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The water sparkles in the pool under rays of the afternoon sun. The swim club is alive with the happy shouts of kids. Adults swim laps to keep fit. Others sip on iced tea and read a book or chat with their neighbor. It is so unlike the summers of my youth, he thinks.
He wasn’t allowed to go swimming in the public pool nearby that he and his friends called “the swimmies.” There were only infrequent trips to Roosevelt Park to dunk oneself in the lake. There was no air conditioning to cool off, only an inadequate window fan. His parents worried incessantly about he and his sister drowning or getting polio. There was no polio vaccine. Jonas Salk himself was probably still just a kid himself trying to shake the heat.
What he remembered most about those hot Philadelphia summers was the pungent odor of the city, the odor of the horses pulling the wagons of vendors selling everything from fruit to laundry bleach, the odor of the manure wafting up from the trolley tracks and the occasional dead animal lying in the street for who knew how long until they came and took it away. The heat was no more intense than this day when he lounged poolside, but life was so much harsher without the conveniences we take for granted today.
He had been only dimly aware of what was happening in the world around him back then, other than what his father brought up in conversation at the dinner table. He remembered we were supposed to be afraid the Russians would blow us all to pieces. We believed there were spies everywhere, even in the highest levels of government. We were stuck in Korea and didn’t know how to get out. Gen. Douglas MacArthur wanted to nuke China and went public. Truman fired him, but MacArthur seemed to have won the hearts of the people, at least in his home. Today was different, but not so different.
President Obama escaped Truman’s fate because he had Gen. David Petreus to replace Gen. Stanley McChrystal. In this case, it is Petreus who is the American hero. He worries. Petreus is not Superman. It is his strategy of counterinsurgency that has so far failed in Afghanistan. He will tweak the policy, but not essentially change it. Afghanistan is not Iraq, and besides, it seems a little premature to declare victory in Iraq before we see what will happen when most of America’s troops are gone.
We don’t need another premature mission accomplished banner. And what is it about Afghanistan that gives us hope of good outcome? Its historic hatred of foreign invaders? Is it the corruption of Hamid Karzai that fuels our hope? No, it is Gen. Petreus that is the only thing that gives us hope, and that is too much a burden for any mortal to carry…
He doesn’t really know much about Elena Kagan. He hopes she will, at the very least, be a capable replacement for Justice John Stevens. She seems like a nice lady with a good sense of humor and the intelligence to survive the congressional hearings and the grumpiness of Sen. Arlen Specter. What he has read is that Kagan’s grandparents once owned a butter and egg store on South Seventh Street. He remembers his mother sending him on errands to the store, which was all white tile and he believed that he could actually smell the creamery butter and eggs? He loved that store. Good luck, Elena Kagan. Win one for Gittleman’s and South Seventh Street…
He is disturbed people still buy into the old myth that you can run the federal government as you do your household budget. When things get tough, you rein in your own budget, but when the economy is tanking and people are getting laid off in droves, the government has to spend its way out of it. You need the economy to grow and put folks back to work. It’s not that the stimulus didn’t work, it wasn’t big enough. The stimulus kept us from going over a cliff, avoid a depression and gave us a slight economic upturn. You can’t reduce the deficit if the economy goes under, and all that pain you’ve inflicted on ordinary working people will be for naught.
Nobody is listening…
We are already getting a glimpse of our future, he thinks. Congress fails to extend unemployment benefits, a relatively inexpensive way to ease the hardships on the jobless. Republicans are opposed to the “goodies” in the war-funding bill. The so-called “goodies” are things like $10 billion to help local school districts avoid laying off teachers; $500 million to hire more border patrol agents and $18 billion to be split between nuclear and renewable energy. Goodies or necessities?…
There is a wondrously giant tree in Girard Park, the kind that as a kid you could imagine being part of a magic forest. As a result of a recent storm, the big tree now lays on its side, its roots ruthlessly ripped out of the ground. The imperious tree once looked down upon the stately neighborhood, for who knows how many years, and is now toppled in a moment of nature’s wrath. It’s a reminder that even the most powerful among us are but a speck in the eye of history to be brushed aside. There is a sadness today in his favorite little park.
He turns back to the pool, as if for solace, and the laughing children.
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