Stars and stripes for a sorta long time…

When I breathed my first, the US of A was just shy of 177 years old..

It seems the fireworks sellers are gearing up for the country’s 250^th birthday come the end of the week.

Well, I’m having a birthday too, at the beginning of the week, and even though nobody’s advertising it in hopes of selling skyrockets, the fact that both me and my native land are getting on got me to thinking.

When I breathed my first, the US of A was just shy of 177 years old. A mere stripling compared to the Ancien Régimes of continental Europe and barely out of swaddling clothes in the view of China’s Celestial Kingdom or the Chrysanthemum Empire of Japan. It’s a nation still enduring its growing pains while leaving its mark on the world. It and I have grown older together, and while I don’t know what it might say about my behavior over the years, I do have some thoughts on the North American republic conceived in blood and liberty two and a half centuries ago.

I’d say we both got off to a good start…the country and me. Tom Jefferson, John Adams, and old Georgie Washington did a fine job birthing the idea that a baker’s dozen British colonies could someday stand on their own as a brand spanking new nation; good as any, better than most. I imagine that Merlin and Jackie had somewhat the same hopes for the undersized, squalling diaper-filler bundled up in bonnet and hospital blanket they hauled home in the family Studebaker.

Now the country had a sizeable head start on me. Well before I’d graduate to Pablum and mashed bananas, the US had been up to all manner of mischief – got its fingers slapped trying to help itself to Canada, but had better luck bullying Mexico to hand over everything and everybody north of the Rio Grande. Africans started out with a price on their heads – literally -- and things didn’t really start getting much better for them until I was well into high school. The rich stayed that way and stayed in charge, but with a whole continent to steal from the folks already living here, there was plenty to go around, so most white folks did fairly well.

By the time I got here, we’d helped flatten most of the real estate in Europe and Asia and were busy making money putting it back together again. Unfortunately, if we were to look closely, we’d surely find a Communist under every bed or so warned Senator McCarthy and his cohorts. There was a Ford or a Chevy in every garage, even though Dad drove a Studebaker, and Wally and the Beaver would soon be assuring us all that we lived in the best possible country ever – never mind that Sputnik beeping overhead.

So I went to grade school and Kennedy said America was going to the moon. A few years later, it looked like America might going to hell.

Like pretty much everyone else, I remember exactly where I was at 1 p.m. December 22, 1963 – Mrs. Strand’s 6^th grade classroom, temporarily located in the Caledonia Elementary School gym while the final touches were put on the new school building. Mrs. Strand had me read the “Ask not” part of Kennedy’s inaugural to the class, then talked with us about Kennedy, Lincoln and other presidents until it was time to go home. It was Friday, there were no Saturday morning cartoons or any other regular TV until after the funeral on Monday. We got a long weekend, but it wasn’t much fun.

LBJ got off to a good start, or so it seemed to me. Of course, I came from a family of FDR Democrats and The Great Society sounded a lot like the New Deal done bigger. Civil rights seemed on the brink of righting a lot of civil wrongs and folks that had owned Fords and Chevies were looking to move up to Mercuries and Buicks.

Life was good in the USA; in Vietnam, not so much.

In those days, Caledonia High had a debate team. Since I was too short for basketball, too small for football, too slow for wrestling, and too stubby for track, my options for extra-curricular glory were pretty doggone limited. I did have a smart mouth and bad attitude that Norma Simon saw as having forensic potential. The prospect of weekend roadtrips in the company of some very female female teammates made it an offer I couldn’t refuse.

And as Johnson escalated and Ho plotted for Tet, our small-town high school debate squad intensely studied and passionately argued the merits, deficiencies, miscalculations and delusions surrounding the draft, the war, and how “the best possible country ever” behaved itself – or didn’t.

Nearly six decades have passed since those days. Much has changed.

The country’s older. So am I.

We’ve both gone through a lot since then.

I still struggle to view my country through the sharp, inquisitive eyes of a high school debater – a competitor in a form of formal argument that required each participant to switch sides each round, to know and understand the arguments for and against the issue in question.

The pro and con. Good and bad.

It usually turns out to be a mixed bag.

We’re the country of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration and impregnated his slave girl. We’re a nation of saints and sinners, with the sinners easily having the edge. Selfless and selfish, giving and greedy, blind and visionary.

As a nation we’re a lot of things, but we’re not perfect.

Never will be.

But for me, every birthday brings another round of resolutions: shed a little weight, walk more, eat less, buy better whisky and share it with folks whose bottle’s run dry.

Let’s do the same for our country…especially the better whisky part

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