Great Again
Been thinking seriously about what I would do if I were elected to Make America Great Again. The operative word being "again" would require me to identify a point of greatness, which would necessarily be subjective, "great" in my mind and memory if not in anyone else's.
It's quite clear to me. I would take us back to 1937 and hold it there, freezing America between 1937 and 1939.
The foremost car is a 1939 Plymouth, though the picture is later than that, as there are cars from the early 1940s, and "It Happened in Brooklyn" was Sinatra's 1947 film with Jimmy Durante, about coming home from WW2. I'd freeze it at 1937-39 though, to avoid the War, even though the country was in the Great Depression. We would stay there and nothing would change. I would be in my late twenties to early thirties, not two to four years old as I actually was at the Time of Great America.
There's the Ritz Theatre. Some bozo later changed it to the Martin, that would never happen. Also, the world we live in is segregated, so it's Whites only downstairs and up the lobby stairs to the left side balcony, Colored folks buy a ticket at the side booth and go up the separate stairs to their fenced off area. I don't like that, but it comes with the Time; Harry Golden later will have a suggestion for overcoming that peacefully, he'll call it "The Golden White Baby Plan," but that's years ahead and we're freezing America here. If you're under 12 a ticket is 11¢ but it costs us adults a quarter. I do not remember that Texaco station being there, but there it is, the camera don't lie, so Fine.
The top picture is the 4th Street Bridge across Massalina Bayou, from our side facing west toward the court house. From my house at the far east end of Massalina Bayou where Hamilton Avenue picks up again, I can hear every car as it rolls across the wooden board decking of the bridge. It's not clear in the picture, but the jail is there too, and when there's an escape the sirens go off and the hounds start barking and howling excitedly.
Across the bridge and up 4th Street a couple of blocks is City Hall and the fire station. There's an art center or such there in 2024, but we aren't going there, we're staying here where America is Great. When there's a fire, by the way, the huge siren goes off, sounding the number of times for the Ward the fire is in, we're in Ward Two here, so there's anxiety if the siren sounds twice, and we hear the American LaFrance fire engine start up and head across the bridge, our way. We can always hear the fire truck's motor roar to life, and it makes such a distinctive roar that we can hear it here almost regardless of where it heads, but especially if it speeds up Cove Boulevard.
There's some kind of grocery place there at the bridge too, or at least they sell eggs, hen's eggs. My brother and his friends used to take our boat over there and swipe rotten eggs from the place outside where the proprietor discarded them.
There's a dichotomy here, I realize that, so there's a lot to work out, because my brother wasn't born until July 1939, and I'll want him to be in this Great America with me. I've chosen my age as maybe 28 to 32, Walt can choose his own age, whatever he wants to be. How you fit into this is your problem, namesane?
Since Time will be frozen, we probably won't be using calendars any more, and every day will be the day school lets out for Summer Vacation, so, sorry, no cold winter mornings. And no rainy Saturday mornings either, ruining the day for kids to go outside and play.
A fish-fry will be fried mullet, because they are abundantly plentiful.
Sorry there's no air conditioning, but never having had it, we don't know the difference, so we don't miss it. Heck, man, turn on the fan, and pull up the switch so it oscillates to cool us too.
My friend Philip's father was an Oldsmobile man too, I remember the 1939 Olds and the 1948 Olds, both six cylinder sedans. We're frozen in this 1937-39 timeframe though, so there'll be no postwar cars, because we'll never get to World War Two.
That new car's a Hudson Terraplane utility coupe, a great car that sort of converts to a pickup truck when you need that. After the War, which isn't going to happen in my Great America, my father made a conversion like that with a 1936 Pontiac coupe. I loved driving it, but that was then and this is now, which is before that. Nowadays if you want to go any distance, you go by train, which is my favorite and part of what makes this period so Great. Air travel isn't really even a dream yet, and we'll keep it that way.
There's terrible persecution going on in Germany, though, meaning that this Time that's Great for me not only isn't great for Black people in America, it isn't necessarily great for everyone overseas either. I don't have a solution for that one yet, what future history will call "the Holocaust" developing in Europe. Thank God it can never happen here, eh?
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Yesterday someone, maybe Carl, posted a whole bunch of early Panama City photographs on Facebook. Many of them are where I will go back to if I can ever really do it again. This Time, I mean to stay though. Maybe I'll get a room at the Dixie-Sherman.
RSF&PTL
T89&c