bewize

Nostalgia is a strange and beautiful emotion, but it's also dangerous. It encourages us to look back at the past and see the best parts, shining like a beacon that scolds us from moving away from our values. It hides the dirt and grime, the blood and the guilt, of eras past under the black and white veneer of a photograph or memory.

In 1945, my grandfather lived in the same city I live in now. He was back from The War, as he still calls it, and living in government housing for soldiers. He attended college on the GI Bill. He still fondly recalls those days, living in a warehouse that had been turned into homes, with walls that could be rolled away so that his kitchen transformed into his neighbors' living room and my father, when he arrived, could be babysat without ever leaving the comfortable warmth provided by my grandmother's stove.

The housing was roughly 40 miles away from the college, but as most of The Boys, as my grandfather still calls them, were attending school right along side him, my grandfather could usually bum a ride from a friend, since he had no car.

When he couldn't catch a ride from someone he knew, Pop would hitchhike. His uniform guaranteed that someone would always stop for him. Even when he had to walk part of the road on his own two feet, he was usually accompanied by a friend, and the dusty roads of Georgia were a far cry from the worn battlefields of Northern Africa, where he'd been stationed.

I love to hear my grandfather talk about The War and The Boys and sometimes, when I'm sitting in a two hour traffic jam to go a tenth of the distance he used to hitchhike in half the time, I'm tempted to give in and believe in the power of nostalgia.

"It was a simpler time," they say. "It was easier then, good versus bad, right versus wrong; we were saving the world."

My grandfather, with encouragement, will talk about sneaking off base, when he was stationed in the States, to secretly spend the night with my grandmother. They were married, but wives weren't permitted on the military base. He jokes about having professors who were part of the military, but didn't have the same high rank that my grandfather had, and who would be forced to salute him, even when they were marking points off his assignments.

When I was six, I found a medal in his dresser and he told me how his plane would drop bombs on Italy and Algeria. He described, in fascinating detail, how he would sometimes have to put on an oxygen mask, and climb outside the plane, clinging to it as it soared miles over the earth, and jump up and down on a bomb until the mechanism would release it, because they couldn't land with it attached and it had frozen to the plane. He literally flew on the back of a prayer, asking God to give him strength so that he wouldn't slip, that he wouldn't let go as the bomb fell because his hands were frozen to the point that he couldn't tell if he was holding the handgrip or not.

I found pictures of his friends, and he would tell stories about how they pulled pranks on each other and how they traded cigarettes instead of money and what it was like for a "southern boy" to see the world on the government dollar.

Sometimes, I would ask what happened to his friends and he would point to a few and proudly tell me what they had done with their lives. Doctors. Engineers. Scientists. Pastors. Fathers. Husbands.

"What about this guy, Pop? Or that one? Or him?"

His smile would dry up, but the pride was still there. "His plane crashed over the Mediterranean. He was shot down over Italy. He died of illness in The War."

My gaze would wander back to the picture of his graduating class. "Did all The Boys go to school, Pop?"

"Not all of them. But a lot of them. We worked our way up in the world."

"What about the women?"

"Women didn't go to school so often then."

I studied the picture. He was right. Not one of the happy shining faces belonged to a girl.

"Were all the soldiers white, Pop?"

"No, not all of them."

"Did the black soldiers go to school?"

"They went to their schools." He answered, uncomfortable now with my questions.

I studied the picture again. He was right. All of the men, looking so proud, still in their uniforms, were white.

I went to a women's college. Everyone in my graduating class was female. Nearly half of us weren't white. Today, one of my friend's sisters goes to the same school where my grandfather worked his way up in the world. She is a first generation American, her parents (and older sister) were born in India. Her pictures are filled with people of both genders and all races.

She complains about the commute, the same as I do.

My grandfather climbed hills, both ways, barefoot when he had too, and complained about it as bitterly as I complain about sitting in traffic jams. Time and distance have faded the memories, so that he recalls the scents of spices in the markets, and not the smell of gunpowder. He remembers the laughter and not the tears. He recalls the stolen kisses with my grandmother and not the months of loneliness.

I would no sooner take that away from him, or discredit it, than I would physically hurt him. Still, I can't help but think that nostalgia has no room, behind its shiny black and white veneer, for the rest of the story. It has no room for the men and women, of all colors, who died while The Boys fought The War to save the world.

It has no room for the poor who couldn't afford college.

It has no room for the marginalized that left one war only to return home to fight other battles.

"It was a simpler time," they say. They lie.

My grandfather fought a war to make the world a better place.

Now it's my turn.

This entry was written in response to the

therealljidol Topic 02: Uphill, barefoot, both ways. There will (probably) be voting for this week's entries. I will make sure to link to the poll once it is put up and I would appreciate it if you would vote for me if you enjoy my entry. As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated.