I have been attempting to attach a picture to this edition of the blog, but it isn’t working. I guess I will have to have Mary Earle, from the ‘Mary’s Moments’ blog come in and school me some more. But the picture appeared in the Painesville (OH) Telegraph on Sunday, September 1, 1973. Wow! Forty-four years ago! It was taken during a high school football game. It has no interest to anyone now, except that the young fellow punting the ball was Tom Orosz, who went on to be an All-American at Ohio State and then played for the Miami Dolphins and the San Francisco 49ers. There is a player from the opposing team who is flying at him, arms raised to block the punt. The flyer is way off the ground and in Tom’s face, but Tom took a stutter-step before he punted and faked the player who is suspended in air to commit too early. Tom punted the ball under the flyer. The flyer, actually, was me and the future NFL player made me look foolish. Didn’t matter. We won. Marsha found this picture in my mother’s Bible after she died in 2002. It was old and yellowed and brittle. She knew I would have just thrown it away as an old piece of paper, but it was apparently special to Mom. Marsha showed it to me some time ago and I scanned it into the computer. This is the first time I have ever tried to do anything with it and I cannot. Trust me, it is awesome. Tom looks great.

          The point here is not for me to remember the old days, but rather, to remember the old attitudes.

          American involvement in the war in Vietnam had ended in January of 1973. But we all knew that it was just paper. The war could fire up at any time, so long as we still had soldiers there. Gathered in the stands at this football game were dads of the players, most of whom had served during WWII or the Korean War. All were patriotic men who had put on the uniform and went away into the smoke and gore of war, and they were proud of their service. But none of them wanted their sons to go into a distant jungle to be wounded or die. There is a policeman in the photo. He is there as crowd control, but he was the only uniformed officer there. There would be no problems at this game, or at any other played by either team for the rest of the season. It just wasn’t done.

          At this point in time, patriotism was pretty low. Vietnam had gone on for a long time. Many young men had died. Others had come back maimed. Still others had come back seemingly healthy, but, thanks to chemicals that had been used to defoliate the jungle, were harboring the building blocks for various kinds of cancers, Hodgkin’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and a host of other long-term sicknesses. Others were coming home with mental wounds that would affect they and their families for generations. Even those patriotic men in the stands were opposed to a war that seemed more and more pointless. My own parents had already told me that they wanted me to go to Canada upon graduation for a few years to avoid the draft if things started back up.

          Racism was a problem in the country. It wasn’t manufactured, either. In a real sense, it was justified. Desegregation was being implemented around the country. African-Americans weren’t called African-Americans. They were called black folks, just like I was white folk. Our previous three wars had been in a large part fought against Asians, so there were some nasty words used to identify them. Japanese cars were ‘rice burners.’ Homosexuals were scorned, avoided and made fun of. The recent riots in various cities in the countries had put the police in a bad light, deserved or not.

          Entertainment was in a state of flux. More science fiction, more nudity for no reason, more violence in movies and TVs. Some comedians were shocking crowds with their routines. There were those who were trying to pass laws to get people to conform certain standards. In sports, most athletes had to have jobs in the off season to provide for their families’.

          Politically, we really were in a mess. The president was on his way to becoming the first American president to have to resign due to scandal. Sex accusations were becoming more common and more lurid. There were those who openly hated the country. Flag burnings had taken place during some of the riots. There wasn’t much of that, but the news built it up.  Soldiers and marines and seamen and airmen had been spit on and mocked, as were the police. The system was in disarray. On that long-ago day in 1973, the future seemed bleak.

          But, a short while before the above picture was taken, before the game began, the two bands from the two schools had marched out on the field. It was a messed up, sick country, with many problems to pull at us. But the boys on each team took off their helmets and lined their respective sidelines. The Moms and Dads and other fans in the stands stood and removed any head coverings they might have had on. That lone police officer snapped into a parade ground salute. A color guard from the local recruiting station presented colors and a small contingent of Boy Scouts attached an American flag to a lanyard on a pole in one end zone. At the first note of the National Anthem the flag began its slow accent to the top of that pole. And, at the first note of the Anthem, all of those people began to sing. Black people who deserved the same rights as white people, Vietnam vets who had been poorly treated by the media and their own government, older vets who now wrestled with the thoughts that their own children would have to fight a bad war, old people, young people, perhaps, if they were there, gay people, began to sing. Not because their country was perfect. No, it wasn’t. Not because they were being forced to sing. They were not. Not because the government had the answers. They certainly didn’t. No, those people lifted their voices because their country and their flag and the very nation they stood upon, offered them, all of us, hope. Hope in a way no other country on the planet could offer their citizens.

O! Say can you see by the dawn’s early light

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming.
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

          The world was different then. It was worse. Nuclear war seemed it could happen anytime. Our leaders wouldn’t have been good leaders of a flock of sheep. It wasn’t the ‘good old days’ by any means. BUT WE WERE FREE AND WE KNEW WHY WE WERE FREE.

          Today? A bunch of spoiled brats are working to take away the hope and the joy our country offers. And we are in agreement. We watch the football games, we buy the products, we spend the money. I no longer watch the NFL. Haven’t for years. If I want to watch spoiled children play, I’ll go to a daycare. This past week a baseball player for the Oakland A’s major league baseball team took the knee during the Anthem. If that is left unchecked, I will cease to watch or listen or read about the majors, too, and that includes my beloved Cleveland Indians. We are Americans. If we cannot stand up for our country, do we have to backbone to stand for our God?