My Generation

Baby boomers are those born after the troops came home from WWII. My generation were the War Babies. Nowhere nearly as large as the boomer generation, the War Babies are still worth noting. The social conscience of the 1960s started with us, although we had plenty of company from Depression Babies and even a few from the 20s.
My earliest memories include listening while my grandfather and Jim Farley, who had been FDR’s campaign manager, talked about politics.
When I was 10 years old, in 1953, I realized that the migrants working on the New Jersey truck farms that surrounded our house were being taken advantage of. They lived in tar paper shacks without electricity or indoor plumbing. Their water came from an irrigation pond, which also supplied mosquitoes of Homeric proportions and the bullheads they ate. One fall day, I took matters into hand and destroyed that hovel. Some time later, a state policeman came by and I was invited to explain myself. My parents paid the farmer and I worked two hours a day during school days and six hours a day during weekends and holidays for slightly less than a year to repay them. My work was exclusively outdoors and consisted of cutting and splitting firewood, mowing lawns, tending the garden and any other chore that arose. The farmer was made to build a cinderblock structure with electricity, propane for cooking and hot water, and indoor plumbing to house his migrant workers. Conscience is a good thing, but it has a price which must be paid.
Conscience snoozed for several years until 1962, when as a college freshman, I signed up to spend my spring vacation in rural Virginia with hundreds of other college students helping African Americans register to vote. Our earnest efforts were treated with disdain. Compared with what happened to those who came after us and ventured deeper into Dixie, we might as well have been drinking beer and soaking rays in Daytona. I have no idea if anybody ever got to vote as a result of our efforts. It was just something that we had to do.
Next year found me in Parris Island, S.C.,a Marine recruit. Although the time I spent in the Marine Corps included the build up in Vietnam, my career at Camp Lejeune, NC, was completely uneventful and beneath notice. I read a lot of books. In the bubble of Camp Lejeune, we were not aware that people were actually questioning our presence in Vietnam. It wasn’t until troops who had fought there came back and explained what a mess it was that we began to question our role.
Once discharged in 1967, people had begun to question our Vietnam adventure. I had no medals to give back, and was not a combat veteran, so I marched as a private citizen. Just another body in the mass.
All the efforts of thousands from my generation have been for naught. The same battles have returned and must be fought again. The environment hasn’t improved enough since Iron Eyes Cody wept on TV. Civil liberties are under as much threat as they were under Nixon. And we are in a war, the reason for which changes almost daily. These ancient bones have got to march again. Thanks for dropping the ball, Boomers, Gen-Xers, etc.
Tom Gordon
Tsg0008@sbcglobal.net