American Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities Listed in a Brochure in 1955

One of the proud moments in my life was the day when I became a naturalized American citizen, following a long journey of four years which included tons of paperwork, interviews, expensive fees I could barely afford, and many trips to the Immigration office at a time when I was a mom, a wife, a daughter, and a student.

I was not lucky to be born in the United States, but I became a naturalized American as soon as the authorities allowed a legal immigrant from a communist country to become one. I was properly vetted, vaccinated, employed, checked for communicable diseases, studied America’s history, its founding documents, and underwent at least three hours of interrogation to make sure that I was not a communist. It was a bit strange, I admit, since I fled communism.

Things have changed since I became a citizen. Immigration laws are no longer respected or followed, politicians keep telling us that laws are “broken,” winking to each other, allowing any flotsam and jetsam of the third world to walk unimpeded across the southern border, and thousands and thousands are flown and dropped into small, conservative communities in the dead of night, carrying U.S. or U.N. debit cards, Medicaid insurance cards, and brand-new cell phones. American citizens are even asked to donate as much as they can for the settlement and care of unvetted and unvaccinated illegals dropped overnight into their midst to increase the voting rolls for the Democrat Party.

A naturalization brochure from 1955 came across my desk recently. Published in 1955 as document M-76 by the Department of Justice, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, it is titled “Welcome to the New Citizen on the occasion of Naturalization.”

Printed in blue are the words to The Star-Spangled Banner, written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key, a Baltimore lawyer, during the bombardment of Fort McHenry and adopted by Congress as the National Anthem in 1931.

Today, the woke leftist America objects to our National Anthem as an outdated, bellicose statement. They are trying to change it to reflect their values, just as they are changing everything else remotely connected to our history that offends them. The easily triggered left is running the country into the ground and destroying our history, replacing it with their manufactured version of past events and persons.

The 1955 brochure also contains a brief congratulatory letter from President Dwight D. Eisenhower who welcomed the new citizens “to a new way of life with rights and privileges, blessings which include a solemn responsibility – the duty to help maintain and advance the principles and ideals upon which our Republic was founded and built.”

Today the meaning of our Constitutional Republic has been lost in the leftist narrative swamp of their brand of democracy, complaining about our “outdated” founding documents that must be replaced by their woke ideals of Marxism and collectivism.

The 1955 brochure contains the words to America’s Creed. William Tyler Page, the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, wrote America’s Creed in 1917 which was accepted by the House on behalf of the American People on April 3, 1918.

“I believe in the United States of America as a Government of the People, by the People, for the People, whose just powers are derived from the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign nation of many sovereign states; a perfect union, one and inseparable, established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes. I therefore believe it my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.”

William Tyler Page would be saddened by the state of politics today as American citizens are being governed by a political class so powerful that their powers are no longer derived from the governed. He would be disappointed to see what is happening to our country’s sovereignty on the southern border which is overrun by millions of illegals from around the world, breaking our laws and signing up for welfare and the voting rolls.

None of our founding documents mention the latest leftist buzzword, “equity,” equality of outcomes, the latest demands from the American Marxist contingent.

The founding documents of our country are written in cursive handwriting which is no longer taught in schools. American students cannot read their country’s original founding documents anymore. The decision to stop teaching cursive handwriting came from educators in America and around the world, even though research has proven that cursive handwriting develops certain parts of the brain, enabling memory and further learning. Frontiers | The Importance of Cursive Handwriting Over Typewriting for Learning in the Classroom: A High-Density EEG Study of 12-Year-Old Children and Young Adults | Psychology (frontiersin.org)

J. M Swing, Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, wrote in the 1955 brochure about the Meaning of American Citizenship:

“Today you have become a citizen of the United States of America. You are no longer an Englishman, a Frenchman, an Italian, a Pole. Neither are you a hyphenated-American – a Polish-American, an Italian-American. You are no longer a subject of the government. Henceforth, you are an integral part of this Government – a freeman – a Citizen of the United States of America.”

J. M. Swing might also be disappointed to see that in 2022, American citizens who were lucky to have been born on American soil, have become strongly hyphenated, polarized, and divided by skin color and ethnicity, and have become subjects of their powerful governments.

Frances Cavanah and Lloyd E. Smith outlined the rights and privileges of an American citizen in the same 1955 immigration brochure:

1.      Think freely as a unique person. Today unfortunately “groupthink” is highly encouraged in the main stream media. In the vein of collectivism, uniqueness is seen as selfish and undemocratic.

2.      I may speak or write as I please if it does not interfere with the rights of others. Today you may speak and write if the left allows you a venue in the mass media, and the technocracy elites allow you to be seen or heard on social media platforms.

3.      Exercise the right to vote. You vote but, as soon as you leave the voting booth, your vote may be nullified by a person voting illegally.

4.      I have the right to choose my work. You may choose your work today if your views and resume are acceptable to those doing the hiring.

5.      I have the right to improve myself through hard work and education. Higher education today has become a joke as universities are now bastions of leftist Marxist groupthink. No diverse thinkers need apply and no divergent opinions are allowed.

6.      I have the right to a prompt trial by jury if I should be accused of a crime. I wonder if those labeled “insurrectionists” have had their days in court yet.

7.      I have equal rights with others when seeking justice in the courts. Do we really have equal rights today in the courts?

8.      I can share in the benefits of many natural resources of my country.

9.      I can educate my children in free schools. They are tuition-free for those who do not pay property taxes which fund public schools. Schools and universities are controlled by a leftist cabal of teachers, administrators, and professors indoctrinated in America’s colleges of education and now even colleges of arts and sciences.

10.  I have the right to worship in the religion of my choice. Have you really been free to worship in church in the last two years during the forced lockdowns? How many churches and priests were fined and arrested for holding church services?

11.  I have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” We can hope and pray for this right, but we have had a lot of unhappy, broke, and bankrupt Americans in the last two years, unable to pursue their dreams due to government lockdowns and unconstitutional mandates. We have experienced at the hands of our federal, state, and local governments, home detention, forced masking, vaccine mandates, election fraud, food and necessities shortages, supply chain disruptions, school closures for extended periods of time, censorship, and forced small businesses and church closures.

The duties of an American citizen were outlined in the 1955 brochure as follows:

1.      Obey the country’s laws. Currently, the socialist Democrats only obey the laws they like and approve of. The rest of us obey the laws.

2.      It is our duty to vote so that our government may truly represent the will of the people. Unfortunately, the leftist wing that runs big cities allows illegal citizens of other countries to vote thus diluting and destroying the votes and the will of the rest of the American voters.

3.      Keep informed on the honesty and ability of candidates for public office. It makes no difference that we know how dishonest some candidates and politicians are, they suffer no consequences, and they are well-funded by donations from the leftist elites who run the country.

4.      Correct injustice through voting. Seldom injustices are corrected through voting anymore since the advent of the electronic voting system which is easy to manipulate and hack.

5.      Pay taxes. The middle class is heavily taxed and so are individuals in the upper class. The rest have little skin in the taxation game.

6.      Serve on juries when called upon.

7.      Hold a public office for the efficient functioning of government. Is our government truly functioning efficiently when you look at the trillions of dollars in debt that has been accumulated in the last five years?

8.      Defend our country if necessary.

9.      Unite in times of crisis and support our government.

10.  Respect our national flag. How many Americans have desecrated our flag, burned it, stepped on it, and destroyed it? How many Americans were forbidden to fly the American flag and were fined by homeowners’ associations (HOAs) and municipalities under the excuse that it offended others?

The goals listed in the citizenship brochure from 67 years ago are majestic and admirable. We should all strive to be better citizens, whether natural born or naturalized.

Those of us, who were not lucky to be born in this country but were lucky enough to be able to immigrate here legally, support this country and its opportunity to succeed guaranteed to everyone. We do not support the woke equality of outcomes. The collectivist idea of “equity” has never worked, and it is never going to work except by coercion and oppression.

To me, my naturalized citizenship carries with it the highest privilege and the highest responsibility to conduct the oath taken on the day when I became a proud American. Freedom is never free, and we must cherish it and protect it from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

 

American Marxism

American Marxism is not exactly Karl Marx’s revolutionary fight between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It is the fight between corporate technocrats and Americans who love their country. The corporate technocrats are aided by corrupt Congressmen, bureaucrats in our own government, the woke military and police, the woke teachers, professors, and administrators, and the entire woke media. At the bottom of the Marxist wrung are the paid street activists and Useful idiots.

American Marxism has been branded and sold as Democrat Socialism and half of America bought the lie and the empty promises of “free stuff,” the Green New Deal, while the rest of the country gets lawlessness, protests, burning, and the looting of stores. Stealing $950 worth of merchandise no longer sends thieves to jail in the formerly beautiful city of San Francisco.

History has shown that law and order disappear prior to the complete societal takeover by tyrants. The activists and commissars present the takeover as a necessity to quell the lawlessness.

The Liberator wrote recently, “Activists are people who will do and say anything to further their cause. Their objective is the destruction of anything which gets in the way of their Marxist utopian dream. Useful Idiots are those who aren’t necessarily evil; they’ve just bought the Activists’ line of BS, hook, line, and sinker.”

The American Socialist Democrats jam the airwaves with their false rhetoric daily, presenting Marxist retread ideas and the promise that they “own the future.”

It would surprise some to learn that the Russian czars’ tyranny provoked a revolutionary movement from the 1820s on, but the first Russian Marxist group was not formed until 1883, the year when Karl Marx died. And this group was formed by a few Russian exiles in Switzerland. It was Lenin who founded the Russian Marxist party during 1900-1903 – the Bolsheviki. Lenin was a socialist who acquired his revolutionary streak from other Russian revolutionaries who hated the czars.

Democrat Socialists in America are well-off, many hold political office, live in mansions, own jets, yachts, and expensive cars. They are not the marginalized of society, starving to death like the Russians during the czars. They live a good life thanks to the capitalism they want to destroy for the rest of America who have worked hard and achieved the American dream. Power has corrupted them to the point of wanting to dictate to everyone how they should live and die.

It was Lenin who “picked up the doctrine of dialectical materialism from the Russian revolutionary N. G. Chernyshevskii, not from Marx. Lenin was sure that “Russia should be the first country to revolt, form socialism, and save the world.”

Democrat Socialists are sure that they will overturn American capitalism, establish socialism, save America from itself, enslave Americans to the will of a few oligarchs, and save the world from the manufactured global warming now turned into the profitable industry of climate change. The Activists on the payroll of the Democrat Socialists are busy paying Useful Idiots to do their bidding to achieve the goal of the Great Reset – from capitalist prosperity to socialist poverty.

According to Francis B. Randall, who wrote in 1963, the Russian Bolsheviks under Lenin were “a tiny, well-disciplined, conspiratorial, elite group in a vast backward mostly peasant country.” The American Democrat Socialists are a huge army of well-educated, well-indoctrinated, in your face group, composed of mostly young Activists and Useful Idiots.

Lenin was able to foment Bolsheviks to a proletarian revolution in 1917 “when the proletariat formed less than ten percent of the Russian population.” Nobody knows for sure in America how many Democrat-Socialist Activists and Useful Idiots on globalist payroll are fanned across the fifty states.

Judging by the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, when a man with senile impairment won the presidency, it is safe to say that these Democrat Socialists worked overtime to install their desired president. At that point, the takeover of our Constitutional Republic by American Marxism was dangerously close to completion.

Karl Marx concocted his ideology that was later implemented as Marxism-Socialism-Communism to establish an impossible classless society based on collectivism, collective thought, collective purpose, and equality of outcomes in which the all-mighty state replaced God and became a forced deity that had to be worshiped under the banner of the Communist Party. The communists stole the souls, lives, meaning, wealth, freedom, and ultimately humanity from millions of people who had to worship the dear leader.

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn wrote in his Gulag Archipelago, “There always is this fallacious belief: It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible. Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.”

For decades in Russia, people who held divergent opinions or tried to publicly resist the communists were arrested in creative ways so as not to start a panic – arrests were made during nighttime, daytime, at home, at work, on a trip, in front of the house, at school, at the theater during a play, at the movies, and anywhere else imaginable, depending on the desired effect.

As Solzhenitsyn wrote, “For several decades, political arrests were distinguished in our country precisely by the fact that people were arrested who were guilty of nothing and were therefore unprepared to put up any resistance whatsoever.”

A strange submissiveness hung like a wet blanket – “A submissive sheep is a find for a wolf.” The commies had quotas of arrests for no reason other than prove their total control. And the people were submissive because they did not know the “mechanics of epidemic arrests” or the quotas. “Universal innocence gave rise to the universal failure to act. Maybe they will not take you? Maybe it will all blow over? Resistance is futile, you will only make your situation worse, thought many who were arrested in Soviet Russia.”

Marxists, Bolsheviks, Stalinists, and Maoists from the former and current communist countries used class struggle and abject fear to divide and conquer their hapless citizens. The American Marxists use the manufactured critical race theory (CRT) across the 50 states to divide and conquer America.

Even the National Archives have turned “woke” to modify American history under the guise of invented “structural racism.” The Russian Bolsheviks were particularly adept at destroying Russian history, monuments, and documents, and “erasing” everything and everyone they deemed “offensive” to their ultimate goals and plans. The National Archives has gone woke and turned on American history - American Thinker

It seems that young generations of Americans, deaf and dumb to reality, and enticed by the words “free stuff” are not willing to learn from other people’s experience; they want to live through it personally because the Democrat Socialists promised in the media that their Socialism is going to give them freedoms they already have and improve the vast wealth that Americans already possess when compared to other nations. Without the activists and useful idiot bureaucrats in government and academia/education, who follow orders, none of the CRT would be possible.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                       

How Did America Become So Great?

Legal immigrants from around the world came to the New World to work hard, find land, and worship freely. Many died in the process during the arduous voyage across the sea, in the wilderness they were attempting to settle, from industrial accidents in factories they toiled in, from disease, or in battles with the natives.

All had to stop at Ellis Island for proper identification and quarantine when necessary. They were desperate but proud men and women who did not immigrate to become wards of the welfare system because there was none to be had. They had to work hard in order to survive. No hapless taxpayers were supporting the new arrivals and nobody waved the country’s flag where they hailed from. Most learned English as soon as they could no matter what level of education they had.

Today the legal immigrants fly in with papers and medical records and immigration authorities check the thoroughly and register their arrival. But the illegal immigrants cross the border themselves at great health risk, leaving behind a huge trail of trash, or cross with the help of expensive coyotes, or are herded into the country by government buses in the dead of night and on planes without proper health screenings.

Caravans of invading armies of illegals from Honduras and El Salvador have already jumped the fence at various points of the border, aided and abetted by Mexico, closer to California, where Democrat officials welcomed them with open arms and pockets at taxpayer expense while America’s poor and veterans are ignored.  Nobody knows or cares whether these illegals are sick, financially able to support themselves, able to work, and, most importantly, whether they are friends or foes of America.

Some legal immigrants were turned back at Ellis Island, their dreams shattered by disease. Many had to wait out the quarantine before they earned admission to the New World, an old world but new because it was full of possibilities and opportunities to settle the land.

These legal immigrant men and women built roads, bridges, towns, cities, skyscrapers, cars, airplanes, rockets, and the best medicine in the world. They built factories, invented drugs that saved millions around the world, created machines, built hospitals, ports, and our current civilization. They were armed, fierce, and fought in many wars.

They were Americans first who cherished their ethnic roots at home and during the holidays. They were free to invent, to experiment, to be themselves, but also be part of a larger and important whole. They cherished their families and God had a prominent place in their lives. And they made America great for many subsequent generations who appreciated the sacrifice and work of the previous generations and of their elders.

In the late 1970s, as a newly arrived legal immigrant who luckily escaped communism, I met a lot of nice, well-meaning, pleasant, happy, and ill-informed Americans and I wondered then, how did America become so great with so much willing and shameless ignorance? Now, forty years later, I have my answer.

People were not ashamed to say that they knew so little history and geography. They were enterprising and willing to work hard. They understood patriotism and respect for their elders. Their world revolved around family, happiness, consumerism, and church, all set within a certain mile radius of bucolic neighborhoods, streets, and towns they knew and loved.

Americans treasured their roads and had a love affair with big cars and the mobility that said cars afforded them, but they took for granted the freedom to use them, to move where a gambling spirit took them, the wide open spaces were theirs to take if they so desired.

Nobody stopped them or legislated them into high-rise, mixed use, tiny apartments or forced them into tin cans on wheels in order to save the planet from a manufactured global warming crisis. There was no Democrat New Green Deal to curtail freedom of movement, flying, forcing people to bike to work, and forbidding fossil fuels.

Students dozed off in history classes and shrugged their shoulders when they knew very little about their own country and government. Communism and millions of victims of it, you say? That might as well be a dark specter on another planet; it would never find its way here. We are Americans!

People with a lot of education and experience were no longer allowed in Jimmy Carter’s Department of Education-controlled classrooms. They could not take just anybody off the streets with a degree, as I was told a few times, one had to be licensed by the Department of Education and a member in good standing of the National Education Association.

Generous to a fault and eager to jump and help their fellow man, many Americans I’ve met would give the shirt off their backs if one asked. They naively helped many people in times of trouble, even those that bit the hands that fed them.

They talked optimistically about the freedoms they had and felt sorrow for those around the world who were not so free. America was great, they said, and it was first at everything because they were fearless and took chances to succeed. Family was very important, children were disciplined without fear of arrest by the government, and church and faith were very important to most Americans.

Americans were free to be self-sufficient and self-reliant; they were not free to freeload. There was no internet to bombard the public with constant fake news, communist indoctrination, miscommunication and misinformation. Political corruption was hidden, communists were enemies, and socialism was abhorrent. The best and the brightest succeeded. In time, excellence has been replaced by mediocrity and collectivism. The idea that everyone is special and equal gave birth to the award for walking without tripping or the award for just existing.

Each community had Christian churches and temples that united them in worship and principles. Everyone understood that God was an essential ingredient in the founding of America and life was precious inside and outside of the womb. Nobody killed babies for research or replacement parts.

Schools were run by each state and by counties, not Jimmy Carter’s Department of Education with Bill Gates’ Common Core collectivist standards and colleges indoctrinating young Americans with “social justice” and “white privilege” curricula and proselytizing for Islam. Technical schools thrived everywhere, teaching Americans life-long useful skills that enabled success and prosperity. Nobody relied on foreign labor, skilled or unskilled. The Braceros program had long been destroyed by lawyers.

Americans were willing to fight for their country with words, ideas, principles, and to give up effort and their lives on battle fields to keep intact their heritage, what they believed in, their country and its founding principles. Europe is strewn with graves of brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice in order to save Europe and its often ungrateful citizens from the Nazi scourge.

Americans as a whole were lulled into a false sense of security because they lived two oceans away from the threat of communism and any potential war. Surely nobody would dare overrun American shores and our borders in order to occupy their beautiful and successful country, the shiny city on the hill! But nobody counted on the home-grown communist and islamo-fascist enemy within which grew like a contagion in the last forty years.

The indoctrination from public schools, colleges, universities, Hollywood, the main stream media, Communist Party USA, and corrupt politicians was so strong in the last forty years that we are now experiencing the fruits of their efforts – American young who hate their country, its achievements, its greatness, its origins, and even their own skin color.

Liberalism/progressivism/environmentalism/ feminism/socialism/communism created new generations of young Americans who are devoid of patriotism and would not hesitate to turn in their own parents to the government if that would bring them 15-minutes of worthless fame. They derisively laugh at patriotic Americans who helped make this country great, including some of their own relatives, as obsolete men and women, marginalizing and dehumanizing their existence. The sheer hatred coming constantly from the main stream media is not unlike the hatred ginned up against the Jews during Hitler’s Nazi regime.

Laws were upheld, the justice system worked, and politicians respected the legal system and tried to pass laws that represented the best interest of their constituents. Today, unfortunately, the corrupt politicians are only interested in becoming powerful, rich, and representing their crony capitalist friends and the citizens of other countries who are invading our borders for the generous welfare paid to them, no questions asked, from funds provided through taxation of the average working Americans. These illegal aliens are now the voting base in many overpopulated areas and states for the Democrat communist party.

Lately, the more Americans talk about freedoms they think they still have, the more I hear the rattling of the chains of captivity and servitude to the mighty government and to politicians who have stopped listening to the people whose tax money fund their wealth and unbounded and corrupt power.

Derek Hunter wrote, “There are no areas in which liberals, progressives, leftists, socialists, or whatever they want to call themselves this week, are working for the betterment of American citizens or to advance the cause of individual liberty. Their entire existence appears to be just the opposite.” https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2019/02/10/the-democratic-party-needs-to-be-destroyed-before-it-destroys-the-country-n2541109?fbclid=IwAR1EPvOn8HJ7BDsmV6gGgJfILd8nTGPmhJ2kRjXO5mW3goBc6rvSIYFjRYA

Many confused and brainwashed young Americans are saying that America was never great in response to President Trump’s signature campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” while they are living a life which is the envy of the world.  If life is so much better everywhere else, as they claim and wish for an European lifestyle that no longer exists, as they are flooded by Muslim immigrants, why are illegal aliens flocking to our shores asking for welfare and demanding the same rights as American citizens?

The mighty Roman Empire’s road to perdition was cluttered with corruption, traitorous acts, sexual deviance, disregard for life, greed, military expansion beyond ability to rule, disregard for the rule of law, and tolerance of the barbarians. According to the BBC, “Rome covered 1.9 million square miles in 390 A.D. Five years later, it had plummeted to 770,000 square miles. By 476, the empire’s reach was zero.”

We are not an empire and we are not Rome, we are a constitutional republic, “if you can keep it.” If you ask the average Americans who don’t understand their own history, we are a democracy. Are we a government by the people, a rule of the majority? Are we a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections? Does the government listen to the people anymore? Are representatives in Congress legislating on behalf of all American voters? How many illegal aliens who came here to dominate, not assimilate, are now cancelling our votes? How many politicians are listening to their constituents?

The Greatest Generation of the South

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Ina Faye’s mother was a “pack-rat” who lived through the Great Depression. A child of seven brothers and sisters, they lived in dignified poverty, glad and thankful for hand-me-downs, clothes, apples, peas, okra, and whatever their neighbors could share in those difficult years. It was a hard-scrabble life but nobody complained much.

Ina Faye’s dad came from a well-off family. Even though he could give her mom whatever she wanted, mom still tended to hoard things. Dad was a farmer who owned a dairy, a milking machine, and even ran Charlet (Charolais) cows bred for beef.

Recycling grease in containers for later use, she would cleanse the grease with potatoes to prevent cross contamination of frying smells. Having brought her frugal ways into the marriage, she saved all the time and cut corners.

When she passed away, Ina Faye found yards and yards of string, old twine, boxes of saved aluminum foil, washed, dried, and neatly stored for future use, jars of buttons, tubs and tubs of Crisco shortening, used tin foil plates scrubbed clean, and batches of home-made lye soap for her husband to use after fertilizing the fields and working on farm equipment.

Ina Faye’s mom always stocked up on sale items and, since Southern ladies fried most of the things they cooked, Crisco shortening was a must pantry item to store in excess.

Old dresses and ragged shirts would be cut into strips and made into lovely quilts which Ina Faye still proudly displays in her Mississippi home. As it was the case then, mom always made clothes for her girls until high school. A terrific seamstress, she made dresses and aprons for herself and other females in the family, a must in the wardrobe of any Southern country woman at that time.

Hancock Fabrics made a good business selling sewing implements, from Singer sewing machines, to buttons, to thread, fabrics, yard sticks, and McCall’s dress patterns made of thin onion-skin beige paper.

Ina Faye found an entire cedar chest filled with fabrics her mom had purchased to make dresses for Cox’s army. The fragrant scent of cedar brought back instant memories when she opened the lid.

In the late 70s and early 80s, the tide started to turn and southern moms started shopping more and more for ready-made clothes in department stores and the fabric shops started to disappear. There are few left around the country, such a novelty that the younger generations do not understand.

An occasional downtown fabric shop in a small town always makes me stop to peruse the racks of fabrics. The smell of cotton dye, the wooden shelves, and polished floors bring back memories long forgotten. I too had sewn my own clothes and my babies’ little dresses in the late seventies and early eighties. Sewing was terrific therapy for the soul and it saved us so much money.

The Greatest Generation learned to scrimp and save, using everything up until it could no longer be fixed and it had to be recycled. An appliance, a tractor, a vehicle, a stove, or anything with a motor, was fixed and reused until it fell apart. And even then, it was recycled or scavenged for parts. Nobody liked to buy on credit; they saved until they had enough money to buy what they needed.

And then, there were Green Stamps given at the grocery store each time a purchase was made. Women filled books of them and bought kitchen items and small appliances. It was so exciting to fill a new book, that much closer to a can opener, an electric frying pan, or a set of dinner plates.

Amway and Tupperware became popular among country folk. Families would have parties, selling vitamins, soap, farm surfactant, and plastic storage containers from Tupperware. There were few families in the South who did not have a Tupperware party and kept their rice, flour, tea, sugar, and other ingredients in classic orange Tupperware containers. My girls played with a Tupperware red and blue puzzle ball with different geometrical yellow shapes that had to be fitted through proper slots.

Everything people ate was produced on the farm. On a special day, dad would take the children to town for a cold cola in a glass bottle, taken out of the grocery store cooler or on a trip to the downtown Rexall Drugs counter where they served cola floats from a real fountain. When the children finished their drinks, dad would return the empty glass bottles to the store owner for a 5 cents refund per drink.

Ina Faye’s parents never bought them candy because mom would parch peanuts grown on the farm and would make chocolate fudge with the peanuts; on weekends, while they played games with friends, they had delicious treats. Her cakes and fried chicken from scratch were “second to none.”

It was a simpler life, close to home and to the country that revolved around church, a life that the children of today will never get to experience. It was much safer, closer to church on Sunday morning, evening, and on Wednesdays. Few girls were sexually active, it was something people did not do, it was immoral and dishonorable, and guys did not expect girls to “put out.” There was intense shame attached to such loose morals, and children were taught right from wrong. Most kids did not get into drugs, there was no Hollywood telling them that anything goes.

Ina Faye’s dad was highly respected in the community and knew most people in the area. He was the Justice of Peace for many years and a good friend of the Sheriff who lived up the road from his home. Her dad would sometimes hold court in their living room and a few couples were married on their front porch.

It was a life from another century when family, church, citizenship, hard work, and morals mattered. It was the 20^th century generation of Americans that had made America great.

 

 

Memorial Day Respect for Freedom

Petagon 9/11 Quilt Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016

I don't know why but I choke and tear up when I hear both the Romanian and the American National Anthems.
I see in my mind's eye all the Romanian faceless heroes who died to free us from the oppression of communism and all the American soldiers who perished in their selfless attempts to free so many people they never knew around the world. I feel a deep sense of gratitude; I can never repay their sacrifice but I can honor them by preserving their legacy.
I have a deep respect for the American flag and I fly it every day with pride. If the wind, rain, and sun tear or discolor it, I retire it with proper honors and purchase a new one. I know the sacrifice of living under tyranny and I abhor the American ingrates who trample and disrespect our flag.

My husbnd served both in Iraq and Afghanistan and brought back a folded American flag which was flown over Kabul. This flag has a place of honor in my house. I understand what he had to endure to serve under our beloved flag.
But his suffering pales by comparison with thousdands and thousands of American soldiers who returned in a coffin in the cargo hold of an airplane, saluted, and buried with honors. Their sacrifice and faces were quickly forgotten.
And then there are thousands who came back with deep scars on their souls, without limbs, and deep scars on their faces and bodies, left to fend for themselves in a cruel VA medical system.
Many veterans died waiting to be seen in the shameful VA clinics. After all, what is a little wait of seven months if you consider that waiting in line is just like waiting in line for a ride at Disney, said the callous VA chief.