Daily Archives: 2013/11/22

MY FATHER THE RACIST?

“Those people get cold and hungry, too.”  Henry, my father

My father was a young man during the real Great Depression. He was a “hobo” who “rode the rails” all over the western United States, sharing boxcars with other men also in dire circumstances. He drifted from place to place looking for any work he could find and working hard for every penny or food he earned.

He also made life-long friends, both among those who helped him and those he rode the rails with. He and his friends referred to each other in racial terms that are totally unacceptable today and they thought nothing of it. In fact, they were terms of endearment for his group. Dad was known as “that hard-headed Finn”, usually accompanied by some other more colorful expletives, and almost all of those he knew referred to themselves by their pejorative racial identities.

Daddy finally found work in a copper mine, married and settled down a few years before World War II began. Times were still tough but with the beginning of the war the depression officially ended and dad found what was considered a defense job as a night shift switchman for the Denver and Rio Grand Western Railroad. He still loved being around trains and worked for the Railroad until his death.

When I was a child there was only one black family in our community and we children never met them. They were spoken of by the adults we knew in terms that today would be very derogatory. I think we children heard every racial epithet in the book. By today’s standards, daddy and his friends would certainly be considered “racists” by referring to all groups in such language.

Coming from the Depression generation, money was a huge factor in dad’s life. He never wasted a penny if he could help it and he lived by the maxim “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” So when he came home from work one extremely cold winter morning and announced that he had “lost” his winter coat and “broken” his thermos my mother was completely baffled and kept trying to get him to tell her how in the world such a thing had happened. He told her to stick to her own problems and just get a new coat and thermos for him.

The next payday mom took me with her while, as usual, she went to railroad accounting to pick up dad’s paycheck. One of dad’s co-workers was also there and came out to our car laughing and said, “Henry nearly froze to death when he gave that black hobo his coat and thermos and fed him his lunch.” He also said dad brought the man into the switchmen’s shed to “warm up and hide from the railroad dicks until the train left and then he even helped him get aboard a boxcar without being seen.” When mom told daddy what she had learned he looked embarrassed and muttered, “Those people get cold and hungry, too.”

Since I had never met any black person I had assumed daddy didn’t like them. But what I heard that day left me with a very different perspective about my father.

My youngest brother, Dave, told me about our father taking him to the airport when he left for Vietnam. He said that everyone leaving on the flight had family and friends seeing them off except for one young black man from out-of-town. Dave walked around greeting friends when he realized dad was no longer with him. He found him sitting with his arms around the black kid, who was homesick, lonely and scared. Our father and Dave stayed with the boy right up until the boys boarded the plane and daddy hugged and kissed them both goodbye.

So, tell me, did my father’s words make him a racist? If so, what did his actions make him?

BETRAYAL

“Traitors are the lowliest of God’s creatures, despised by those they betray, and secretly loathed by those they serve.”   Richard Paul Evans

Once again the odious, slimy Harry Reid has struck against the liberty of the American people. I know that eternal judgment belongs to God, but as free people we need to remember what the term judgment really means. Eternal judgment belongs to God, but here on earth and under our laws, generally a jury of the accused’s peers hears the evidence and decides guilt or innocence, then a Judge decides the punishment or doom of the guilty. We are the jury, not the judge.

With that in mind you and I need to know that each citizen has not only the right but the duty to decide if there is enough evidence to say an elected official has betrayed the country and broken his or her oath of office. I have decided for myself that we are surrounded by too many liars and oath breakers in all offices of our government. They need to be held accountable for their deeds and delivered to the judges.

To repeat: Once again the odious, slimy Harry Reid has struck against the liberty of the American people by changing Senate rules under the direction of an even more odious President, who is also guilty of lies to the people.

It is disenheartening to remember that the mess we presently face with Obamacare could have been avoided save for the actions of one man, Chief Justice John Roberts. What I hear from others indicates they suspect John Roberts and/or his family was threatened, that he had  been caught in some shameful act and blackmailed, that he wanted to be “accepted” by those in power, or that he is simply a traitor. It is a terrible thing to believe that any of those things could be true. Perhaps it is simply a sign of our times that not only are such suspicions voiced, but that they are so easy to believe.

How many other officials or bureaucrats in government service need to face a jury of their peers so that a judge may pronounce RIGHTEOUS judgment?