Modern American Wimpdom

Yesterday,  a motorcycle decked out with a huge American flag, big enough to act as a mainsail on a frigate, roared past me.  Also smaller flags, Don't Tread On me, maybe a Stars and Bars--I don't recall.  It was loud as a freight train and its rider's hair, what there was of it, mostly gray, streamed in the wind. 

There you had the essence of American manhood, New Hampshire style.  You knew this freedom fighter would be heading to a gathering of like minded patriots, to drink beer and smoke and laugh about all the snowflakes out there who wear masks to grocery stores.

Ms. Maud has recommended John Steinbeck's "East of Eden,"  and though I did not think I liked Steinbeck much, Ms. Maud is of such discernment, I figured I give Steinbeck another try. After all, beyond bike rides, what else to I have to do now in the lock down Covid day?

But before I got to Eden,  I discovered a slim volume of his war correspondence "Once There Was a War."  Each little dispatch is a gem, but two have stayed with me and bubbled up behind my eyes, watching that red blooded American easy rider rumble by down Route 27 on his way toward Exeter.  

One was a report of a movie theater in a suburb of London, where children, soldiers, nurses watch a Veronica Lake movie and the children thrilled to her blond glamour and took what they saw on the screen as absolute truth about life in America, and the soldiers stared numbly and the nurses laughed, until a German bomb collapsed the roof and set fire to the building and the kids, or parts of them were extracted, methodically, by rescue teams and hauled off to hospital.

Another dispatch, titled simply, "Chewing Gum" described a line of children held back near the gangplank of an American ship, holding out their hands for chewing gum from the disembarking GI's. 
"When you have gum you have something permanent, something you can use day after day and even trade when you are tired of it. Candy is ephemeral. One moment you have candy, and the next moment you haven't. But gum is really property."

But the real moment occurs when a bag of orange peels is dropped on the dock from the ship, "Golden with squeezed orange skins. The children hesitate, because it is against all their training to break the rules. But the test is too great. They can't stand it. They break over the line and tumble on the garbage box. They squeeze the skins for the last drop of juice that may conceivably be there."

A bobby comes along and shoos them off, desultorily.  He has to do his job but his sympathy is with the children. They get very hungry for oranges, he says. Nobody over 5 years of age is allowed oranges in England. The bobby hasn't had an orange in 4 years.

Reading the New York Times about the deprivation of Americans locked down in their apartments or homes, unable to go out to restaurants or to bars, or swimming pools or country clubs, I marvel at the fortitude of my fellow countrymen, who have suffered so much with this COVID19 pandemic.

Those who have lost jobs, yes. They are hurting as Americans did during the Depression--although now we do have unemployment insurance, at least temporarily for many.

But when it comes to deprivation, everything is relative.