On this day each year when my thoughts inevitably turn to 8:46 a.m. when the first plane struck the World Trade Center’s North Tower, I also think about my mom and dad, who left this earth many years before the attack that killed almost 3,000 of our citizens. Had you told my parents years before that such an attack was even possible, they simply would not have believed it.
That thought progresses to others that revolve around how much our world has changed since they died, for my dad, in 1978, and for my mom a decade later. As for how we communicate these days and how we often don’t, for all of my parents’ days, people were far more likely to use the word “telephone,” as they would use the word “phone.”
They also lived their lives in an era when it was easy to reach a live person at a company on the telephone rather than an automated message generated by companies that would rather you not bother them with your petty concerns. Don’t believe how difficult it is to speak to someone? Well, the next time you have trouble with your YouTube TV stream, try finding someone at Google who will listen to you.
As I look around at what’s changed since my coming-of-age 1960s, there’s so much more my parents never could have imagined. After popping into what European travelers would have called a comfort stop while driving my work roads a few weeks ago, I entered a restroom and immediately saw a white box affixed to the glazed block wall that said, “Opioid Overdose Supplies.” Neither of my parents could have imagined a drug-addiction problem so wildly out of control that such a wall-mount would be necessary in a public restroom.
While Mom and Dad certainly weren’t strangers to the occasional well-mixed Manhattan, neither could have imagined the nearly 50 million Americans who experienced SUDs (substance-use disorders) in this past year, this, from the website addictiongroup.org. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, 10.1 million people have misused prescription drugs in the last year.
Mom and Dad also, I’m certain, would not understand the current state of political polarization, which is so pronounced that it’s abundantly clear when watching certain news networks that those delivering the news have a transparent political bias that appeals either to all those Democrats watching CNN and MSNBC or all those Republicans lapping up all that Fox News “fair and balanced” coverage.
In their 1960s world viewers had no idea as to the political leanings of the familiar news faces of that era, such as that era’s big three, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. It was only long after their careers were completed did it become evident that Cronkite was more of a left-wing liberal, Huntley tilted toward the Dems but Brinkley favored the Grand Old Party.
As for why networks and newscasters of another era were more objective in their presentations, perhaps it’s because viewers of that time didn’t seem to despise anyone who favored the other party. While I adored my parents and cherished my formative years under their roof, I couldn’t tell you to this day whether they favored elephants or donkeys, which is why I’m sure if they were here today, they’d be shocked at the way different networks package and present the news.
Finally, they would have both been shocked and vehemently opposed to the seemingly unabated surge of millions of people from all over the world coming across our borders illegally. My father gave four years of his life as a Marine in World War II protecting our country and her borders. As for my mother, born in Nova Scotia, the former Cavell Harriet Coombs was immensely proud of the naturalization process she completed as a young adult.
My sis, Joanie, three years older than me and more equipped, therefore, to chronicle family history, recalls with greater clarity the process Mom revealed to her.
“Mom took classes in Chicago and took the citizenship test in her early 20s, before being sworn in as an American citizen. Although she continued to have great affection for all those Royals to whom she owed allegiance as a youth, she was, without a doubt, immensely proud of her American citizenship and the process she underwent to achieve it.”
Yes, on this day when so many of my thoughts reflect back to the events of the most tragic of September 11s ever, a day my parents could have never envisioned, I also know there’s so much else that they surely would not have believed.
John Grindrod is a regular columnist for The Lima News, a freelance writer and editor and the author of two books. Reach him at [email protected].
