Listen To The Frog

 This morning I attended a memorial service for the father of a friend of mine.

Mac was 100 years old when he passed last week.

As I sat in church, I pondered the wisdom this man gained in all that time. The lessons gathered from living. And I thought of my own life.

You do that at a funeral. Particularly as you get older.

My adult daughter ran into a "scam" a few days ago that almost cost her two hundred dollars. Fortunately,  she was able to correct the error before any real damage was done to her bank account.

The lesson?  

If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

Still and all, the results will inflict deep wounds when the lesson is harsh and is meant for a lifetime.

When I was very young, I spent a few weeks one summer at a friend of my mothers. The friend was a recently divorced woman of wealth who lived in what I can only describe as a mansion and received, I was told later, a rather substantial amount of money in alimony each month.

There were some times I was left to my own devices and I spent it rambling through her library.

It was vast, with many books. I came across a "Life" series of picture books on World War Two.

I was fascinated with the helmets worn by the German troops. The uniforms and insignia of the Waffen SS, the Luftwaffe and other branches of the Nazi military captured my imagination, and I began a period of my life immersed in the life-style of this terrible and deadly fascist horde.

I had a neighbor who worked closely during the war with the "Pathfinders" in Europe and as a translator and agent for the OSS.

Or so he told me.

And I had no cause to doubt him. He and his wife spoke fluent German  He had pistols, knives,swords, dagger, uniforms and photographs of himself dressed as a member of the SS.

I was enthralled.

As I grew older, I began drawing swastikas on many things. As a teenager, I bought record albums of Hitlers speeches and Nazi martial music. "Die Fahne Hoch" (The Horst Weisel Song) bounced off the walls of my basement room that was draped with a red, white and black banner emblazoned with a twisted cross.

It never entered my mind that this was evil. Or if it did, I dismissed it as a thing of the past.

My friends and I would laugh at genocide and mock the holocaust by singing a sickening parody of a popular  inoffensive song recorded by Peter Paul and Mary entitled "The Lemon Tree" substituting horrible words. I will not even attempt to repeat it. 

Until. Until.

Until a night some fifty years ago when a couple of my friends and I drove home after a high-school science club meeting. I was bound to be a scientist of note. But, that was not to be.

It was evening as Bob and Dave and I drove through the town from the school.. The street lamps were on and we slowed down as we came to a cross-walk. A person stepped out and we stopped. Ken was driving and he was always polite. Steve was in the back.

I guffawed and sputtered. "Hey Bob. Ya get ten points if you hit him." There was a mild chuckle from the teenage boys. I tried for a larger laugh.

"Ya get twenty points if it's a Jew and she's pushing a baby carriage".  With glee I sprayed the words out and waited for what I thought would be an explosion of mirth at my brilliant and biting wit.

Silence swelled in the dark and pressed around me like a damp blanket. I could hear the radio faintly in the background and the quiet clearing of a throat.

Bob spoke.

"George, there's a Jew in this car." He paused. "And it's not me."

My blood froze and I felt like I had been hit with a pipe. To this day, I can only imagine how Dave felt.

Suddenly there was a face to the target of my juvenile humor.  I became disgusted at my sophmoric love for a deep and terrible evil. And I felt worse then I had ever felt in my life.

I mumbled an apology.

Lame. Lame. Stupid. Stupid.

I asked to be let out before I got home. Bob stopped below the hill where I lived and I got out. I did not even have the decency to look into the back seat. I couldn't. I just couldn't!

I couldn't sleep that night, either. Into the early morning I lay awake staring and thinking. The horror of the murder of six million innocent souls whirled around my bed and I realized how awful my respect for a monster had been.

I went to school the next morning and avoided David all day. I was not myself and from that day forward, I have never forgotten the lesson I learned about bigotry and hate.

I apologized with a letter and a face to face meeting with Davi He was gracious and kind and forgave me the transgression of my youth.

There is no excuse, For the displeasure we feel in a person's race, religion, nationality or gender-identification. There simply is no excuse.

Respect for life and the lives of the innocent are why we play banjo's.

Isn't it?  

I mean, do we play just to satisfy our own ego's? Do we play and sing just 'cause it's cool?

Sure. I guess some of us do, including, at times, yours truly.

But I would like to think we play and sing because we have been given the chance to use our gifts to spread the word about a better world, and how we could all work together to make it so.

Oh, I hear some of you.

"George. Get a grip. Go back to the sixties. Go back to Woodstock. You are preaching 40 years after the fact. You are a dreamer, pal."

Yeah.

That's what they told Kermit;

And he answered back.

"Someday we'll find it. The rainbow connection.

The lovers. The dreamers.

And me." 

© 2010 George Locke

Merci, Jacques!

Interviewing Death

Stiff and Cold

Make It Up As You Go Along

Why I Wear This Hat

Mind Games

Sandy Could Play The Banjo Real Good

The Big Bang

Roux

Thank You, Richard

In The Land of the Missing

The Half-Mile Iditarod Race

His Name Was Tom

The Sherlock Riff

The Greatest Sled Ride In History

What We All Share

Conversation With Dr. Malchevski

A Simple Act Of Love

Dad And The Hammer Of Life