Stricken with the cancer that would take his life in less than a year, Babe Ruth gives out toys to children recovering from polio.
I’m sorry, there’s something in my eye.
I like the wistful Christmas songs a lot. I always found Christmas a time for reflection, not just a party. Lots of other people get that vibe, too, it seems. Makes it seem more profound. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, has been recorded a zillion times and featured in a million movies. The original recorded version, sung by Judy Garland in Meet Me In St. Louis is still the best.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
From now on,
our troubles will be out of sight.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yuletide gay,
From now on,
our troubles will be miles away.
Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.
Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star
upon the highest bough.
And have yourself
A merry little Christmas now.
Remember — “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas Now” is an imperative.
Real, live people. I’m afraid I do. It makes me lonely to love people.
Not people as an abstraction. I’m talking about persons. When people start talking about their ideas for “the people,” I know some “persons” are going in the proverbial oven. Can you love your fellow man? Not the ones just like you. All sorts of other people. Everyone seems interested in fixing all the other people in the world. It’s not a new idea, but everyone thinks they’ve just invented the wheel or fire or something every time they try it. Persons always suffer when ideas about perfecting people get going. It’s an iron law, like gravity or the 1040 form.
People are raucous and noisy and they jostle and fight. They smell. Occasionally they smell good. They have ambition where you wish they’d lie still. They are somnolent when you’d prefer they push your cart. They are rotund and jolly and easygoing whether you think everyone should be a humorless ectomorph scold or not.
An ideal human’s behavior is being laid out with plumb bob and ruler right now, by people for whom I have no regard. The persons they are trying to make from the magnificent clay of humanity would be contemptible, if it was possible to produce them, which it isn’t. They wear the authenticity of real people like a cannibal wears the skin of his victim.
Above all, they hate the sight of children. They’re all still potential persons. Can’t have that, can we? Me? That’s why I love them.
I found this picture in the Library of Congress. The caption is what caught my eye at first, although of course the picture itself is very compelling. The caption reads:
John Fredrick’s son: “Some day we’re goin’ ta have a new house too, an a car like you all.” Saint Mary’s County, Maryland
The picture was taken in 1941. That is a very moving, mundane thing to read. That boy’s father is outside the shack with people helping him to dig a new privy hole and drill a new well far enough apart so that one does not foul the other.
People used to instinctively understand that owning a house that could become a home could in turn could become a catalyst for, or a safeguard of, the only really important institution devised by man: The family.
People often assume I am consumed with nostalgia and am backward looking. I don’t think so. I see people retreating towards barbarism and calling themselves progressive. That’s all. In a very real way, I am living right at the edge of what society and technology allows. And I like it here.
I see the idea of a home that has meaning in and of itself slipping away at all price points. It’s just a rubber box to sleep in and hold the satellite dish for an increasing number of people, and I find that disturbing for cultural reasons as much as aesthetic ones. I hear of people who pay their credit cards and abandon their homes because the homes hold no equity and hence have no intrinsic value, but their credit cards are valuable. But my home, and the home of many others who share my worldview, if perhaps only subconsciously, have intrinsic value that stand alone outside of commerce. It would be a big deal for me to lose my home. It’s not just a box I live in.
That little boy in the picture understood that the way he understood the stove is hot. He did not require a white paper referencing Le Corbusier, Bruno Zevi, Christopher Alexander and Martin Luther King to figure it out.
He knew about the car, too. People used to understand viscerally what it meant, what it really represented. Even a serf knew when he was no longer tied to the land, unable to leave. You are free to go if you must, or you will– but especially if you can.
The desire and ability to stay in one place backed up with the freedom to go if you so desire, or must. The vast majority of us take all of that for granted; or worse, a very vocal minority are actively opposed to it for reasons that boil down to, in a dark unguarded moment: I’ve already got mine, to hell with the rabble.
Resist the assault on all of it, lest your children find themselves in a hellish shack, wishing they had it all back.
I hope you got them, John Fredrick’s son.
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