THE GREAT ESCAPE
During my family
vacation to Lake George in the Adirondack region of New York I had, possibly
to your misfortune, an opportunity to consider a chaser to last week's
column. This is a trip my wife and I have made for the past six years or so,
generally taking in the same family-fun adventures with our two boys, now
eight and nine years old. As a disclaimer, it is difficult to write what I
want to write without sounding judgmental, snobbish, elitist or the like.
So, without further delay and with that preamble in place, let me say that
it is not my intention. Let me also say that my love for Northern New
Hampshire notwithstanding, this area of upstate New York is one of the most
gorgeous areas in the Northeast. The town itself, kind of a throwback to the
fifties, is lined with boutiques, t-shirt and pizza joints, not unlike
Kennebunkport, Maine, Brattleboro, Vermont or lots of other of those quaint
little places that our New England is famous for. I like the culture too.
Seems like good folks, a history of cowboys and everything horse-related,
including a real-life Rodeo that gives me a much anticipated annual chance
to wear a cowboy hat.
This year we spent a day at a mammoth amusement park. I believe you know the
chain I'm talking about...something about a number, followed by the word
"flags". One thing I noticed was how brutally expensive this place was. Ten
bucks to park, forty a head to get in, which I assumed was more than an
entry fee, and then to my dismay, assorted additional fees once your
"inside". Go Karts? Ten bucks. Water Park? Ten bucks. Raft Ride? Ten bucks.
Dixie cup of "fresh squeezed" lemonade? Four bucks. I asked the vendor "how
much for just the lemon?" "The response, in broken English..."No can sell
alone lemon". I was suspicious that there was any printed policy regarding
the sale of "alone lemons" having been sent from Lemonade Stand
Headquarters, you know, the big 20 story building in Chicago, but I let it
go.
The truly frightening part of this day was my observations of the crowd, and
I do mean crowd, at this place. Granted, this is an urban area and again, I
don't want to sound like some Blueblood jerk, but it is truly alarming to
think of where we are headed sometimes. As a New Hampshire native and a
generally gregarious person, I have met folks from all walks of life. I know
old timers up here who live in shacks, literally, with no running water.
Grizzly Adams. Yet, once known many are fine people, gentlemen, smarter than
you would think, just never got into the rat race. Just not interested. But
what I saw this day was not that type of person. Many of these people, you
can just kind of tell, are skidding through life by the skin of their teeth.
Overweight, tattooed, screaming kids in tow, unkempt, fried-dough in one
hand and a 64 oz. slurpie in the other. You know what I mean. Look, I eat
all that crap when I'm there, too, but there's something more at play here.
I also know, through childhood friends born into squalid conditions and
abusive homes, that the cycle tends to continue from generation to
generation. That said, it gets hard to know who or what to blame. Would I be
any different born into those conditions? Does it really come down to who
gave birth to you? You can't argue the good fortune of being born into a
stable home, financially and intellectually sound and how it affects ones
future. We don't like to talk about it. It's uncomfortable. And we feel well
enough driving away from such places with a collective "whew"!
At the risk of sounding like a presumptuous ass, I feel confident that about
90% of the people I saw that day think no further about their lives than the
end of that day. They are blissfully unaware that we are at war. Many would
think the Middle East is Virginia. They are not engaged whatsoever with the
travails of our times and in truth are probably without the capacity to do
so and moreover at no fault of their own. I recently talked with an Old
Italian friend, very successful builder from New Jersey. Came up the hard
way, many siblings sharing one room…a story repeated through thousands of
families from that generation. They were poor, but they weren't dumb. There
was a fire in the belly. There was a dream for the future, an understanding
of the sacrifice and self-discipline that would be required to realize it. I
don't see that in this crowd, and that's what scares me.
I just don't know where you begin to try to help. We've got to get Americans
interested in being smarter. We've got to get the ones who can help,
interested in helping. It is easy to slough it off, to walk around or over
it, like so many cowcakes in a pasture. I'm worried that the cowcakes will
grow, and get deeper and more compact and finally you can't step over or
around. Some of us will simply order hip-boots from L.L. Bean when that
happens but is that the course of a great nation? It's going to take a lot
more than a slogan like "no child left behind". I'm beginning to think there
was a punctuation error in that slogan...that it was supposed to read "No
Child/Left Behind".
And there are so many children being left behind that our collective eyes
should be bulging out of our heads. I wanted to tell my children to look at
the faces of those other kids and remember them...you will see them here
some day with their kids when you are here with yours...if we make it that
far. At the end of the day, the park name finally made sense to me..."The
Great Escape"....was leaving.