An Independence Day Reflection: “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe…”

I have an ongo­ing love-hate rela­tion­ship with “the lit­tle vil­lage of Lodi,” as Paul Zim­mer­man referred to it reg­u­larly when writ­ing about local events in the Lodi News-Sentinel while I was grow­ing up here in the 1960’s and ’70’s.

Last night was our annual “Cel­e­brate Amer­ica” event at Hutchins Street Square. You couldn’t ask for a more patri­otic, whole­some exem­pli­fi­ca­tion of the Amer­i­can spirit. Local res­i­dents and their guests gather on the lawn of the com­mu­nity cen­ter that lit­er­ally rose from the ashes of our beloved for­mer Lodi and, later, Tokay High School — the cam­pus from which I grad­u­ated in 1974 — with their lawn chairs and pic­nic bas­kets. They wave flags, blow bub­bles, toss around Fris­bees and foot­balls, eat hot dogs and apple pie, gos­sip about each other, dis­cuss the weather, and stand when the Knights of Colum­bus and Boy Scouts present the col­ors. Atten­dees jump to their feet and place their hand over their heart again when the Lodi Fire Depart­ment hoists a giant Amer­i­can flag from its lad­der truck and the National Anthem is played.

The more free­dom we enjoy, the greater the respon­si­bil­ity we bear, toward oth­ers as well as our­selves. (Oscar Arias Sanchez)

The fes­tiv­i­ties kick off at 5:00 p.m. with an hour or so of music from the Lodi Com­mu­nity Band in which I have a great time play­ing my flute before join­ing my fam­ily and friends on the lawn to enjoy the rest of the evening’s events. We sur­ren­der the stage to a group of local women who tap dance in bedaz­zled shirts and culottes to “Can’t Smile With­out You” by Barry Manilow and a few other tunes from the same genre. The show is usu­ally capped off with a per­for­mance by a mil­i­tary band from a nearby base. By the time the sun sets, we are en route back to the car with our fold­ing chairs, ice chests, and other gear.

As I sat on the lawn last night sur­vey­ing the crowd, I reflected on what it was like grow­ing up in Lodi. My expe­ri­ences could be described as quin­tes­sen­tially small-town Amer­i­can. I walked or rode my bike to the neigh­bor­hood school; par­tic­i­pated in extra-curricular activ­i­ties includ­ing band and choir; took piano lessons; wor­shiped in the local Lutheran con­gre­ga­tion with my par­ents each Sunday;took swim­ming lessons; par­tic­i­pated in sum­mer band and the annual read­ing chal­lenge spon­sored by the pub­lic library; and stayed out of trou­ble. My late-teen and early-twenties rebel­lions were mild and short-lived.

But all was not idyl­lic. And I found myself think­ing, as I looked at the crowd gath­ered last night, about the ugly under­side of Lodi — and other small towns like it — that existed when I grew up here. And to a much lesser degree, still exists today. It was that other aspect of life in Lodi that fueled my career choice and con­tin­ues on sev­eral lev­els to inspire me daily, even as I write this arti­cle in the liv­ing room of the house in “Liv­able, Lov­able Lodi” that my par­ents built in 1959. This house rep­re­sents the acqui­si­tion of a key aspect of their Amer­i­can dreams, the other major com­po­nent being, of course, their daugh­ters’ attain­ment of advanced degrees.

Dur­ing my child­hood, the nation was in tur­moil. The war in Viet Nam and social changes marked the 1960’s. I watched events such as the August 28, 1963, march on Wash­ing­ton, D.C., led by Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., in this room on our family’s black and white tele­vi­sion. On that date, Dr. King declared from the steps of the Lin­coln Memo­r­ial that “[n]ow is the time to open the doors of oppor­tu­nity to all of God’s chil­dren. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick­sands of racial injus­tice to the solid rock of broth­er­hood.” Less than one year later, Amer­ica took a giant step toward equal­ity for all when Pres­i­dent Lyn­don B. John­son signed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, into law. The Fair Hous­ing Act (Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968) was enacted four years later.

Dr. King longed for an Amer­ica where his “four lit­tle chil­dren will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the con­tent of their char­ac­ter.” Assas­si­nated in 1968, he did not live to see a day when “lit­tle black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with lit­tle white boys and white girls as sis­ters and brothers.”

Asked in 1995 to eval­u­ate what progress Amer­ica had made toward achiev­ing the “Amer­i­can Dream” for all, Rosa Parks opined that “[w]e still have a long way to go, we still have many obsta­cles and many chal­lenges to face. It’s far from per­fect, and it may never be, but I think as long as we do the best we can to improve con­di­tions, then peo­ple will be benefited.”

While Dr. King was march­ing on Wash­ing­ton, women were speak­ing up and out in their quest for equal­ity, and men and women of all col­ors were protest­ing a war they could nei­ther under­stand nor endorse, many Lodi­ans were hap­pily obliv­i­ous to the changes sweep­ing through Amer­i­can cities. Shame­fully, Lodi was a town known in those days for its racism, big­otry, and out-of-step cit­i­zens. There were no African-Americans in the Lodi class­rooms where I was edu­cated dur­ing that time period, nor did we have any neigh­bors of color. By the time that I grad­u­ated from Tokay High School in 1974, only two of my class­mates were African-American – and nei­ther of them resided within Lodi, but were bused to Tokay from north Stockton.

Dur­ing my child­hood, pub­lic school hol­i­day cel­e­bra­tions did not incor­po­rate Hanukkah, much less Kwan­zaa or the Win­ter Sol­stice, and there was no dis­tinc­tion drawn between sec­u­lar and reli­gious Christ­mas obser­vances as is rou­tine in school fes­ti­vals today. We did not have a spring break. We had an “Easter vaca­tion,” the under­ly­ing assump­tion being, of course, that every­one com­mem­o­rated Easter. Our text­books did not cel­e­brate diver­sity – we were weaned on “Dick,” “Jane,” and sim­i­lar unabashedly white role mod­els. I recall with humil­i­a­tion the day I repeated a com­ment made by my mother in ref­er­ence to World War II to a class­mate of Japan­ese descent who gen­tly explained its sig­nif­i­cance to me.

We stand for free­dom. That is our con­vic­tion for our­selves; that is our only com­mit­ment to oth­ers. (Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy)

And I still vividly recall the day in 1989 when my old­est son was play­ing with his toys on the kitchen floor while his father and I pre­pared din­ner. He began recit­ing a count­ing rhyme we had not heard since our own child­hoods. Momen­tar­ily ter­ror­ized, I looked over at Big­Bob and saw the same hor­ri­fied expres­sion on his face. Time seemed to stand still when, unaware of his par­ents’ inter­est in his activ­ity, he began singing “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe … “

At that moment, I was cat­a­pulted back to my own Lodi child­hood when my friends and I sang “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a ______ by the toe, if he hollers, make him pay fifty dol­lars every day” on the play­ground of Need­ham School, com­pletely igno­rant about the mean­ing of the word we said with abandon.

So when our child glee­fully sang out “catch a tiger by the toe,” we cheered. Delighted by his par­ents’ approval, he stood up and clapped, too, as the three of us danced around the kitchen singing “catch a tiger by the toe” over and over. He had no idea, of course, why we were so proud of him — and relieved to see that the world in which he was grow­ing up looked a lot dif­fer­ent than the one we knew as children.

Lodi, like the rest of Amer­ica, has come a long way since the days when I was jump­ing rope and play­ing dodge­ball on the play­ground of the local ele­men­tary school. Inci­dents of dis­crim­i­na­tion, harass­ment, retal­i­a­tion and/or hate vio­lence still occur, but chil­dren of all col­ors play and study together in the fash­ion about which Dr. King dreamed in the same class­rooms of the same schools I attended. Unlike us, today’s young Lodi­ans par­tic­i­pate in “Win­ter Fes­ti­vals,” “Hol­i­day Pageants” or similarly-titled events singing “The Drei­del Song,” sec­u­lar and reli­gious Christ­mas car­ols, Kwan­zaa tunes, and cel­e­brat­ing the arrival of Win­ter Sol­stice with an appre­ci­a­tion of the tra­di­tions, beliefs, prac­tices, and val­ues of their neigh­bors. They enjoy breaks from school between quar­ters. The chil­dren march­ing around the Square last night, wav­ing flags and singing patri­otic songs, were a diverse group of young­sters who nei­ther noticed nor cared that the skin color of the child march­ing next to him/her was dif­fer­ent than his/her own.

Unfor­tu­nately, I was com­pelled to protest to the event’s orga­niz­ers last year when the mas­ter of cer­e­monies told a homo­pho­bic joke that was com­pletely inap­pro­pri­ate for and marred the fes­tiv­i­ties. But the good news is that, although he could not resist tak­ing the micro­phone and announc­ing, “I’ll try not to say any­thing polit­i­cally incor­rect this year,” he did refrain from telling any sim­i­larly offen­sive jokes or sto­ries last night. That’s progress.

Still, as I sur­veyed the crowd last evening, I could not help but feel some shame and dis­ap­point­ment about the fact that the group was not as diverse as I would have liked. For all the change that has tran­spired in Lodi — and sim­i­lar cities through­out this coun­try — much more remains to be accomplished.

But the Found­ing Fathers were wise and pre­scient, not­ing that Amer­ica is a promise, not a prod­uct. The Amer­i­can dream — how­ever you define it — is ever-evolving, adapt­ing to soci­etal changes, adjust­ing as we become more knowl­edge­able about and appre­cia­tive of our differences.

Tonight I will again be play­ing my flute dur­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties at Lodi Lake, another local land­mark. Again, I will remem­ber the time I have spent there over the years, and the friends and fam­ily with whom I enjoyed those occa­sions. I’m sure that I will again con­sider the love-hate rela­tion­ship I have with this town, what it rep­re­sents, how it has impacted my life. But, when the cel­e­bra­tion is over, I will come home to the only real home I have ever known. Yes, I have owned and resided in other houses, but none of them were ever home in the sense that this house has been and always will be. And not all of them were here in the vil­lage that is, in so many ways — good and bad — a lit­tle town that time seems so often to have forgotten.

And when my vaca­tion is over, I will return to the work I love, remind­ing myself of the peo­ple and events that fueled my desire to become a lawyer and spurred me into civil right work. When I get dis­cour­aged about the pace at which progress is being made toward true equal­ity, egal­i­tar­i­an­ism, and free­dom for all, I will stop for a moment, and whis­per to myself, as I have so many times since that day in 1989, “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, … ” as a reminder of how far I — indeed, all of us – have already come.

A Thou­sand Words Prompt: Num­ber Three

Pre­sent­ing the finest of the writer’s blogs by the blog­gers who write them: Top 5 Picks as cho­sen by the July 11, 2008 WOOF Con­test contestants.

Short Story:

• JHS — An Inde­pen­dence Day Reflec­tion: “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe… ”

About Writ­ing:

• Cather­ine — Thoughts about review­ing books

Poetry:

• Qugrainne — Cli­max and the Bat­tle of the Adjec­tives and the Adverbs

Fic­tion / Flash Fic­tion / Ser­ial Fic­tion:

• Jenn — The Pseu­do­nym

Poetry / Col­lab­o­ra­tive Poetry:

• Jen­nifer M. Scott — Inde­pen­dence Day

Brought to You by Plot­dog Press Fea­tur­ing: A Novel Approach Series — Draft Novel — Inter­ven­tion Chap­ter 1

Other July 11, 2008 Con­tes­tants:

Fic­tion / Flash Fic­tion / Ser­ial Fic­tion:

• Jen­nifer M. Scott — Peace­able Facade
• Jen­nifer M. Scott — Fire­fly Chap­ter 18

Poetry / Col­lab­o­ra­tive Poetry:

• Jen­nifer M. Scott — Inde­pen­dence Day
• Jen­nifer M. Scott — Van­ish
• exquis­ite corpse — Wed­ding Night

Want to par­tic­i­pate in the next WOOF? Sub­mit a link to your best writ­ing post of the week using the form at the bot­tom of this page.

Tech­no­rati Tags: A Thou­sand Words, Life in Lodi, Sim­ply the Best Group Writ­ing Project, W.O.O.F. Con­test

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• Mon­day Mus­ings: Box­ing Day
• I Heard the “D” Word on Christ­mas Day (Part One)
• Sim­ply the Best: Group Writ­ing Project
• Remem­ber­ing 9/11