Marching to a Different Drummer: One Life Lived

No one should take life too seriously. So, perhaps, even Spiro Agnew, had he ever heard a joke about himself, would not have taken offense. Not known for his intellect, a story was told that his library had burnt. The fire destroyed both comic books! Well, even if true, let me make a plea for such light reading material. As a boy I much enjoyed hours upon hours over a period of years perusing them. In the 1950s comic books (at only a dime an issue) often told good stories. And, I loved some of the characters (and often the fine artwork). My favorites included (in the main) fictitious denizens of the Old West, such as Red Mask, along with a gorgeous blonde woman, as his companion, known as the Black Phantom, not to mention the likes of the Durango Kid, the Lone Ranger, and the Ghost Rider. Of course, as well, there were the real-life heroes--Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. And, not failing to detail either, the fictional Native American--Straight Arrow.

Treating, as I have above, comic books, a series of illustrated books, along with another work (like unto a comic), also engaged my mind as a youth. The first had as the author the well-known humorist Walt Kelly and came to be known as the Pogo books with a host of characters in the Florida everglades. Pogo, the possum, had a good friend--an alligator named Albert. Kelly used those unforgettable personalities to make some telling points about a wide range of subjects, but especially on the political happenings of the day. Undoubtedly, the wittiest (and most thought-provoking) pronouncement Kelly ever made, by way of Pogo, was as follows:"We have met the enemy and he is us."

The other work, singled out here, is Mad magazine, which outrageously lampooned (and still does) motion pictures, entertainers, and"what have you" in each monthly issue. In the 1950s (when this magazine was as good or better than it has ever been) one had to scrutinize almost every illustrated frame to locate out of the way"nuggets" of humor. One of those I don't believe I am apt to forget. A billboard, depicted along a highway, had lettered across it, the words:"In case of enemy attack, boy, will you see a traffic jam," which reminds me of another treat for almost all motorists in the 1950s along real highways. The never to be forgotten Burma Shave signs, placed at intervals beside the road, which when read in succession, often provided more than a chuckle.

Turning next to a matter of greater import. If anyone (of any age), but particularly the student in high school or college ever expects to become truly well-educated (and hopefully wise), it is essential to read widely, primarily from the classics of literature (novels, plays, and poems), as well as the works of the ancients, especially such timeless books as Plato's Republic and the Apology (the latter on the last days of Socrates, that truly wise man, who said:"The unexamined life is not worth living."

For the young reader, let me offer some advice at this juncture. Never let anyone tell you what actions you take in life are of no consequence. Be like unto Henry David Thoreau, the author of Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854), who believed he was a"majority of one." Thoreau proved it too. He had refused to pay his Concord (Massachusetts) poll tax. For that protest against slavery, he was jailed in July 1846 by the local constable, one Samuel Staple. Whereupon, according to some accounts, when visited by Ralph Waldo Emerson, after his (Thoreau's) release, had been asked:"Why did you go to jail?," and the incarcerated man"shot back":"Why were not you?"

American history, no less than the histories of other nations or times, are all replete with people, who made a difference. Take the great abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the antislavery newspaper The Liberator (1831), the columns of which stirred people throughout the North. When Garrison was asked why he was so vehement in attacking human bondage, he replied:"If I am all on fire, it is because I have mountains of ice to melt." Or, the remark of Abraham Lincoln to Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), a book so effective as a protest against slavery in the South, that, our 16th President, the"rail-splitter" from Illinois, reportedly greeted her once (1862) in the White House with:"So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war," meaning of course the War of the Rebellion (Civil War).

Now, we all know, even professional historians (often trained though, I'm afraid, with too much attention paid to looking for"forces" or"trends" in history and/or scholarship, to appreciate the fact), that human beings by their actions, and not collectively is meant here, have, do, and will always, make a difference! No wonder some of the greatest works of literature reflect just that. How? Through the remembrance by us all of remarkable men and women, created by the strokes of many pens--the brave knight Ivanhoe, in the novel by that name (1819) of Sir Walter Scott; Athos, Porthos, and Aramis of Alexander Dumas's The Three Musketeers (1844); the malevolent, yet intriguing character Long John Silver in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1882); not failing to mention Helen of Troy, whose abduction precipitated the Trojan War, detailed by Homer in the Iliad. From that epic come many other memorable characters, as well as events. But, what reader would ever forget the death of Hector, the Trojan hero, slain bloodily by the Greek hero of heroes--Achilles? Or, later in Homer's story, Achilles' own demise, thrown from his swiftly-moving chariot, by a single arrow, which had pierced him in his only vulnerable spot--his heel?

To the foregoing, let me add, and borrowing from English poetry, a knight from the Arthurian legend, Sir Galahad, whom Alfred Lord Tennyson made to remark:"My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure." No wonder then that virtuous man found the Holy Grail! Remember too from English poetry the old seafarer, immortalized by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which thrilled me as a teenager, while reading it one day in high-school (Senior) English class (1959-1960). For, a life lived wrong, and as related in the poem, brought disaster, unlike the reward of Sir Galahad. The old seafarer with a cross-bow had"shot the ALBATROSS," from which result came the curse upon all aboard the ship. Lastly, and drawing upon a poem by the American, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who could ever forget?--assuming it had been read--the opening lines:"Listen, my children, and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere," hero in fact, not fiction.

With poetry uppermost in mind, let me close with quotations from two works of the kind. One, which suggests the imperative need to take time in life for more than worldly gain; the other, a poetic way by which I would hope to sum up my own philosophy for education (and for living). First then, let the reader, but especially the young one (boy or girl; man or woman), who is not"set in his or her way" yet, ponder the opening lines of a poem by William Wordsworth:"The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers." That is just as true, if not more so today, as it was when first published (1807).

Second, for my own philosophical"stance," let me present a poem by Vachel Lindsay. It is"The Mouse That Gnawed the Oak Tree Down," and relates a story about a little rodent, which felled a mighty tree. As Lindsay puts the matter in the last stanza--the fallen oak opened to the forest floor the bright rays of the sun. So, as the Springfield, Illinois, bard concludes:"'I'll make this ancient swamp more light,' And started on another tree." That's what life is all about (or should be)--bringing more light to the forest, more light to the world!