Shad

#489


I was on the island of Tonga in the South Pacific. A family wanted me to eat lunch with them. In a pit in the yard, with hot coals, on strange looking leaves, they cooked fish using herbs known only to them. It was delicious beyond compare. Then as now, it brought back the memory of a sons devotion to his aged father.

In the community in which I was reared the old three room school house had been given to a local lodge. The rooms were large but it had been accommodated to care for an elderly couple who, during the depression, had lost everything. Devoted to the church and the community this old couple had several daughters living around but their great joy was their only son, Robert, who, after they had sacrificed everything, he had graduated from the University. This man, exceptional in every way, became a well known government parks authority. Having been superintendent of Hyde park (FDR's home and burial place) and others. He had told my cousin who owned the country store nearby, supply my parents every need and you know you will get paid. The main thing, each week when the fish man comes by, make sure my father gets a shad, the fish which he loves so well. And so it was, week after week, year after year, the fish man always made sure a nice shad was delivered to the home.

Robert left a large estate and among his bequest the building of a Baptistry in the Church in which we were all raised, built in 1874. Until then, we had all been Baptized in a local fish pond. Robert had a great love for his parents, his family, his friends, his community. I was working across the road one day when his parents, sitting on the front porch, both very old, both disabled, both walking with canes, spotted his car arriving. As old as they were, like children, they were waving and dancing. This is what parenting used to be like.

In the same community, another poor white family, educated one daughter, their only child. After college, she became very successful as a Boston lawyer. She wrote me a letter and told me how much her father was enjoying his new spectacles...he could finally read the bible. She said, “you know my mother is bedridden and I would so appreciate you going by the house and seeing if there is anything you can do for her eyes, she so enjoyed embroidery and quilting.”

I was speaking in the community and I sent word that I would be at their house at a certain time. He had her all propped up in a chair. She was afraid that since she was illiterate I could not examine her eyes. I had my opthalmoscope and retina scope which enabled me to check on the health of her eyes in case of cataracts and I could determine her prescription very accurately with the retina scope. I had the prescription made up and sent it to her via my mother. My mother said, all she could do was cry because she could see how to thread a needle and sew. Of course I had told her that the new glasses were a gift from my mother but the wonderful daughter insisted on sending me a check. This is what parenting used to be like.

Since those days, I have been totally blind. My drivers often tell me that the world has totally changed during the past 50 years. They say, “Doc, you would not believe what the world is like now...most girls with tattoos and piercings, young men wearing baggy pants, drivers making obscene gestures at one another.” A friend told me recently about going to an athletic event. One of the prominent couples in the city were seated in the stadium below him. He said they were dressed in finery befitting a global event but, he said, each time the opposing team came near their side of the stadium they would yell out obscenities and make obscene gestures. As their team was losing, they decided to leave but he said, I felt even worse when I noticed, as they passed by, he had a Christian cross in his lapel and she was wearing a Christian cross around her neck. This couple, wealthy, educated, country club members, too, have children but they are known to have addictive problems, have not done very well. This is today's parents, in today's world.

The first time I was in Russia, I stayed at the large hotel at the Kremlin directly across from St. Basil's Cathedral. Of course in Russia, large means better. The dining room, a dormitory type structure, seated 2,000 people at long, crude tables. Each hotel room had a peep hole where staunch, ugly women working the halls could keep an eye on everything going on in your room. A friend, traveling with me, a commentator on WOR radio, New York City, used the old fashioned, hard contact lenses. In his bathroom, he put some paper in the lavatory to hold some water so he could wet his lenses. This “hall woman” immediately came in shaking her finger at him. In my own bathroom, I was using a used towel to wipe off my shoes. A hall woman came in shaking her fingers at me. Big brother has not stopped at your front door either. Every day, in every way, we are losing all the freedoms for which our ancestors paid a tremendous price.

At a recent prom, when the young people arrived for this night of enjoyment, before they could enter the building, police searched their cars, searched the pocket books of the girls and the pockets of the boys to make sure they were not taking anything illegal inside. There was a time when young girls in evening gowns, young boys in tuxedos, looked upon their high school prom as the zenith of their high school accomplishment. When will today's parents realize that their children are now puppets of the state?

Without God, you cannot understand God. To the believer, no explanation of God is necessary. To the unbeliever, any explanation of God is impossible.

Those of us who knew America when parents, children, churches, communities, were livable and lovable must give those memories to children because they will never be able to understand love of home, God and country otherwise.