I once described my upbringing to a friend, and he jokingly asked if I was feral. I was raised on a crops farm, situated upon a few dozen acres of upland surrounded by swamp (yes, I’m an authentic “Swamp Yankee”) in a little New England town that made Andy Griffith’s Mayberry look like Manhattan. My mother died when I was two, and I couldn’t help thinking that when my father looked at me, the old Marine saw her. He could hardly raise his voice to me, let alone lay a hand on me (and this was back in the day when most children were spanked). When I was twelve, he built a little cabin for me and my friends in the woods behind the farm and told me later it was so I could grow up carefree. Whenever I see this scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I tear up a bit – that’s the view my dad took.
Yet in that little town I could not get away with much. Everyone knew my dad (he was a Selectman – which also made him one of the police commissioners – convenient that) and if any of the townsfolk espied dangerous or destructive shenanigans it was sure to get back to him. So as long as I kept my grades up, and our only full-time cop – Hubie – didn’t have to stop by to have a chat with dad too often on my account, I was free to come and go as I pleased.
My father had been all over the world as a Marine, in places both horrible (the Battle of Saipan) – and picturesque (tours of duty in the Med) yet he said he’d found no place he’d rather live than our little town.
In Democracy in America de Tocqueville cited the New England town meeting as a major source from which American exceptionalism sprang. We had one every year, and they were entertaining to say the least. This scene from Blazing Saddles is not far off the mark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPsRszS8uSo.
Yet at those meetings common citizens formed the legislative branch of the town’s governance. They knew what they wanted and needed, and the attendant costs. (New England today has some of the best public schools in the country because of this.)
For years my father was up on the stage with his fellow selectmen, and the town’s only lawyer (with whom I would later train) served as moderator. As an aside, have you ever noticed how Americans, even school children, seem to have Robert’s Rules of Order in their bloodstream? Watch kids form a club, or decide on a course of action, and you’ll see it.
When I came of age, I too played a minor role as an elected planning board member. It was not the most exciting thing I have ever done, there not being all that much to plan, but there I was among them all, and I even got to march in the Memorial Day parade with the rest of the “town fathers.”
Another pillar of American exceptionalism, according to de Tocqueville, was the American jury system. Knowing that I was planning to go to law school and that once that happened it would be likely I would never be picked for a jury, my father arranged for my name to be drawn to serve a month in the superior court jury pool. I will always be grateful to him for doing that. I served on four cases, ranging from kids stealing beer to attempted murder. This was the 1970s and I looked a bit like Ted Neeley in Jesus Christ Superstar. If you got drawn for the 1st chair you were automatically the foreman. We were deciding a gun possession case, and we were allowed to handle the evidence. I’ll never forget the furrowed brow of the judge as he looked me over.
“Here is the gun.” He said.
“Here is the ammunition. Do not put the ammunition into the gun. Do you understand me, son?
“Yes, Your Honor…”
That farmhouse in which I was raised was built by Churchills in the 1700s and has never been sold at arms-length. It had more books in the attic and elsewhere than the town’s library. My father taught me from my toddler years to be a proud descendant of William Bradford and Myles Standish, two prominent signers of the Mayflower Compact, forming the first English “body politick” in the New World.
As I age, increasingly I see how much of my unique upbringing is at the core of who I am, and what “Divine Providence” (as the founding fathers referred to it) has instructed me to do with my life.
A few years before he died, he took me to a concert of the bands of the Black Watch and the Coldstream Guards. The Guards played a salute to American armed forces, playing all their hymns but one.
“Sorry they left you guys out, dad.” I said.
“They’re saving the best for last.” he answered.
Sure enough, the place grew dark, then the spotlights shown upon two flags held high by a mixed color guard of Marines and Highlanders of the Black Watch – the Union Jack stood side-by-side with old Glory. As they sallied forth, the pipes struck up the hymn I had memorized every verse of by the time I was six:
From the Halls of Montezuma…
My father shot to his feet, a tear of pride upon his cheek. Here and there throughout the audience men stood up; some elderly and struggling to do so.
Once a Marine, always a Marine. It’s been decades since his passing, but I miss him as much as ever.