When they were not telling us that, they would say they went over there to protect the Europeans.

I was smart enough to read between the lines of a history book. My father knew that. I was probably his favorite smart ass, but I was always yelled at or asked to leave the room first. He didn't like arguing with me. I always told him it was fear that he would lose.

One time my father was explaining to me how lucky the Europeans were the U.S. had sped to their rescue from the Nazis. I reminded him that speed was not a known factor in the rescue of Europeans. We took our time. Many beautiful cities and their inhabitants were destroyed as we weighed our options. I still believe we would have gotten out of it if it were possible.

But it wasn't. The U.S. had to fight in Europe or in no time it would be fighting the Nazis right here. So we were not there to rescue anyone but ourselves from the rapid advance West of Hitler's forces. That seemed obvious to me, but my Dad liked his version better. What about the Marshall Plan, he used to say. We gave them all that money to restart their economies. Also a must, I told him. If Europe's economy didn't work, ours wouldn't either.

Roosevelt didn't send troops over there because he was afraid that some French woman would get hurt on the way to the market. We were not there to protect the French. We were there to stop the advance of the Nazis and to push them back to the Fatherland. Several years ago an anti-French propaganda program was set into motion over some statement a French offical made that the State Dept. didn't like. I think this French diplomat might have complained about the the U.S. invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq without any provocation.

I remember Andy Rooney, the messy-browed broadcaster went nuts on "60 Minutes." During WWII he had been working for the Stars and Stripes as a correspondent when France was liberated from the Nazis and he thought the French should be very grateful to the U.S. for having done this favor. What a crock. Mind you, Rooney was no Ernie Pyle. I worked at Stars and Stripes as a reporter too, although much later than Rooney's time, and thankfully, most people had grown brains by then.

I doubt if my Dad and I ever settled any of these arguments. I remember once however, he did say kind of begrudgingly out of the side of his mouth that the U.S. was motivated by self-interest to a degree in WWII. Anyway, the Germans got what they deserved for their crimes. Europe was not my Dad's theater though. The Pacific was.

We had no argument there. The Japanese had invaded the U.S. at Pearl Harbor, atrocites seemed so easy for them. They were truly hated by Americans. To this day, looking at all the historical documentation, I can understand why.