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Frigid Ruminations on Bill of Rights Day
Reading a TownHall column yesterday morning, in which one Diana West ridiculed a revival concert played by Led Zeppelin, I learned that there is an entire generation, perhaps two, of adults in the USA who resent us Boomers. West's screed centered on the fact that the band members certainly looked their age, along with a lot of pooh-poohing about the enthusiasm of the equally aged audience. She concluded with the snarky remark: "If our ‘grown men' are busy transporting themselves closer to their adolescent selves, who guards against the barbarians at the gate? Nero got a very bad name for fiddling while Rome burned. But at least he wasn't playing air guitar."
A clever turn of phrase to be sure, but hardly fair, or original. Through most of my adult life, I have entertained audiences of octogenarians (and beyond) by playing the music of their youth. Nobody has ever been heard accusing them of narcissism, immaturity or excessive nostalgia. But to someone as callow as West, my audience comprises The Greatest Generation, while Zeppelin's was merely a flock of over-indulgent, embarrassing grandparents who were not acting their age.
This morning, I was privileged to take part in an event where I saw but a single person under the age of 45--the Wreaths Across America observation at a cemetery nearby. For those unfamiliar with the event, it all started a few years back when the Worcester Wreath Company (a for-profit commercial business in Maine) began a tradition of placing wreaths on the headstones of our Nation's fallen heroes at Arlington National Cemetery. Over the years, it's grown beyond just Arlington. Volunteers from the area of Harrington, where Worcester is located, gather to decorate each wreath with a small American flag and other patriotic symbols. On the way to Arlington, Worcester's truck stops here and there to drop off wreaths, which some wreaths are escorted to other veterans' cemeteries, where honors are paid simultaneously across the continent at noon, Eastern time.
When the tractor-trailer load of wreaths leaves for the trip to Arlington, it is escorted along the way by members of the Patriot Guard Riders. You may recognize the name of this group of motorcyclists. Their members were instrumental in blockading the roads of Lancaster County, PA last year after learning that members of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church (the "God Hates Fags" outfit) planned to conduct anti-war, anti-USA demonstrations at the funerals of some of the innocent Amish schoolchildren massacred in Nickel Mine, PA.
The Riders I met this morning were all Boomers, and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a contingent of Civil Air Patrol members old enough to have flown with Eddie Rickenbacker. The local National Guard unit furnished a color guard, and as a member of Buglers Across America, I was invited to render "Taps."
Here we gathered on a wind-swept hilltop in temperatures hovering at the freezing mark: a handful of the Greatest Generation, another handful of Baby Boomers, and two teenage kids. Fewer than a dozen non-participants appeared, and I did not see among them a single member of this smug generation of 20-to 40-year olds of which Ms. West is a member. Presumably all of them were comfortably ensconced at some cozy Starbuck's, sipping a five-dollar cup of coffee, while this little contingent of geezers and apprentice geezers was outside Doing the Right Thing.
I was proud and flattered to have participated. My own military service, between 1969 and 1971, had been as undistinguished as it was possible to be, and still culminate in an Honorable Discharge. I think of this bugling business as my way of finishing payment on an old debt; making up for what I could and should have done better three dozen years ago. There was a significant reward for me: the trumpet gods smiled upon me, and in spite of fast-encroaching hypothermia, I managed to sound the 24 notes of "Taps" with the appropriate dignity and no cracked notes.
Afterward I paid a visit to a friend, a Korean war veteran, who is incarcerated in one of these prisons that we euphemistically call a "continuing care retirement community." And as I drove to his place from the cemetery, I found myself shivering. Not so much from the cold as from the thought that if I live to reach Don's situation, the people emptying my bed pan will be the humorless and smug members of Diana West's generation, and their shamelessly over-indulged children. God help me, if I live to see that day.