My father was a hero. Just about everybody’s father was a hero. Some even had medals to prove it. How do I live up to that? I could complain about school or work, or how tough my life was, and the silent guy seated at the head of the table could trump every complaint.
He sat at
the bar at the American Legion silently drinking, never discussing the horrors
of Guadalcanal or Okinawa or D-Day or The Bulge with his buddies. These heroes
had no need to talk, it was a shared experience. They spent their youth hungry,
standing in bread lines or watching their fields dry up and blow away. They grew
into adults fighting across Africa, Europe, and the Pacific.
Dubbed the
“Greatest Generation”, who were they to complain? Their fathers and
grandfathers, the old soldiers from WWI, sat next to them at the VFW, staring
at their half-empty mugs of Schlitz trying their best to forget the
gut-twisting fear of Belleau Wood.
Compared
with the previous two generations of war and struggle (hell, let’s be honest,
the Civil War Vets were not far in the past), what did I have to whine about;
that life in the suburbs was just too hard? So, what did I do? I decided that I
would rebel against everything my hero father stood for.
Sitting
around the Elks or Masonic Lodge on Monday evening telling dirty jokes? Not for
me. A house in the burbs with a good job? Nope. Glen Miller? Hardly.
When Johnny
Stabler was asked what he was protesting against, I understood his response perfectly: “Waddya
Got?” Teenaged me grew my hair long, slicked it back with Bryl cream and searched
the radio until I found dirty, pounding, screaming Rock & Roll. My dad
never knew an easy time. It was no wonder he could not understand my rejection
of the good life he provided. He sacrificed so much, and I appreciated it so
little.
Of course
I did not know any of this at the time. I was a self-centered twerp. I thought
John Lennon was wise. I believed Mao’s Little Red Book of Lies. I was
anti-establishment, anti-war, anti-Military Industrial complex. Yes, I was anti-hero. If he was for it, in
my mind it had to be bad.
That is
how I found myself standing with a mass of like-minded protestors in Chicago’s Grant
Park, believing the world, and the Democratic Party in particular, cared about
what I thought.
Spoiler:
They did not.
