Several Quick Musings

The headline on the Web page, "Legendary Actress Dies."  It was Joan Leslie.  Who?  The "legendary actress."  Sometimes I don't quite understand our use of words.

On my drive home from running with my blind buddy, I found that radio station that carries "Joshua's Highway," with two or three black ministers as hosts.  Today, in the short time I listened, they questioned black Americans' "obsession" with being African American.  "What do they know about Africa and being African?," one asked.  I have this aversion to hyphenated-Americans.  I am, plain and simple, an American, not an Italian-American or a German-American or an Austrian-American.  I guess I don't like the implied division of the term(s).  I do enjoy and relish our ethnic differences, within the realm of assimilation of American culture.

These ministers also asked, "Why, if the United States is so racist, so bigoted, so prejudiced, why do these people come over here, legally and illegally?"  One continued, "I'd like to ask one of them, 'Why do you come to America?'"

In a fit of nostalgia, I remembered as a kid taking "drives" in the car with my family on Sunday afternoons.  The drives weren't every week, but every so often.  I don't remember disliking them, but looking forward to them, esp when we'd stop for a Dairy Queen cone.  Occasionally my dad would let me get my cone dipped; I always got the red dipping (cherry?).  We didn't get ice cream very often, rarely from the grocery store.  If my dad was paid cash for one of the basketball or baseball games he officiated, once in a blue moon he'd stop and get us milkshakes from a dairy called "Westwoods."  Ooh, they were good!  Sometimes, on our bikes, we guys would find construction sites and, for the empty/returnable bottles (deposits), we'd go to the store for the workers.  With the leftover deposit money, we'd get a nickel bar from the Good Humor man/truck.  No complaints.  We didn't know we didn't have much money.  None of my buddies did.  We just lived and had fun, a great childhood to have.

It was always fun to play football in the street.  When a car would come by, someone would yell, "Times, car!"  Because there was a Detroit Times daily newspaper, someone would jokingly add, "News, car!  Free Press, car!  Polish Daily......"  OK, I guess one had to be there.  And it was great to be a receiver and run the defender down the street, doing an out in front of a parked car.  The defender couldn't cover, not unless he ran into and through the car.  If the QB could throw an accurate pass and the receiver could catch it, it was an easy gain.  Of course, much depended on how many cars were parked on the street.  And, if Mrs. Soviak and Mrs. Rembecki were out there yelling and threatening to call the police on us! Oh, we were juvenile delinquents......

OK, out to get some of these papers/essays graded.