Civility

Civility

CIVILITY: noun

1) formal politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech: I hope we can treat each other with civility and respect

2) polite remarks used in formal conversation : she was exchanging civilities with his mother

In early use the term denoted the state of being a citizen and hence good citizenship or orderly behavior.

Believe it or not there was a time when people actually talked to each other instead of just yelling.  It was a time when people could disagree without being disagreeable; a time when a debate meant orderly discourse and not a shouting match.

The recent Presidential primaries and the upcoming election have reinforced to me once again the complete lack of respect we have for each other in this country today.   South Carolina, where I live, went through a fierce Republican primary fight, yet I would wager that not one in five of the electorate could today tell where most of the candidates stood on the issues.  It all seemed to center around the dog on Romney’s car roof and Gingrich’s ex-wife.

The lack of civility in this country is not the preserve as politicians.  Recently I watched as the President of the United States, while making a speech, was repeatedly interrupted by a reporter.  Shame on that member of the media and anyone who cannot respect the Office of the President regardless of the occupant.  Harry Truman once fired the most publically popular general in the U.S. Army making the comment, “I don’t give a damn what he says about Harry Truman but he will damn well not disrespect the office.”

Now we are approaching the election of that same high office and the focus on one side is on Romney’s tax returns and, yet again, where President Obama was born on the other. Instead of strategists, both major parties now hire attack dogs whose only qualification seems to be that they be able to scream louder on news shows than their counterparts.  I find this embarrassing both as an American and as a member of a supposed civilized culture.  If you want to see a stark contrast to the current environment queue up the Kennedy/Nixon debates on YouTube sometime and listen for a few minutes. What you will see is perhaps boring though relevant to the times.  What you will also see is two men who shared a great deal of personal animosity but were able to put that animosity aside and act “civilly” towards each other for the benefit of the debate.  You will also see there is no live audience to incite or influence the discussion.

 As long she was alive we visited my wife’s grandmother whenever we came to South Carolina.  It never failed that as we were leaving, her last words to us were always the same: “Y’all be nice to each other.”  Mr. Romney and President Obama, you don’t have to like each other.  You don’t have to agree with each other.  However you can keep a civil tongue and be nice to each other.

Be nice to each other.  Good advice for presidents and paupers alike.

As Time Goes By.

At the Beach

At the Beach

Recently my wife and I went to the beach.  It was our second trip this summer and, hopefully we’ll get back a couple of more times before the cold weather returns.  We both love the beach.  She gets her love honestly, having grown up less than a two-hour drive from the South Carolina coast.  I wasn’t that fortunate; having grown up in a town in North Carolina twice that distance from the sea.  Yet I share her love of sand and surf as If I was born there.  In fact my first visit to the sea was when I was six weeks old

My family was fortunate to have a cottage at Carolina Beach; the operative word here being cottage.  My children would have been aghast if I had tried to make them stay in such a place when we took our family vacations to the beach.  Yet, to us, in the 1950’s, it was comfortable enough and we loved out trips there in the summer.  It was especially meaningful to me because it was the one place my Father became my Dad.

My father and I were never close.  I neither feel any guilt nor have any animosity for this relationship.  It is just a cold, hard, fact.  My Father was a child of the depression and I was a child of television.  He grew up worrying about his next meal.  I grew up worrying I wouldn’t have the right color alligator shirt.  His work was his life, first and foremost.  My life was Elvis and cars.  Yet there was always one time when he quit being a businessman and provider and one place where started being a Dad.  That was the time we spent to together at the beach.

My fondest memories of him are those precious days over too few years we spent at Carolina Beach.  It was there we spent hours fishing in the surf, swimming in the sea.  It was there he taught me how to float on my back over the swells and to body surf in to the shore.  It was there I learned to bait a hook, to fish from shore and from a pier.  I remember when I was eight standing side by side with him on the Center Fishing Pier when the Spots were running, each of us pulling up two at a time on our lines.  When I had a backlash on my reel he would swap with me, untangle my line and hand it back.  We caught fish that day until the coolers were overflowing.  It is to this day still the best day fishing I can ever remember.  He taught me how to dig in the wet sand for sand fleas and then use them for bait.  He taught me how to fly kites.  He showed me love though like most men in his generation he could hardly ever verbalize it.

My Dad is gone now as is that little cottage at Carolina Beach.  It gave way, as most of the single-family dwellings on the beachfront, to condos ages ago.  It has become, like so much of what I write about, just another old man’s memory.  I don’t fish anymore.  It seems hardly anyone fishes from the surf anymore.  I guess there are just too many people on the beaches these days.  I still body surf and float on my back over the swells though I never mastered like my Dad who seemed to be able to stay like that all day.

If you ever go with us to the sea and I wander off my own to sit and stare at the water.  Please don’t take it personal.  You did nothing to upset me.  I’m just watching my Dad as he rides slowly over the rolling waves……

As Time Goes By

Going Home

Going Home

Recently I had the opportunity to return to my hometown; the place where I was born and raised.  I don’t go there much anymore; actually hardly ever.  My family has pretty much either died or moved away and, in fact, I have only one cousin, who is in her eighties left there.  I go back now almost exclusively for high school reunions and funerals – my last trip, unfortunately, for this latter reason.

Going home now is a bittersweet experience.  Bitter from the loss of so many loved ones like my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and an increasing number of old friends.  Bitter as I see the empty stores in my hometown; the local drugstore where I drank cherry cokes made at the soda fountain and spent countless hours playing matchbook football at the diner tables, the clothing store where my mother bought my first pair of jeans, the A&P gone and replaced by a Family Dollar store.  There are no local groceries anymore and, for that matter, no local hardware, no local banks.  It is the passing of a uniquely southern way of life that will never come again; a time when churches were unlocked day and night, a time when neighbors shared telephone party lines, and we all waited anxiously for the next new movie at the local theater, which is also long removed from the scene. 

 Yet there is sweetness to going home, going to a place where I will always be “Jimmy”, not Jim and never James; a comfort to see people still there who tell me I look more and more like my Dad.  It is nice to ride by the house where I grew up, drive up the big hill we sledded down in winter snow; though in truth even the hill is not as high and long as I remember. 

There is a comfort in greeting the friends of my youth.  Except for my immediate family there is nowhere else I can go for so many shared memories.  Those memories are the sweetest of all.  I often play a game with myself in which I try to remember the first time I met these dear, dear people and more often than not fail, not because of a senior’s memory but rather from the fact that they have just always been there.

Thomas Wolfe’s said, “You Can’t Go Home Again”. Clichéd or not it still rings true.  However, once in awhile can back for a visit and taste the bittersweet.