Music To My Years

A Paper Delivered to the Cosmopolitan Club May 22, 2001

By Richard G. Beemer

Reviewed By Michael Brewer

 have been writing a music column for nearly six years. The column, titled Loud And Clear, appears in a bimonthly, Catholic Parent, a periodical published by Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., a national Catholic publishing company located here in Huntington, Ind., which has provided me employment for more than 29 years.

Catholic Parent was launched in 1993, and soon after I convinced the publisher that a column that reviewed lyrics to popular music would be enthusiastically received by Catholic Parent subscribers.

My intent was to give parents a heads-up about offensive lyrics on the CDs their children were listening to. But I also hoped to be able to recommend bands that would be musically interesting, entertaining and also capable of offering lyrics that didnt stoop to the lowest common denominators of profanity and sexual innuendo, not to mention incest, rape, violence, murder, child abuse, homosexuality and other assorted specific sins of men and women.

This hope of mine proved to be the greatest challenge of all. Out of approximately 36 or so columns written, Ive recommended but a pittance of popular bands, much to the chagrin of the editor.

That said, I suppose I ought to give one and all a hint as to what this paper is about. It is a four-part paper: First, I will reflect on the magazine columns I've written thus far for Catholic Parent; second, I will draw from newspaper articles that have dealt with the subject of rock 'n' roll; third, I will present a brief overview of so-called Christian Rock; and, finally, a look at music lyrics from earlier eras. I have no profound point to make. The following falls under the category of observations.

Let me begin by saying that I am not a prude, nor do I subscribe to things fattening, illegal or immoral. My opinions about life in general and the specific acts of others have been formed by my faith and my upbringing.

Here are a couple samplings of correspondences from readers of Catholic Parent who read the column and had a question and an opinion, respectively.

One woman e-mailed me the following, in part: "I am desperately searching for a review with Christian ethics on Brittany Spears. . . . My children, ages 5 and 7, are seeing their friends follow this teen idol, and I have offered my negatives, as I see it. I don't want to advise the children incorrectly. I have negative feelings toward this star, and I am unsure if they are truly justified. Thanks, Michelle Mills."

What I wanted to e-mail back to her would have gone something like this: "Five and 7! Brittany Spears! You offered your negatives to a 5- and 7-year-old? Have you tried parenting? One look at Spears, who has this thing about taking her clothes off in front of millions of people, should have been your first clue! What kind of mother are you? Shame on you for even considering this stuff! Five and 7?"

Instead, being the trained professional that I am, I sent this young mother a copy of two reviews I wrote critiquing Spears' music. My Parental Advisory for her CD, "Oops . . . I Did It Again," read: "Although I doubt this CD will put your children in the near occasion of sin, I'm recommending it for mature teenagers only." Regarding a later CD of Spears, titled "Baby One more time,"  I wrote: "If you are the parents of mature, moral, responsible junior or senior high school daughters, this CD shouldn't sound an alarm, but its definitely not recommended for the ears of those struggling through the early, tender years of confusing adolescence. Also, Spears dependency on boys as a means to form her identity could be better formed were she to focus toward the heavens." She never wrote back. I hope she did the right thing.

Another reader, a 14-year-old boy, didn't agree with my review of Limp Bizkits' CD, "Three Dollar Bill Yall$." My take on Fred Durst, lead singer for the heavy-medal rap band, was that he was "Just another punk spoiled on the excesses of a culture devoid of moral discernment." Not very charitable, granted, but he had it coming, what with his penchant for spewing the f-word throughout his CDs.

The 14-year-old Catholic boy took me to task. He wrote: "You did not [he emphasized did not with bold, underlined type] mention anywhere in type that on the song "Indigo Flow" Fred Durst openly says that he loves God. I think you are quick to judge on most of your reviews. I do agree that there is a good deal of profanity on the album. I have this CD and am a big Limp Bizkit fan." Signed Nick Layman.

I wrote back: "Dear Mr. Layman: Thank you for writing regarding my review of Limp Bizkit. Im a 49-year-old father of six children, so my perspective is a bit different than yours.

"It makes no matter to me that Durst proclaims to love God, because he apparently has achieved neither an inward nor an outward manifestation of faith. His word selection betrays any sense of religious conviction, and is therefore unfit for kids your age. Do your parents know that you listen to this stuff? . . . Show your parents my review of Limp Bizkit and let them listen to the CD. I'd be interested in what they thought of it."

That, apparently, was not a good suggestion, since I never heard back what his parents thought of someone who yelps profanities such as "Shut the [expletive deleted] up!"

Lyrics are made up of words, and words have meaning, so let's take a look at some of those lyrics attached to songs that children and teenagers bring home upon purchasing a CD, purchased most often without any parental knowledge, involvement or input.

The heavy-metal band Slayer provided these insightful lyrics to a song titled "903" on their 1994 CD, "Divine Intervention": "The excitement of dissection is sweet / My skin crawls with orgasmic speed / A lifeless object for my subjection / An obsession beyond your imagination / Primitive instinct a passion for flesh / Primal feeding on the multitudes of death / Sadistic acts a love so true / Absorbingly masticating a part of you."

Kind of makes your skin crawl too, doesn't it?

Then there's singer/songwriter Alanis Morisette, who was raised Catholic. She told a New York magazine that she rejected Catholicism because there was too much hypocrisy. "I didn't want to feel guilty about things that I could be reveling in, things like my sexuality. To be deviant here and there is a part of growing up, as far as realizing what's right and wrong. The concept of religion: there's so much rigidity to it.

On her 1995 CD, "Jagged Little Pill," the partial lyrics to the song "Forgiven" are as follows: "You know how us Catholic girls can be / We make up for so much time a little too late / I never forget it, confusing as it was / No fun with no guilt feelings / The sinners, the saviors, the loverless priests / Ill see you next Sunday / I sang Alleluia in the choir / I confessed my darkest deeds to an envious man / My brothers they never went blind for what they did / But I may as well have / In the name of the Father, the Skeptic and the Son / I had one more stupid question."

It just makes me sigh.

Marilyn Manson, a cultural pervert who manages to make millions off the unparented masses of Americas juveniles, reached his peak in 1995 with the CD "Smells Like Children." Manson once said: "Raise your kids better or Ill raise them for you. I want to raise kids in truth and tell them that everything is a lie; there is no truth."

Riding the wave of this CD's smashing success with the loser-crowd, Manson retched forth another CD the following year titled "Antichrist Superstar." For the tune "The Minute of Decay," Manson composed the following upbeat lyrics: I'm on my way down now, Id like to take you with me / I'm on my way down / the minute that it's born / it begins to die / I'd love to just give in / I'd love to live this lie / Ive been to black and back / I've whited out my name / A lack of pain, a lack of hope, a lack of anything to say . . . there is no cure for what is killing me / I'm on my way down / I looked ahead and saw a world that's dead / I guess that I am, too."

Now, I ask you, can anyone really believe that this message of despair isn't being heard loud and clear, so to speak, by the children who listen to this stuff? These are the lyrical memories they will take into adulthood, just as we in this room took into adulthood the memories of ballads that defined our place in time as youths. Music and specific songs that people are fond of their entire lives are usually associated with specific events or time periods, and even a single phrase of an old song from one's past, heard from the radio of a passing automobile or through the window of a home as one is walking by, can trigger the memory of an emotion, a kiss, an embrace, a place. So try to imagine what memories the lyrics to "The Minute of Decay" might bring to mind for one of Manson's diehard fans 30 years from now. Can you imagine anyone swooning over lyrics such as "I looked ahead and saw a world thats dead / I guess that I am too"?

Nine Inch Nails is another example of how the complete despair that so many of these bands embrace becomes for the tender young souls who listen to this music the musical history lesson that will be remembered in adulthood.

Trent Reznor, the genius behind this music, and he is an incredibly intense and disturbed genius, composes lyrics such as the following: "The clouds will part and the sky cracks open / and God himself will reach his [blankety-blank] arm through, just to push you down / just to hold you down."  Or how about this, from the tune "Somewhat Damaged": "Made the choice to go away / drink the fountain of decay / tear a hole exquisite red / [blankety-blank] the rest and stab it dead / broken bruised forgotten sore / too [blankety-blanked] up to care anymore."

The aforementioned was brought to you from the same gentleman who had a hit a few years ago with the lyric hook of "I want to [blankety-blank] you like an animal." The radio stations bleeped the blankety-blank, so the young listening audience of expletive deleteds got blanked off about bleeps, but to no avail, because the bleepers stood their ground against the expletive deleteds and continued to bleep the blankety-blanks.

Blank goodness.

Geoff Boucher and Jordon Raphael co-authored a piece in The Journal-Gazette December 17, 2000, in which they reported on our kids preference for raw, uncensored music. Seems the president of the Recording Industry Association of America, Hilary Rosen, was standing in line at a department store behind a woman who was purchasing "Country Grammar," the hit CD by rapper Nelly. It was to be a gift for her young son. The cashier offered her a warning. He told the mother that the CD was rife with lewd lyrics, so perhaps instead she might want a clean version, one edited for young or sensitive ears.

The reporters did not mention the age of the youth who was to receive this thoughtful mother's gift.

The mother replied to the cashier: "Oh no. I want him to have the real thing. It's not the first time he's heard those words. He's not going to like it, and we're not going to like it, if it's not what the artist said, if it's what some censor did."

You know, in this country we license people to drive because we don't want stupid people, ignorant of traffic laws, driving cars. One needs a liquor license to sell booze, but young folk manage a way around the law just to get stupid. We even need boating licences for people too stupid to operate boats properly and safely, and fishing licences for people too stupid to know what is a reasonable number of fish to catch. It seems to me that parenting is an awful lot more difficult and demanding than fishing, and as stupid as some parents seem to be these days, perhaps we ought to pass a law requiring married couples to meet certain standards, standards drawn up by me, of course, before they can be allowed to breed. Stupid is, stupid does.

Back to the stupid mother in the store.

One would think that the edited-for-content discs would be popular, what with today's edgy music. But no. The young-ins, and even the artists, hate them, parents are confused by them and industry honchos find them wanting in quality.

The other problem is that the clean versions aren't all that clean. You can take all the f- and n-words out of a song about incest and rape, but you still have a song about incest and rape. Also, the electronic sound effects that are employed to mask profanities are so sonically flimsy that any listener can tell what word is being excised.

And those parental-advisory stickers found on CDs with explicit lyrics of sex, violence or drug imagery? All they do is encourage interest by younger people, and apparently they want it as raw as it comes.

When rap music first came out, I predicted its early demise. Boy was I wrong. "Plugged In" newsletter, published by James C. Dobson's Focus on the Family organization, reported that hip-hop and rap have become more popular than country music for the very first time. Twenty-five percent of the music purchased in the United States is from the rock genre. Rap and hip-hop place second with 12.9 percent, followed by country with 10.7 percent, then R&B/urban with 9.7 percent and pop with 8 percent. Egads! Blame it all on James Dean for the first-ever rap tune, Big John.

Speaking of blame, from whence did this music come, this rock music and all that has branched off from it, such as rap and pop?

It all began with a movie made way back in 1955, according to Andrew Minto in a 1990 piece in the Catholic periodical Homiletic and Pastoral Review, titled "Rock Music: An Ethical Evaluation". "The movie, Blackboard Jungle, marked the end of an era, an era in which parents and children held similar views on most everything, and teenagers were viewed as young adults, given responsibilities of an adult to some extent, and were expected to fulfill those responsibilities in a similar fashion and with the same attitude as their parents.

"In the movie, the author wrote, teenagers talked back disrespectfully to their teachers, scorned learning, attempted to rape another student, and resisted discipline by beating two of the teachers. The movie expressed an attitude toward authority, which became the new symbol of teenage rebellion.

"The movie's music helped to make clear the values of a new culture. The new rock 'n' roll music was strictly counterposed to the musical tradition of adult culture in a scene where the records of a treasured, rare jazz collection belonging to a teacher who tries to reach the kids were smashed in a game of keep-away because they were deemed old-fashioned. The theme song of the movie was recorded by Bill Haley and the Comets and described a twenty-four-hour party time. It was entitled Rock Around The Clock. The significance of the movie and the song was that for the first time in history there was music that spoke to, about and for teenagers and the life which they wanted to live with no references at all to the adult world."

One might suspect that the aforementioned was derived from evangelical Christian studies on the subject. Rather, it was taken from a modern, secular, music-appreciation textbook, titled "Music: An Appreciation," by Roger Kamien, which in the 1990s was used at the college level.

And then there's Christian rock, that strange combination of hormones and homilies that struts its holier-than-thou stuff to audiences of saved teenagers who want to rock the night away in a Jesus Christ-like way.

Those who want some control over their children yet who are willing to compromise by allowing Christian rock in their homes, and those who think anything of a rock-like nature is the business of Beelzebub, are the unwitting members of this subculture of hard rock. I vaguely recall a newspaper article from a few years past on the subject of Christian rock, in which the author reported that orthodox evangelical Christians were concerned about Christian rock kicking too much [butt]. The a-word, not butt, was used in the article. Apparently, the church elders were afraid that there was a point where butt-kicking became more butt and less kicking, or was it the other way around? The point was that it was OK to plug in those electric guitars and mount those Ludwig drum kits to express oneself in a youthfully exuberant fashion, but be extremely prudent, lest those juvenile vats of hormones overflow into the sewer of sexual desire.

Andrew Minto wrote another piece for Homiletic and Pastoral Review in 1990 titled, "Is Christian Rock a Contradiction?" "Why, some ask, would God use a medium to effect conversions, since there are some authentic conversions among the lot, if the medium is in itself antithetical to God and his plan of salvation?

"First, one must recognize that the end does not justify the means. Even a small percentage of conversions do not justify that some may be dis-evangelized into the wrong camp. Furthermore, if authentic praise is the rearticulation of Gods own communication of himself and his plan of salvation, then evangelization must be admitted as one of the highest forms of praise. Therefore, such music is not only incompatible with praise but even more so with evangelization.

"Second, the only possible explanation for why God would use a medium that is inconsistent with the Gospel and praise is the fact that God is showering a lost generation with his mercy."

Personally, I have no interest in so-called Christian rock, nor do I care much about the secular drivel I review for Catholic Parent magazine. Christian rock, it seems to me, needs to lose the rock, and the secular drivel needs to just go away altogether, but they won't, of course. So we live with them.

Which brings me to the past, and to the conclusion of this informational piece on a culture that baby-sits our children.

I enjoy listening to 106.3, a radio station out of Fort Wayne, Ind., which plays the oldies of my parents, mostly. Were I the owner of the station, I'd go back even further in time, to my parents' parents, if possible. It would also be enjoyable to listen to country-western music from those eras as well. Country's love affair with pop has diminished the gene pool of genuine country fare. So it goes.

My mother, God rest her soul, passed along to me several books of music from those eras, and as I was looking through one of them recently, I was taken aback by one song in particular, "The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane."

Even then, I thought.

The lyrics to "The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane" are thus:

"The naughty lady of Shady Lane has the town in a whirl / The naughty lady of shady lane, me oh my, oh what a girl / The naughty lady of Shady Lane has hit the town like a bomb / The back fence gossip ain't been this good since Mabel ran off with Tom / Our town was peaceful and quiet before she came on the scene / The lady has started a riot, disturbin' the routine / You should see how she carries on with her admirers galore /  She must be giving them quite a thrill, the way they flock to her door / She throws those come-hither glances at every Tom, Dick and Joe / When offered some liquid refreshment, the lady never, never says no / The things they're trying to pin or her, won't hold much water, I'm sure / Beneath the powder and fancy lace, there beats a heart sweet and pure / She just needs someone to change her, then she'll be nice as can be / If you're in the neighborhood, stranger, youre welcome to stop in and see / Naughty lady of Shady Lane, so delightful to behold / The naughty lady of Shady Lane, she's delectable, quite respectable / and shes only nine days old." 

Now that's music to my (y)ears.

The following essay needs certain punctuation marks attributed to it because the Web-site builder refuses these harmless and normal little ditties to be allowed on the Page. I will insert them at a later date. Thank you,

Richard G. Beemer

Papers Of The Past

An Essay Delivered to

The Cosmopolitan Club ??

By Richard G. Beemer

Reviewed by ??

My objective in writing this paper is threefold: to portray the authors of several  Cosmopolitan Club papers culled from the dusty binders in the Indiana Room at the Huntington Public Library; to frame the authors in historical context by recalling the news of the day in which their papers were delivered; and to present portions of the papers each of these men composed. In writing this paper I have quoted from many sources, however, I wish not to verbally indicate that I am quoting some important subject or the presenter of the paper. I would advise you to assume that the more eloquent phrases belong to those whom I reference, the more simplistic and grammatically awkward phrases those of my own feeble attempts at writing clearly. 

Accompanying the regal photographic portrait of Thad Butler on Page 1 of the Dec. 7, 1915, edition of the Huntington Herald, was an obituary that ran for approximately 40 inches. Mr. Butler authored the oldest Cosmopolitan Club paper on file in the Indiana Room. Titled "If Christ Came Today," Mr. Butler delivered his paper on the evening of Dec. 10, 1895, some 20 years earlier, at the age of 49. But as outlined above, we first need to know a little about the man.

"Thad Butler died of what was called Arterio sclerosis. As reported in the Huntington Herald. For weeks, Mr. Butler had been sinking. The spring of life was running down. The coil of human endeavor has spent its earthly energy. He suffered no pain; he was just tired."

Only 7-years-old when his father died, he sacrificed education in order to give his efforts to supporting his mother. At 13 he began learning the printer's trade and later attended Oberlin college for a year. His first newspaper job was with the Kendallville Standard at the age of 17, where he was known as a swift compositor. He formed a partnership in the 1870s on the Wabash Plain Dealer, later selling his interest and moving to Andrews, Ind., where he founded the Andrew's Express. He moved to Huntington in 1886 and consolidated the Express with the Lime City News. The News Express and Indiana Herald were later merged, forming the Herald and News Express Co. Mr. Butler remained as managing editor of The Herald for about 24 years. Selling The Herald, he moved with his wife to Boulder, Colo., founding a paper there, too, but wished to return to Huntington, whereupon he founded the Morning Times. The paper was later purchased and merged with the Evening News-Democrat, after which Mr. Butler and his partner bought the Decatur Herald, where they remained until it, too, was sold in 1914. Mr. Butler retired from active labor in the journalistic realm, opening up a business for supplying linotype matter for various publishers. The firm was called the Huntington Type Setting Company.

Mr. Butler was twice honored with government positions. One of those was as postmaster of Huntington in 1889, an office he held for a mere six months, resigning to devote his entire energy to newspaper work. In his letter of resignation, the obituary reported: "Trying to edit a newspaper and lick stamps and be responsible for people's mail was too much for him to stand for. He said in two weeks he saw his mistake, just like the man who yoked himself up with an unruly calf."   

The obituary commented on Mr. Butler's association with The Cosmopolitan Club: "For many years a member of The Cosmopolitan Club, it was always a drawing card to announce that Thad Butler would read the paper. Local spice and original applications made his literary productions timely and enjoyable."

Regarding Mr. Butler's writing abilities as a newspaper man, the obituary read: "His power of editorial expression was unusual, his lucidity, terseness and bluntness lighting up his composition and making it admirable, forceful, conclusive. During a political fight, if the opposing contemporarys printing machinery happened to break down, Thad was ever ready to offer the hospitality of his own office and shop for the running off of a grist of hot stuff intended to skim him alive."

The concluding paragraph of Mr. Butler's obituary read unlike any you'll see in today's modern newspapers. It concluded: "To all who knew Thad Butler intimately, his passing becomes a personal grief, coupled with a realization that another pioneer, to whom the country always owes a debt of gratitude and tender memory, has passed from the world of activity and toil to the eternal rest of the just and faithful." 

And now, the news!

The weekly Huntington Democrat surrendered 99 percent of its front page to county news, if you can agree that one-sentence entries such as "Ex-trainman Bologna Hoyt was shaking hands with his many friends here Saturday" is news. Now that was not a headline; no story development. Just the plain fact that, in Andrews, Bologna Hoyt made an appearance somewhere in the county and it was news. In Simpson, one of the top stories informed the readers that "Butchering time is here and the farmers are filling their pork barrels with hams and eating fresh sausage."

From Markle, correspondent Dandy Jim recorded several hot items:

"There is plenty of water in the Wabash now and skating is good."

Next item: "Peace reigns supreme in this neck o' woods; no divorces, no weddings to report. So mote it be." A mote, for those of you who may want to know, is a small particle.

Next item: "The game in this part of the country is very scarce and we can see hunters every day, almost. If there was only one quail and rabbit in the whole country we would have some cranks that would stand out all day without a bit to eat, trying to kill them."

From Bippus, a vibrant hub of activity in 1895, the correspondent filed the following: "Will Young, of pugilistic fame, who is about one by three feet and who participated in the riot at this place with the Voght Bros., the 7^th of last June, was in town last Thursday for the first time since he made a display of his gentlemanly (?) manners. His purpose here is not known, unless he came as a spy to investigate the fortifications and impregnable strength of the batteries encircling the little hamlet." Of the hundred or so local news stories on Page 1, not one concerned a national topic.

The weekly Huntington Herald, on its front page, top right, two columns wide, gave space to a display ad for Royal Baking Powder, an item that must have been extremely important to folks back then to achieve such prominence. The Herald, too, reported county news. It was a slow news day in Andrews, however, as the correspondent duly noted in his one-sentence correspondence: "Business in every department is dull."

Now to Mr. Butler's paper, delivered Tuesday, Dec. 10, 1895. It was a Page 1 story in The Huntington Democrat. Herewith the account:

"The largest crowd that has ever been present at a meeting of the Cosmopolitan Club, was in attendance at the home of Mrs. H.H. Arnold, on North Jefferson street, Tuesday evening. At least two hundred people were present to hear read the paper, 'If Christ Should Come To Huntington,' by Thad Butler, of the Herald.

"Mr. Butler commenced the reading of his paper by reciting a poem, after which he gave a general idea of Christ. He thought Christ was a mere man, born like others, but with every attribute of goodness; that he was superior to any man who ever lived. He then presented generally the great results of christianity and the good it has done.

"Mr. Butler then went at once to his subject, 'If Christ Should Come To Huntington.' He took a pessimistic view of everything, saying that if Christ should come to Huntington, he would find hypocrisy in the churches, he would find corrupt men in high places, dishonest men in business, liars everywhere and that all christians do not belong to churches. He would not find men in political parties all honest, and estimated that Christ would not be a prohibitionist, and that he would find scoundrels in every department and walk of life.

"That he would find all these conditions of things, Mr. Butler also stated that Christ would not be recognized if he should come, on account of his not being known. He concluded with a general platitude of exhortations and showing what conditions things would be if Christ should come to Huntington. He also spoke of the healing power of Christian Science and intimated that the evidence of living persons now was as good that by Christ and that there was no reason why we shouldn't believe in the healing power now as the people did two thousand years ago. He concluded the paper by reciting a poem.

"As a paper, it is said to have been one of the finest ever delivered before the Cosmopolitan Club. It was well-written; not one sentence too long, but was of the right length.; it contained short sentences and was admirably rendered.

"The paper was then given a general discussion by various members of the club. The last argument of Mr. Butler's paper, that of Christian Science healing, Dr. Grayston said there was a distinction of diseases and that it was impossible that organic diseases could be cured by anything of that kind, but that sympathy diseases might be. Dr. Grayston also said that in sympathy cases where a weaker mind could be influenced by a stronger mind, it would bear good results.

"Rev. Kendrick, Rev. Nave, Judge C.W. Watkins, Prof. R.I. Hamilton, and others, also indulged in the discussion of the paper. T.G. Smith said that, 'If Christ Should Come To Huntington,' he undoubtedly would not make his headquarters at the Herald office.

Before moving on to the next paper, I would be remiss if this account of Mr. Butler's paper concluded without a sampling of direct quotes.

I quote:

"Unless he came with pomp and power, royal in his appearance and attire, just as the Jews expected him to come, he would be as promptly and summarily rejected by the people of the present day. How many doors would be thrown open in the handsome residences of Huntington to welcome an unlettered and unannounced Gallilean, whose associates were illiterate fishermen, whose earthly possessions were invisible by the naked eye, and whose apparel bore no evidence of fashions decree?

"I venture to suggest a few of the fads and customs which would need explanation to a Christ unfamiliar with nineteenth-century civilization.

"What would be his thoughts if he visited the scientific room of one of our institutions of learning and beheld an instructor engaged, with a class of youths, in the vivisection of a poor dumb brute, under the plea that such a sacrifice is necessary for the advancement of science?

"What excuse could he offer for the morbid taste of even the most refined people for the salacious reading to be found in sensational newspapers?

"Would his sense of justice approve of court proceedings by which a man is sentenced to as long a term for stealing a sack of wheat as is another for an attempted murder, and another for brutal assault upon an unprotected girl?

"Would he deem his command to preach the Gospel to all the world complied with, when, the Sunday night before election, political sermons were delivered from church pulpits?

"Would the sight of an election night mob, howling through the streets, blowing tin horns, alternating their cheers for successful candidates with groans for defeated aspirants, impress him with the thought that the voice of the people is the voice of God?

"Jesus was neither a recluse nor an ascetic. He mingled freely with all classes of people and entered into their rational enjoyments. The charge of the self-righteous Pharisees against him was that he was a gluttonous man, a wine bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. The same charges in these days would bring reproach not easily silenced, and if a modern Christ should refuse to recognize the color line and feed at the same table with colored men, there are sections of the country in which he would be forever socially ostracized."

The next paper I examined was delivered by Dr. Robert G. Johnston on Friday, March 19, 1937. Its title was "Socialized Medicine." The doctor was 50-years-old at the time.

Dr. Johnston's obituary 34-years later was more typical of the bland, factual obits we're accustomed to these days. He died Sunday, April 25, 1971. The obituary read:

"Dr. Robert G. Johnston, 84, died at Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie at 6:25 a.m. He had been admitted to the hospital April 12.

"Dr. Johnston was a physician in Huntington from 1919 until his retirement in 1968. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in 1909, and graduated from the medical school in 1911. He practiced in Markle from 1913 until his entry into the Army in 1918. After leaving the Army, Dr. Johnston returned to practice in 1919. He was a resident of the Woodlawn Nursing Home in Muncie until going to the hospital.

"He was born Dec. 27, 1886, in Dekalb County to Mr. and Mrs. O.F. Johnston. His marriage was to Alice B. Sudborough, and she died Oct. 15, 1962.

"He was a member of the Huntington County Medical Society, the Indiana State Medical Association, the First Methodist Church, the Scottish Rite Temple in Fort Wayne and the Kiwanis Club. He was one of 33 Indiana physicians honored in 1961 by the Indiana State Medical Association for practicing medicine for half a century."

There was no mention of the good doctor's membership in the Cosmopolitan Club. 

The bold banner headline at the top of the Huntington Herald-Press front page for March 19, 1937, screamed, "School Explosion Toll Is 425." A gas accumulation was suspected as the cause of the blast in New London, Texas. In Indianapolis, newspapers were tied up by strikers. In London, England, a barrier to Mrs. Wallis Simpson's absolute divorce and her marriage to Edward of Windsor was cleared when a charge of collusion was dismissed, and in Honolulu, Amelia Earhart was preparing for her second hop on her 27,000-mile world flight. The popular column, "Up Jefferson," dispensed with its usual snippets of daily goings-on, such as: "Miss Laura Shanks pausing to gaze at a window display. George Zitser speaking of the weather in favorable terms. Horace Cutshall going somewhere in a hurry [and] Charles Berkfield nodding to a friend.  

Services were planned for Good Friday at St. Peter's Lutheran Church by Rev. C.F.J. Wirsing, and the county politicians were doing what they still do to this day: bickering over how to spend taxpayers' money. 

Now to his paper, "Socialized Medicine."

Dr. Johnston wasn't warm to the idea of socialized medicine. Neither would have been Hilary Clinton had she perused the good doctor's paper. He began:

"The fundamental object of medical practice is to provide and make available adequate, and efficient medical service at all times for all people regardless of their position in our social universe and regardless of race or color. A most worthy object as all will agree but not always able to be fulfilled for one reason or another.

"But along come the theorists and say that by the socialization of medicine these aims can and will be fulfilled. By socialization of medicine, in this discussion, I shall make its meaning synonymous for state medicine, compulsory health insurance, or any form which removes the medical service from the physician's control as individuals.

"Socialized medicine has been around at least since 1883.

"Bismarck, in order to shackle the poor and the working classes, and with a promise of social security, launched a compulsory health insurance plan, known as the Krankenkassen, later adding unemployment and old age benefits. But even now after working with this system for more than fifty years, almost daily amendments, new rulings, and new interpretations are required...."

Dr. Johnston provided an example of the abuse of socialized medicine that even our well-trained doctors of today might well nod to with understanding: "Under state medicine patients are apt to become morbidly interested in their ailments, and lack the will or inclination to recover. For example, a German doctor, who became a hospital patient, reported there were six private patients besides himself and 200 insurance cases in the hospital when he entered. In eleven days all of the paying patients had been discharged as recovered while the insurance cases showed little improvement and continued to stay on at government expense.

"Under the regime of the Krankenkassen the average incapacity for work has risen from five and one half days to twenty eight days per year for each employee. More than 1,000,000 patients were investigated by special medical officers in one year and 56% were found to me malingering.

"Prior to socialization, Germany had been making many strides of progress at the end of the 19^th century and the first part of the 20^th, and was universally acclaimed as a world leader in medicine.

"But with the beginning of compulsory health insurance, the medical profession became more and more subordinated to political control and bureaucratic regulations, and its very economic foundation was undermined. Progress lagged and Germany gradually lost her place in leadership, and the physicians there today are more or less demoralized and pauperized.

"Under the Nazi government of 1937, 90% of the income of all German physicians is from health insurance, and for them to even earn a comfortable living it is necessary for them to see from 75 to 100 patients each day. A little mathematics will show about how much time they can give to each patient.

Dr. Johnston then cited Russia, where everything was supposedly free:

"A Russian's health supervision begins before birth. His mother is relieved from all factory work two months before he is born, she does not return to work for 56 days afterward. He will be placed in a nursery at his mother's factory, when she does not return to work, and the state furnishes a mother, who nurses her baby, one free meal per day.

Dr. Johnston was somewhat kind to compensation insurance in the United States, in that it insures the employee adequate care, relieves the employer of heavy damage suits and insures the physician a legitimate fee.

He didn't much care for the Veterans Bureau, citing it as a U.S. example of social medicine: "The expenditures of the Veterans Administration in Indiana for the year of 1936 was $18,000,000," he pointed out.

The doctor explained why physicians in the United States had no use for socialized medicine: "Despite its tremendous cost, where tried it has not fulfilled its purpose as anticipated; too little time can be given to individual patients to give them the care they deserve and are entitled to expect; the doctors do not receive fees commensurate with their investment and have neither the time or money to keep abreast of medical advances."

Dr. Johnstons most personal paragraph came from the heart: "But above all things we wish to preserve some of that delightful relationship which has existed since time immemorial between patient and physician. In this connection I think of children and old people. In treating children, one of the first things necessary is to gain their confidence, and it cannot be done hurriedly. Old people like to take their time in telling you their troubles, and they don't leave out many of the details, either.

Howard Houghton was a man respected not only for his professional integrity as a newspaperman, but for his civic contributions. His paper, titled "Fellow Citizens," was delivered Tuesday, April 15, 1939. He was 44 years old.

His obituary some 40 years later read, in part:

"Howard Houghton, Rt. 9, the editor emeritus of the Herald-Press, whose newspaper career spanned more than 50 years, died at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at Memorial Hospital, following a long illness. He was 84.

"Judge, as he was known to his friends and colleagues, was editor of the Herald-Press from 1935 to 1965, and was publisher of the newspaper in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He held the position of editor emeritus since relinquishing the day-to-day editing chores.

"A native of southern Indiana, he was a 1917 graduate of Indiana University, where he first displayed his flair for writing and editing. He remains the only I.U. student ever to hold the positions of editor of the university newspaper, The Daily Student, and the yearbook, The Arbutus, simultaneously.

"After serving a brief Navy hitch at the close of the First World War, he joined the Vincennes Commercial as a reporter. He became editor of the Commercial and its successor, the Sun-Commercial, and served for two months on the Vincennes City Council before moving to Huntington in 1935 to assume the editorship of the Herald-Press.

"During his tenure with the Herald-Press, Mr. Houghton became involved with a number of civic endeavors. He was the first president of the Huntington County Society for Crippled Children in 1984.

He was president of the Huntington Chamber of Commerce in 1954-55, and of the Huntington Kiwanis Club in 1947. He is past president and one of the founders of the Cosmopolitan Club." I believe they meant members, rather than founders.

"He became well-known throughout the state for his editorial writing, and was president of the Indiana Republican Editorial Association in 1955-56. He was president of the Society of Indiana Pioneers in 1974, and held memberships in the Indiana Historical Society.

"The obituary continued with a list Mr. Houghtons many honors, memberships and associations.

In the news the day Mr. Houghton delivered his Cosmopolitan Club paper, the Herald-Press ran a banner headline that read: "Reorganization Plan Offered," a news story announcing President Franklin Roosevelt's proposal to create three new federal agencies by merging welfare, works and lending functions.

Across the pond, Great Britain's cabinet was considering a bill for compulsory military-service bill.

And in California, millions of grasshoppers were devouring everything edible in their path, even the paint on farmhouses. The hoppers literally stripped the fertile fields along a 50-mile front in San Joaquin Valley.

Mr. Houghton's paper was a collection of 14 reflections on the lives of people who lived in and around Huntington. His last paragraph summed up what he had in mind when he wrote the paper:

"These, then, are a few among many fellow citizens. Men and women, oldsters and youngsters, white men and black, saints and sinners; those of good repute who have evil in them, and of evil repute who yet do good works; each separate and distinct from all others; each going about the business of life, and no one knowing the memories his brother keeps."

I chose two of the shorter stories to share with you tonight, the first one titled "Mr. and Mrs. Brooks":

"Life had become a habit to Mr. and Mrs. Brooks. They had become a habit to each other. Their children were grown up and gone. Most of the friends they cherished were dead and those who remained were a habit, too. There was only the store for Mr. Brooks and the house for Mrs. Brooks. The daily tasks in each were so familiar that they were done almost as reflex actions.

"They had lived together so long that now they even looked alike. They had bared their thoughts to each other so often that now there was little need for words. One was likely to give an answer before the other had spoken.

"Villagers set their clocks by Mr. Brooks as he went to the store in the morning, went home at noon for dinner and back afterwards, home again in the evening to stay. Mrs. Brooks appeared at each shop exactly at the same time every morning in her shopping rounds. When they walked together, Mr. Brooks was exactly a half-step ahead of Mrs. Brooks. Their infrequent words oozed from the corners of their mouths.

"Mr. Brooks had lived too long to be moved by the elements. One evening as he was following the familiar path home from the store he was caught in a shower, but it did not change his accustomed pace.

"When he opened the door of his house, he looked forward to a change of clothing and a moment of peace with the evening paper. But he was met by Mrs. Brooks, who said: 'Now that you are a little wet, Mr. Brooks, will you move the potted plants under the rain?'

"Mr. Brooks performed that chore and moved toward his purpose. But Mrs. Brooks spoke once again: 'Now that you are a little wet, Mr. Brooks, will you bring a bundle of kindling for the morning fire?'

"Mr. Brooks brought in the kindling, and again started for his delayed peace. But Mrs. Brooks said: 'Now that you are a little wet, Mr. Brooks, will you fetch in a pail of water?'

"Mr. Brooks pumped the pail level full at the well. Mrs. Brooks stepped onto the back porch to open the door for him. He paused to look at her, then raised the pail over her head and dumped the contents. He said: 'Now that you are a little wet, Mrs. Brooks, will you place supper on the table?'

Mr. Houghton titled this next piece "The Old Soldier."

"By vocation, John Wetters was a veteran of the late Army of the Potomac. By avocation he was judge of the circuit court. He came out of the Civil war a major, opened a law office and within a few years was elected judge. A tradition was started then. The people elected him every six years as long as he lived.

"A young lawyer named Jerry Arnold was having a difficult time with what looked like a simple case one day in the judge's later years. Jerry knew that justice was on his side, but he didn't seem to be getting his case to the jury. His witnesses fumbled and stuttered, and even he admitted they did not sound convincing.

"Jerry called another name, and as an ancient, stoop-shouldered man walked toward the witness chair, he paused to whisper in the lawyer's ear: 'Instead of asking me what my name is, ask your first question, "Who are you?" ' 

"Jerry had not the least idea what was coming, but he asked:

" 'Who are you?

"The shoulders of the man in the witness chair straightened. His pale eyes became brighter. His voice was firm and clear:

" 'Private Jacob Hammond, Company I, 14^th Regiment Indiana Volunteers.'

"He was looking straight toward the bench. Judge Wetters, who had been drowsily dreaming of battlefields and marching men, turned his chair to face the witness. He raised his hand in a movement toward a salute, and the trial went on.

"From that instant there was a different atmosphere in the courtroom. The case had turned Jerry's way. The opposing attorney sensed it and tried to change things back his way by confusing the witness. He succeeded only in drawing a soft admonition from the bench:

" 'Counsel must remember the witness is an old soldier.'

Father Simeon Schmitt was pastor of Ss. Peter and Paul Parish when he read his paper to the Cosmopolitan Club on April 24, 1945, five years before he would baptize me into the Catholic Church. His paper was titled "Drawing the Color Line."

The good people at the Indiana Room provided information about Father Schmitt from a parish history rather than from an obituary. Father Schmitt was the first native Hoosier to become pastor of Ss. Peter and Paul, and during his 12-year pastorate he made improvements to the school, and initiated a fund drive to build a new convent. Suffice it to say that, like any conscientious and holy pastor, he addressed and provided for the material needs of the parish and, more importantly, for the spiritual needs of its parishioners as well.

The banner headline in the Herald-Press on Tuesday, April 24, read:

"Report Ring Closed on Berlin."

Dateline, London:

"Russian siege forces were reported late today to have driven into the Charlottenburg area of west-central Berlin, apparently after knifing clear through the heart of the devastated and tottering city.

" 'The imminent fall of Berlin,' a Moscow radio commentator said this evening, 'will break the last vestiges of resistance, the last convulsive throes of the wounded monster.' " 

"On another front, Gen. George Smith Patton's third army troops broke open the outer forces of Hitler's redoubt on a broad frost today. Army tanks and armored troop carriers reached the northwestern bend of the Danube this afternoon after a 10-mile advance through weak and disorganized enemy opposition.

"And in northern Italy, the American fifth army closed in on the great naval base of La Spezia today on the heels of fast-retreating German forces in northern Italy.

War news, local and national, dominated the front page of the Herald-Press. In local news, "Mr. and Mrs. Ray T. Belding, Sr., 519 East State street, have received a telegram from the war department advising them that their son, Cpl. Ray T. Belding, reported missing in action January 4, has returned to military control. The parents received a telegram February 28, advising them that their son was missing and have been scanning pictures and lists of prisoners since that time."

Now to Father Schmitts paper, which concerned a people good enough to fight in a war with the white man in a foreign country, but not good enough to use public restrooms in their own homeland.

Father began his paper with a list of people who have poured into this country from every land, "who had little in common save their zest for freedom and their search for greater opportunities. They included Irish, Germans, Italians, Scandinavians, Russians, Poles, Czecks, Serbs, Greeks, Turks, Jews, and small numbers from the Orient: Chinese, Japanese, Malays, and men from the islands of the Pacific. All these are America.

"One group, the African Negroes, came not of their own will, but as slaves. Although slavery was a common practice at that time, it was strange to find it among the freedom loving peoples of the New World. It bothered the Founding Fathers to the extent that they wrote into the immortal Declaration of Independence those memorable words: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'

Slavery, then, contradicted the American ideal.

"The first slaves were bought in 1690 by Jamestown colonists from a Dutch privateer. But some time elapsed before slavery became institutionalized, and economic factors are important to a historical understanding of its eventual foothold in the land of the free.

"A plantation economy developed in the South for the raising of tobacco, rice, indigo and cotton. Slave labor proved profitable. Slaves were less desirable economically in the North, the land of small farms, commerce and industry. However, by the time of the Revolutionary War, there were as many as 50,000 slaves in the colonies north of Maryland. History affords no evidence of a superior moral sense north of the Mason-Dixon line. Northerner's only scruple against slavery was that it was economically unprofitable, and racial injustice was quite strong in the North, something about which all Americans, and not merely Southerners, can well be ashamed.

"But not all Southerners favored slavery. Many argued that it was basically unjust, and regretted that it existed in their midst.

"The whole matter of slavery could have been settled, had not the South appealed to the old doctrine of states' rights. Abraham Lincoln argued that the union must be preserved. The controversy became so bitter that men were in no mood for conciliation. And so our Civil War was fought.

"Even though the victory of the North was decisive, the victory of the democratic principle as applying to Negroes remained in doubt. The 13^th, 14^th and 15^th amendments were written into the Constitution to abolish slavery and to guarantee Negro rights. But not even the use of military force during reconstruction could force Southerners to accept former slaves as full citizens.

 "When President Hayes withdrew the last federal troops from the South, it was really a defeated army that marched northward. Subsequently, the South won important victories in the court, one of the more important the ruling of the Supreme Court in 1883, which hamstrung the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1875. On the basis of the fourteenth amendment this law had aimed to give Negroes equal rights with whites in hotels, theaters, and public conveyances.

"What really happened was that North and South had entered into a tacit compromise on the two issues over which the Civil War was fought. The South had yielded on the principle of states' rights, and from this time on the supremacy of the national government and the unity of the nation was never seriously challenged. On the other hand, slavery having been abolished, the North yielded to the Southerners' the privilege of handling race relations in their own way.

"The abolition of slavery gave blacks the freedom to move freely from place to place, yet in most respects the Negroe's position has until very recent times little improved. Generally, he has been denied the right to vote, and has received unequal treatment in the courts. Discriminatory legislation has been passed against him, he has been deprived of equal educational opportunities, has continuously faced economic discrimination, and has been denied anything savoring in the least of social equality."  

 Father Schmitt went on to describe the situation that existed in 1945 for the American black, admitting that the obtainment of rights moved at a snail's pace.

Father Schmitt retold an observation from an imprisoned Nazi officer in a Southern prison camp, who had observed the treatment of the "colored folks" in that area. He remarked to an American officer that "America and Germany should not be at war. We should not be fighting against each other, for we uphold the same ideas and ideologies. We Germans subjugate and oppress the Jewish people, an inferior race, while you Americans do the very same thing here with an inferior race, the Negroes.

"Father Schmitt asked: 'What is the difference in principle between the Nordic supremacy in Europe and white supremacy in America? In crumbling Germany we see the fate of that Nordic supremacy, and Americans who have climbed onto the band-wagon of white supremacy are riding for a fall, simply because such an idea cannot live side by side with democracy.'

Father Schmitt mentioned those of the black race who have shattered the myth of white supremacy, notably boxer Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Ralph Metcalfe, Herb Thompson, botanist Dr. George Washington Carver, American educator Booker T. Washington, actor and singer Paul Robeson, opera singer Marion Anderson and Richmond Barthe.

I originally selected 10 papers for perusal, but eventually recognized the folly of taking on such a great number of fascinating essays, discovering right from the start that my editing skills would do battle with my interest in recounting local history. Guess which won.

However, during my visit to the Indiana Room, I discovered a few items of interest:

·        First, the second oldest paper in the collection is "How the Geography of Huntington County Affects the Work of the Huntington Circuit Court," delivered by Sumner Kenner December 18,1936. Something must have happened to the papers between 1895 and 1936, a span of 41 years. I wonder what?

·        Second, the papers weren't listed in chronological order until about 1955. I presume they were logged as they were received prior to 1955.

·        Third, for some unknown reason, the reviews have not been kept or catalogued until recently. I doubt they were even handed in.

·        Finally, the paper titled "Edward Jenner and Smallpox," delivered by F.B. Mitman on Sept. 24, 1940, was written in a beautiful cursive style, with absolutely no mistakes. My guess is that it was the final draft, carefully copied by an assistant.

·        Final thought: History is important, yet we never seem to learn from it. Well, I've learned something from this excursion into the past: All the great minds of the world are not only those whom we've learned about in our history books, but include simple yet intelligent and creative men from all walks of life from all corners of this nation. And we in Huntington are fortunate to have an outlet for the simple, yet intelligent and creative to share their great thoughts. We should all be proud to be Cosmopolitan men. 

What's A Kid To Do?

By Richard G. Beemer

Cosmopolitan Club

February 22, 1994

Author's Web-site note: This was my first paper before The Cosmopolitan Club, so I hadn't a clue what to expect. Allow me to say that the paper was much too long, had no direction whatsoever and put most everyone in the room to sleep. I delivered it at Chuck and Jean Nelson's, who own a produce farm on U.S. 24 East, between Huntington and Roanoke.

PREFACE

There is nothing of profound interest in this paper. It may or may not touch upon topics such as the end and beginning of the world, religion, medicine (wholistic or otherwise), abortion, fraud, the decline of American industrial strength, questionable U.S. automobile manufacturing, sex or the sexes, race or the races, morality, history, sports, politics, the weather, rain forests, spotted owls, the drug culture or the real burning question of the day: Does Charles Manson have a right to receive royalties for selling one of his songs to the rock group Guns 'n Roses. Well ... perhaps it will comment on Charlie. What a mess, Charlie.

     But this paper is about something, but not a specific something.

     If I sound like a cowpoke kicking the prairie grit from his boots and looking for a fight in the Silver Dollar Saloon, just remember that I'm only new to the cosmopolitan cultural crowd of Huntington, looking to find a niche somewhere between the politically correct and those with functional gray matter, the righteous snake-handlers and the barroom bohemians, the doers and the don't-bother-me's.

     So I invite you to just sit back, relax and listen to a few of my reminisces of simpler times, times when the sunrise was more than a distraction you blink at while driving your big-iron thing on wheels hurriedly to work; when melting ice cream sliding down the side of a cone was something you savored rather than silently cursed; times when the sound of an approaching train was a signal to pedal your bike as hard as you could to plop a coin on the tracks, not to beat the train to the railroad crossing in the family minivan on the way to praise your Maker.

     The boys of today are the same as the boys of yesterday, but today's parks and playgrounds, and even some backyards, are no longer the sanctuaries from the adult woes of the world they once were. Don't ask for specific data; it's just a gut feeling I have about growing up in the city. Granted, Huntington ain't the Bronx, but all cities, large and small, are not the same; somehow they've become spiritual prisons, warehouses for downtown souls corrupted by decades of industrial and cultural warfare, a revolution that has yet to see its final battle.

    Perhaps this paper is about being a boy, in a time long before society had to debate whether boy criminals should be prosecuted as juveniles or as adults. But it's even more about me as a youth and how certain people influenced me on my journey to adulthood. It's also about how I hope and pray each day that I'm teaching my children the values, morals and intellectual discernment that will mold them into men of fortitude, humility and grace. So perhaps it is about all the big questions -- life and death, good and evil, heaven and hell.

     By the way, this paper consists of three parts, the beginning, the middle and the end, as do most things written.

 .................................................................

Part I: The Beginning

     Huntington has little, recreationaly speaking, in the form of social entertainment, to offer its adolescents and teenagers on a regular basis. Perhaps I haven't looked hard enough, but the last place I recall observing young Huntingtonians socializing in sight of the scrutinizing public eye was in Marsh's Supermarket parking lot and places nearby. But even the public havens for Huntington's youths have been discouraged as local watering holes by city officials, although those tenuous foxholes are still frequented by the stout of heart, eager to beat their breasts and bark their threats in the face of established citizenry bold enough to challenge their squatters' rights.

     So what's a kid to do?

     Sure, there are the church-sponsored programs that attract the few whose parents take the time to offer a value system, values that have eroded so deeply that those who DO have them are somehow looked upon as today's freaks, and those without those sacred values are touted by some as the hope of our Republic. God help us.

     Not that the '50s or decades later had more to offer; that they had less to offer was perhaps in youths' favor. Remember the tales grandpa and grandma told? Life was certainly much more of an adventure back then, it seemed.

     Is it that there are no challenges left to the imagination of the young other than those offered if thumbed on a keyboard or maneuvered with a joystick? Is it so difficult to play with the toys of the mind? Do simple building blocks and hand-propelled cars require catalog-size owner manuals? Of course they do not. But somewhere along the line, so many of today's children have forgotten how to use their built-in roadmaps.

     I am the father of six children, half mine and hers, half hers and mine. The two youngest, Nicholas A. and Jacob L., five and three respectively, who came to me late in my life, are ours. Often they invite me into their world of innocence to play. How easy it is for me to accept their invitation as I cast a bid on one of their matchbox cars that will drive me down the roads through their imaginary worlds. And what a trip it is in their world.

     Like laughter, there must be something universal about sticks. From a pirate's dagger to a cowboy's pistol, the simple stick transforms my boys to the jungles of Never Never Land and the dusty trails of the Old West. They act out the scenes of things imagined, unlike the boys of Bosnia, where sticks, if sharpened properly, protect from real dangers. I hope that the legislative powers that be don't ever ban sticks, or require a five-day waiting period before one can be used for shooting practice at imaginary bad guys; or that some concerned and caring individual doesn't offer a certificate for a free fuzzy toy for any child who turns in his lethal assault stick. Thank God for sticks.

     My boys will always imagine; I'll see to that. I will give them all that is me, but I can't be guaranteed that someday they will share my politics, my religion or my lifestyle; but right now their imagination is one with mine, and mine with theirs. It's good to be a kid. If only more parents thought so.

     Recently we moved to the country. After a lengthy search, we found a home on five acres, a veritable Garden of Eden for us, where my boys can run and shoot their sticks without Big Brother or the people in the house next door watching over them.

     We moved there for two reasons. First, my wife and I prefer the wide-open spaces, for our lifestyles require ample space for fruit, vegetable, herbal, flower and perennial-plant gardening. Second, I personally hope to pass on to my children an appreciation for the art and science of gardening and as many life-sustaining alternatives to dependency on the Washington liberals/socialists that I can. They will, with my gentle prodding, eat the eggs they'll help gather from our chickens, partake of the pork they will help raise, and of the fruit and vegetables they will help nurture.

     Following a recent lengthy wintery hike through a neighboring woods with my boys, my son Nicholas remarked, "I like the woods, daddy. Can we come here again?"

     "Honey," I replied, "anytime you wish." Lots of sticks there, in the woods. We returned home without words between us. Were Robin Hood or Peter Pan in the vicinity, both Nick and Jake would have soon been their new recruits, ready to thwart the shiftless Sheriff of Nottingham or the cursed Captain Hook. And old dad would have been by their side, by golly. If I have one of those silly inner childs, he certainly is healthy.

     My boys, if I don't mess up, will be given the intellectual tools to learn of the ways of the world -- of the rich, diverse cultures that make up this wondrous earth.

     They will also be taught a respect for all life; that it is God-given and sacred, to be respected from conception to natural death.

     They will learn to feed the hungry, for there are too many empty bellys; to give drink to the thirsty, for there are too many clawing in the dirt desperately; to clothe the naked, for there are too many lying threadbare, dying in the gutters of an  affluent wilderness; to visit the imprisoned, for their's is a loneliness darker than death; to shelter the homeless, for many wander, searching high and low for a nook or cranny to protect them from the elements; to visit the sick, for their's is a life of uncertainty; and to bury the dead, for life deserves its final dignity in a place of eternal rest. 

     If this sounds like an open letter to my boys, it's only because I hope that someday their curiosity will get the best of them and they'll read some of this. I'm an overly worrisome sort of father, but hopefully my cautious nature won't transform them into rebellious sociopaths of the worst kind, like kids sheltered so much from all that is terrible in the world that they sign up for membership in all the wrong places once mom and dad aren't there to hold their hands.

     Parenting is a frightening ordeal at times, but only when I allow the demons of my own insecurities to suggest to me that something horrible could happen to my boys. As an adult, I should be prepared. No one told me that as an older parent I would be so insecure, that every ounce of protection I can muster won't deter the hand of fate when it sneaks from behind and taps the shoulders of the ones I love.

Part II: The Middle

     I mentioned something earlier about simpler times. Allow me to share a few of my simpler times with you.

     So many of the most memorable events of childhood include our grandparents, and it is from these memories that I will glean. Back in the days of traditional families, a kid could grow up within spittin' distance of his grandparents. Not so today, when lots of kids grow up and wouldn't even recognize their grandparents if they ran into them in an airport.

     I remember my Great-grandfather Frank Wood, a whiskey drinking, cigar-chomping railroader, who had the world's largest heart (and liver). His railroader's hat partially obscured his W.C. Field's-like face. A red nose stood out like a beacon (from too much milk and cookies, he'd tell me). A torn T-shirt, wrinkled work pants and leather workboots were his clothing articles of choice. Now retired in 1960, he finally had the time to indulge himself in matters of singular import, such as fishing, or picking through the city's smoldering dumps for hidden treasures. Too naive to notice the difference, to my young mind it was as if John Wayne had come alive, pilgrim, and I was Tom Sawyer, his sidekick, looking for damsels in distress and dragons to slay.

     Grandpa raised worms, made his own cane poles and waded the creek beds with hip boots and a net to catch minnows for bait when the worms wouldn't cooperate. One particular summer afternoon found us wading in a creek, coercing into our nets the tidbits that would surely help us land a leviathan. Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed grandpa reaching his hand into the water, and in a blink he pulled from the stream a giant black snake. With a firm grasp on it, along with a whoop and a holler, he swung it round and round above his head, finally launching it from his grip to land safely back in the water many yards away. I, of course, stood in total awe of this man, my John Wayne.   

     Here was a man who didn't set the best examples, but he loved me and he kept me around, dragging me about town with him to barter with fellow junk collectors and to dismantle discarded appliances at the town dump in those days when people weren't ashamed of their garbage.

     I had my first taste of fire water at the ripe-old age of 10, I think, and were he alive today, I could surely sue him for sharing his sour mash with such an impressionable boy. But back then it was not a criminal case, and today I wouldn't dare suggest to my shrink, had I one, that that event had a thing to do with my existing, nagging neuroses.

     Gramps had his own bedroom, where he would lie in his bed, chew his tobacco and spit it across his bedsheets into a nearby cardboard box filled with sand. He had a great collection and a great appreciation of forbidden magazines, such as Men's Magazine and True Detective, which I would skim through as soon as he'd drop his guard. Above the cardboard table, at which he'd play game after game of solitaire, was a framed poster that read, "Everything I like is either illegal, immoral or fattening." I didn't know the meaning of those words then, but I sure do now, and to tell the truth, they're still the temptations that keep me in line at the confessional.

     His bride, Great-Grandma Helen, rarely invaded his room, for obvious reasons, except to make a charge at changing his tobacco-stained bedsheets and to gather his musty clothes heaped in a corner of the room. They managed to raise three children, and I surmised at a much later age that it must have been decades ago when they were conceived, long before Gramps started his plummet down the slippery slope of questionable hygienic habits.

     I saw him mourn only once, and it wasn't for the death of his woman, for she outlived him by 20 years or so. Jigs, a short-tailed mongrel that accompanied him everywhere, died in a fire that started in Gramp's truck. I 'm not privy to the details of the dog's demise, but I do know that Gramps never found it inside himself to take in another kitchen-pointer to replace Jigs' right-hand position at the helm of his battered Ford pickup.

     My mother would give him holy hell when he'd show up at our house on Clark St., three sheets to the wind, with the latest Playboy pullout crumpled and folded in his shirt pocket. But after the holy hell, he'd set us on his lap and sing something about a monkey wrapping its tail around a flagpole, and the laughter would begin. We'd bounce on his knee till mom screamed "enough is enough." He'd leave as abruptly as he came, a Santa Claus of a man delivering his imprudent gifts to wide-eyed children who still believed in him.

     Gramps finally died when all the physical abuse he'd heaped on himself read him the riot act for the last time. Just 12-years-old at the time, my understanding of death reached a new plateau. I was beginning to understand life's urgency, its impatience with standing in line, its need to get the damn bills paid, the chores done and the obligations fulfilled so one could finally forget about bringing home the bacon and concentrate on casting one's fate to the wind. That's what Gramps taught me: how to cast. 

     Great-grandpa Frank wasn't the only one to impress me in socially unredeeming ways. My great-grandmother tolerated Gramps long enough to see their three children reach maturity, one of whom was my grandmother, Edna Mae Metz, a spittin' image of her father, but in a kinder, gentler manner. Her friends called her Eddie. Her detractors knew better than to call her anything other than that.

     After divorcing Jack Metz, a former golf pro at Huntington's LaFontaine Country Club in the 1930s -- a man I never had the pleasure of knowing -- she raised my mother, as a single parent, in the days when the stigma of divorce was a scarlet letter of failure (unlike divorce today, a decision rendered by more than half of this nation's population as calmly as the pondering of chocolates in a candy store).

     Grandma Mae dolted on all eight of her daughter's children like a surrogate hen, taking us under her wing as if we were her own brood. My mother gave birth to too many children much too quickly, which only added fuel to the anti-Catholic fires that burned fiercely back then. According to the propaganda of the times, we Catholics were second-class citizens who populated the country -- like frenzied field-rabbits -- in hopes of overwhelming the opposition with sheer numbers. It's great to be an American. But I digress.

     Grandma Mae took me into her heart and home on many weekends, giving breathing space to my mother so she could continue her encounters with my siblings and tend to her collection of cloth diapers.

     Grandma Mae worked as a clerk for some time at the front desk of what was the Hotel LaFontaine after the second big war, but I remember her as the tool-crib manager at the old Memcor plant on Frederick St., back when the company was doing a bang-up business in the '50s and '60s manufacturing two-way radios for the military. It was top-secret stuff, I was told, and off-limits to the public, the Commies especially, and the likes of me. But I, determined to visit my grandmother at Operation Memcor -- a mission I accepted -- would not be deterred from my noble quest for Hershey's chocolate and Seven-Up in a 6-ounce green, glass bottle at Oasis Memcor on my long trek home from Huntington Catholic grammar school.

     Although each entrance to the factory had affixed to its doors a boldly painted warning that read "No Admittance by Unauthorized Personnel," or something like that, I took a deep breath and crawled up the shipping/receiving platform and made my way to Eddie Mae. Grandma, here I come!

     As my co-conspirator, she would greet me with a hug, a bright-red lipstick-wet kiss on my cheek and a warning not to breathe a word. "Sit here out of sight and I'll be right back," she'd warn. Between skyscraper-high shelves filled with manufacturing tools, I'd sit on a wooden stool out of sight of Memcor's white-collar police, patiently waiting my proper due of Hershey's chocolate and Seven-Up. 

     Within moments I'd have my needs fulfilled, and I would sit there on my stool, lapping chocolate and swilling bubbly while listening to the background banter between my "other mother" and the rabble who darkened her tool crib. Most of her co-workers soon learned how to ask politely for resharpened tool bits and supplies from a woman who had been bitten too many times in the butt by soldier-boys interested more in her busts than her brains. The veterans, familiar with Eddie Mae's ways and temperament, would come away with pristine tools; the ignorant rustics would find themselves damned to somewhere in the lower rings of Dante's hell, ice-cold from the frigid stare of a self-declared woman of singular mind who was too impatient to suffer fools gladly.

     She was a good woman, as good women go. But as a grandmother she was, in my mind, the mold that should be the standard for the rest of the world.

     She gave all that she was. Typical weekends with this beloved woman would be a couch-potato's nirvana were she among the breathing today, but only a child like I once was could ever appreciate her kind of love and generosity. If I sound like a spoiled brat now, it's only because I learned from her a generosity that one expresses as simply and naturally as singing in the rain. Like her father, she had a heart of gold. If more kids today had grandparents like her, they would know exactly what to do if confronted with a right or wrong situation; at least they would know the difference.

     Like her father, Frank, she was an avid reader of the True Detective magazine genre. Grandma had only one bedroom in her scrubbed-clean duplex, so we kids always bedded down with her on our special nights in her home. While she devoured the trashy murder reports in True Detective, I'd fantasize with Superman comic books, sharing oxygen with her and her pungent Pall Mall cigarettes.

     No sooner than the lights were turned off and I was given my toothless kiss goodnight, the sounds of the evening would sift through the tiny, opened window facing the north. As I waited for sleep to take me, I'd absorb the sounds of the giant, rumbling diesels at the nearby Erie Railroad Yards coupling and uncoupling the cars, their foghorns sounding reveille for the next march north to Chi-town. Within minutes my grandmother, in the early, restless throes of a smoker's sleep, would snort the snore heard 'round the world. The cacophonous harmony of diesel engines and suffocating sinuses became so familiar to me as a young boy, that to this day I am convinced that I appreciate the compositions of the likes of Frank Zappa and Igor Stravinsky as a result of those duets.

     Grandma Mae had her bad habits. But I believe that being righteous is more a philosophy of substance than of symbolism, and she taught me, most of all, an intolerance of bigotry, injustice and hatred; and she also taught me how to know when the tables have been turned by the connivers, how to identify the operators out there who use sympathy and the squeaky wheel to get the attention of good people, folks who often get hurt in the line of duty when on their missions of mercy.  

     To most anyone else, Eddie Mae was an enigma, but to me, Grandma Mae was as pure and simple as people ought to be, as pure and simple as I hope I can someday be.

     She got baptized Catholic while in the hospital when her heart began suggesting to her that all those Pall Mall's were adding up to certain death, a death she should be on the lookout for. When she made her first and last confession, she had gotten as near to making peace with the Divine at the last moment as anyone could hope to flirt.

     She passed away while sitting at her kitchen table, head down in her arms, as close to standing up as one can get at the moment of death. But at least, thank God, she died with her boots on, and her integrity intact.

Part III: The End

     On first thought, I had planned to smother you with depressing statistics on juvenile delinquency, which would be a fitting conclusion to a paper that accentuated the negative.

     On second thought, I wondered what good that would do after "Part II: The Middle" focused on two people who influenced me not so much as a result of their personal bad habits, but because of their genuine love for life and their love for me.

     Perhaps this paper was a bit of navel-gazing, but you're OK and I'm OK, as the pop psychologists of not too long ago used to say, and I'm not fearful of reprise from my fellow man just because I wear my life like a tight-fitting garment, worn perhaps too close to my psyche to protect me from criticism's cold winds.

     But this paper was an opportunity, however, to explain how destiny had breathed in my ear the news I needed to take the chances we all take when we accept the challenges old-man life presents us when we least suspect.

     Nevertheless, I suppose I should attempt to answer the question the title of this paper proposes: What's a kid to do?

     We in this room face future's unknown, and we instinctively know that, in the brief breathing time that remains for us, that not a whole lot will surprise us. But the newborns, those lucky enough to get a high number when their parents choose life over abortion when spinning the wheel of sexual congress, depend on us to be the examples that help to set them free from the nightmare demons that feed on childhood and adolescence.

     There are numerous communities in this country in which parents, because of kidnappings, rape, rage and murder, are forced to hide their children from the wolves in sheep's clothing, who huff and puff at their doors from dusk to dawn, and who follow them through the woods to grandma's place.

     When I was a young boy, the world was my oyster. Today's boys can't even go fishing for fear of losing their bait to lunatics, freed from the Hoosegow of Heinous Crimes because they finally mastered the fine art of acting somewhat normal.  

       What is the point of this paper, you might be asking yourselves? Is it just an opportunity for me to exercise similes and imagery to the point of exhaustion?

     Well, I suppose, I presume that among us are men who have handed down to their children good, wholesome values and a sense of moral discipline. And I hope that yours and mine are aware of the struggles that last a lifetime once those values and moral disciplines have been pounded into their heads. It's not easy being a kid, but it is good to be a kid, and anything we can do to preserve that time in life is immensely important. I want my children to know a certain comaraderie with the good folks, and to know when to draw the line when their peers pressure them with forbidden fruits.

     Someday all kids become adults, but what kind of adults? Are they selfish, or are they generous? Are they loving, or incapable of giving it or receiving it? Are they prayerful, or are they hateful?

     Father Val Peters, director of Boys Town in Omaha, Neb., reassures us that there are no bad boys. He takes in, for a short time, the selfish, the unloving and prayerless outcasts and troublemakers of our fickle society and attempts to show them that there is a better way. This from a celibate man, a man who's never experienced the pride, the satisfaction, the sense of immortality when one is a small part of bringing life into this black and white world. Let us pray that our visits to HIS town are as tourists.    

     I've always found it amusing that insurance companies will divvy up their share of medical costs after the sickness has taken its toll, but never in its prevention. The penal system, too, responds to the evil inflicted by the evildoer with imprisonment and so-called rehabilitation, but is slapped in the face with a recidivism rate of more that 80 percent. It's no wonder, when most of these people are sent back to a prison cell with more amenities than the average workingman can provide with an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. It's GOOD to be incarcerated. Being a criminal is a tough job, but somebody has to do it. By the time they've reached the pearly gates of prison, the hardcore's are beyond help anyway, and their memories of childhood have long been smothered by poverty's pillow, a pillow filled with the down of crimes unimaginable. Where were their grandpas and grandmas when they were needed? Better yet, where were their parents, and what did they do to twist their minds and torture their souls? And -- I must ask -- what didn't they do?

     I see the inhumanity around me and understand why so many of the elderly would rather -- after long lives of witnessing life's daily carnage on the tube -- channel surf to the big sitcom in the sky, to be rid of the cheap immorality plays this society passes along as family entertainment.

Great-grandpa Frank's betrothed, Helen, lived to be 89, and she stayed in her home until her sharp mind dulled with age, spending her last few days in a nursing home, far away from her beloved cats, who loved her best. I'll never forget her praying for the Communion of Saints to take her with them into the clouds when, after Sunday Mass, I'd bring her the spiritual nourishment we Catholics call holy Communion. She could see the silver lining in the clouds then, her inner vision much sharper after sharing in so many Last Suppers. She, too, had stories to tell of her childhood, and hearing them for the hundreth time mattered little to me, for they were good memories, although tainted with tough times.

     I must, in fairness, recount at least one memory of her from my childhood. Often, on my mile-or-so-long walks home from grammar school, I'd head for her home on Frederick St. I used to tell her, more to see her smile than to be truthful, that I could smell her freshly baked cornbread as I crossed the LaFontaine St. bridge, its essense suspending me in mid-air like a cartoon character in utter, animated ecstacy. On any given day, I would be greeted at her front door like a long-lost soul, and shuffled off to the huge floor radiator to warm my frozen toes. Dangling my naked feet above the radiator, I'd feast on butter-saturated homemade cornbread, cinnamon and brown sugar toast and steaming sassafras tea. Soon I'd be on my way, a kiss on my cheek, my belly full and warm. Arriving home later than usual, my parents knew without asking where I had dallied.   

     Just a few more points, if I may.

     First, we exercise both our physical bodies and our spiritual souls, but the body can only take so much, and soon withers away, whereas the soul sticks around until the last nano-second of life, waiting for directions to either the Promised Land or the Rings of Hell. I know that, if heaven is cracked up to be what all of us humans purport it to be, Great-grandpa Frank, Great-grandma Helen and Grandma Mae are sitting at the right hand of the Big Guy in the sky. God bless 'em. 

     Second, Dan Quayle was right about family values, but were he a better speller he would have learned to keep his mouth shut at the appropriate times. Embraced by liberals now that the political ball is in their court, family values, however they are defined by them, will get plenty of lip-service over the next three years, but nothing of substance.

     Third, taught to write tough and edit tight, this paper was an opportunity for me to do neither and to exercise my superb abilities to ramble on ad infinitum. I thank you for your patience, but I may not thank you for your comments.

     Fourth, what about Charlie? Charles Manson, you might remember, shocked the nation after he and his hippie band tarnished the flower-children culture, my culture, with mayhem and murder. As a boy, he knew only loneliness, rejection and hate. No wonder he killed. Incarcerated for life, were he allowed to roam the streets now, he'd find an even greater number of eligible recruits.

     Finally, as a society we've gotten soft on crime, and it's three strikes and you're out, Mr. Clinton tells us. But even I'm smart enough to know that, after that ridiculous statement, there will be even more decent folks out there arming themselves to the teeth. Bill Clinton likens murder to a hunting trip, offering three chances to bag your limit. This is one target who plans to shoot back on the first pitch. The only weapon I've ever owned was a stick, but as man's inhumanity for man increases, I'm seriously considering forming a one-man militia to protect me and mine. I've never been much for guns, but I do respect them and the people who have decided they're a staple of life. And my sons, if they decide to arm themselves, will know better than to use them to play children's games.

     I apologize, my fellow Cosmopolitans, for not focusing on one point. But I could go on and on. Were this my philosophy of life, I could ramble on for several hundred pages, but I'd only put you in a much deeper sleep.

     Let me end this folderol with this: Everything I've written in this paper, one way or another, is an effort to reflect my love of life and my love for my children. My mother and father, who love my boys too, aren't ornery like my grandparents were, but they love my boys as much as Frank, Helen and Eddie Mae loved me. I've just used the word "love" five times. Spoken often to describe everything from one's relationship with food, pets and the weather, it's a word that, if used for the right reasons, at the right times, and offered at ALL times to our children, wouldn't have me, or anyone, asking, "What's a kid to do?" 

POSTSCRIPT

     After you gentlemen wake up from your deep sleep, I would like to invite you to share your memories of growing up. I presume that most of us here had grandparents, and I do not mean to imply, for those of you who never knew your grandparents, that you have no tales to tell. So if the mood strikes you, I would like to hear a tale or two. I'm sure we all would.

Pepper!

A Paper Delivered to the Cosmopolitan Club

February 25, 1997

BY RICHARD G. BEEMER

Milo Meeks, a clerk at Introspect Industries, was the companys calmest, quietest, well-mannered and politest employee. Not a foul word fluttered from his mouth, he dressed impeccably, and could always be counted on to cooperate to the fullest when called upon to give 110 percent on any company project, often putting in overtime at no extra pay for his trouble. Everyone liked him, even the president, who, after 25 years, still called him Miles. Even that never bothered him. Thats Milo, sir, hed say with a smile, and carry on with his duties.

At the end of what was a normal work day, Meeks routinely prepared his work area for the next day, donned his outerwear and, after a friendly farewell to those still milling about, walked to the parking lot and climbed into his car. After buckling up, starting the engine, switching on the headlights and radio, he proceeded slowly from the parking lot to the interstate just outside the companys grounds.

Once on the interstate, a transformation, oh so subtle at first, began. With the Allegro Vivace from Mozarts Symphony No. 41 in C-Major playing softly in the background as he increased his speed to the 65 mile-per-hour limit, the meek and mild Meeks noticed that traffic was heavier than usual. Yet all the motorists were clipping along well above the limit, weaving in and out to pass the slower-moving vehicles. He, too, began maneuvering for a clearer shot at the road ahead. At first somewhat relaxed, his muscles began to tense, and a tiny bead of moisture formed in the middle of his forehead as it became more and more difficult to maintain his speed without jockeying for a better position. By now it was apparent to Meeks, as perspiration began to form in the pits of his arms and his pulse began to quicken, that to maintain his right as an American citizen to be in the lead, more drastic measures were called for. The meek and mild Meeks suddenly morphed into Manifold Man, master of miles, earl of ethyl, duke of overdrive, prince of pistons, almighty king of the road. Cut off from passing a car in front of him by another to his left, he cursed under his breath, turned to face the slack-jawed troglodite and gestured. Like 7 percent of the drivers in America who dont get their way, he gestured with a one-finger salute, only to have the courtesy returned, and snappy too. Then, like 15 percent of the population, he yelled an obscenity at the driver, who of course could not hear him, but who knew exactly, simply by observing the movement of Meeks lips, what two-syllable rebuke spewed forth from his being. This, of course, was followed by an action attributed to another 7 percent of the driving population: he shook his fist. In no time he was swearing, gesturing and shaking his fist in a manner befitting a crazed New York cab driver. To make matters worse, he began pounding on the horn and flashing his lights at the slow-moving moron in front of him (methods employed by 8 percent of drivers). Waiting impatiently to make his move, he found an opening and slammed his 150 horsepower turbocharged, 4 cylinder, 20-valve Audi down into third gear and roared ahead of the pack, smilingly menacingly to himself as he swiftly pulled away.

Twenty minutes and several daredevil maneuvers later, he screeched to a halt just inches from his garage door, calmly exited his car, entered his home, sweetly kissed his wife and children and settled into his easychair to read the paper, not a sign visible that he had, for roughly a half-hour, terrorized a good portion of the commuter population during his drive home.

This little tale may be a tad exaggerated, but it serves as an adequate introduction to the subject of this paper: manners. Even people behind the wheel of a car should have them, but more and more even the nicest, well-mannered and pleasant people transform suddenly and viciously into thoughtless, selfish and rude members of the species once inside their $20,000 investments.

So what about manners, and etiquette too, for that matter? Since childhood, there isnt one of us in this room who hasnt experienced the rigors of learning how to eat properly, to avoid using foul language. to play fair, to respect our elders, to do this and that and to not offend anyone. Yeah right, but its not always easy to maintain that dignity, poise and charm, especially when other adults somehow missed the point in their formative years.

What about those people who haul 13 items into the 10-items-or-less express lane at the supermarket, then have the audacity to stand there and write a check, but of course cant find their expletive deleted courtesy card? A fatal wound to the head comes to mind. But your common sense checks your anger, you grit your teeth and mumble until the offensive lout leaves.

And what about those otherwise sweet and generous people who think nothing of telling you their life story while drooling over a tuna-fish sandwich, with cheese, the sight of which can sicken the strongest stomach? A fatal wound to the head comes to mind. Again, good sense prevails and you do your darnedest not to notice your lunch partners upper palate, gold tooth and tongue as they masticate the mush they have so relentlessly formed.

During the course of thinking about the subject of this paper, I wondered how people from different eras and cultures acted, what was considered proper and decent, what people should and shouldnt do in polite society. In The History of Manners, a college textbook by Norbert Elias, I found some examples worth repeating here.

Professor Elias cited examples from Erasmus of Rotterdams De civilitate morum puerilium, which loosely translated means On the civil demeanor of the Young, in which medieva manners, or the lack of them, were bluntly addressed.

Erasmus observed that, while at table, some devoured rather than eat, as if they were about to be carried off to prison, or were thieves woofing down their booty. Others pushed so much into their mouths that their cheeks bulged like billows. Still others pulled their lips apart while eating, so that they made noises like pigs.

I will now share with you additional rules of etiquette and good table manners deemed appropriate for their times by Erasmus and others.

It is not polite to drink from the dish, although some who approve of this rude habit insolently pick up the dish and pour it down as if they were mad.

Avoid those who fall upon the dishes like swine while eating, snorting disgustingly and smacking their lips.

A number of people gnaw a bone and then put it back in the dish this is a serious offense.

Those who stand up and snort disgustingly over the dishes like swine belong with other barnyard beasts.

To snort like a salmon (snort?), gobble like a badger, and complain while eating these three things are quite improper.

Do not slurp with your mouth when eating from a spoon. This is a bestial habit.

Those who like mustard and salt should take care to avoid the filthy habit of putting their fingers into them.

A man who clears his throat when he eats and one who blows his nose in the tablecloth are both ill-bred, I assure you.

If a man wipes his nose on his hand at table because he knows no better, then he is a fool, believe me.

Do not stuff too much into yourself, or you will be obliged to commit a breach of good manners.

Do not be the first to touch the dish that has been brought in, not only because this shows you greedy, but also because it is dangerous. For someone who puts something hot into his mouth unawares must either spit it out or, if he swallows it, burn his throat. In either case he is as ridiculous as he is pitiable.

Do not keep your knife always in your hand, as village people do, but take it only when you need it.

Rather than subject my fellow Cosmopolitans to medieval observations on blowing ones nose, I felt it more in good taste to spare you those morsels of proper propriety.

But who among us, for one reason or another, has not on occasion spit? Its a practice that was as abhorred in medieval times as it is now.

Here are some examples from the Middle Ages:

Do not spit over or on the table.

Do not spit into the bowl when washing your hands.

Do not spit across the table in the manner of hunters.

Heres one from the year 1530:

Turn away when spitting, lest your saliva fall on someone. If anything purulent falls to the ground, it should be trodden upon, lest it nauseate someone. If you are not at liberty to do this, catch the sputum in a small cloth. It is unmannerly to suck back saliva, as equally are those whom we see spitting at every third word not from necessity but from habit.

This one, from an anonymous author in 1714, is my favorite:

Do not spit so far that you have to look for the saliva to put your foot on it.

By now, I am sure that many here are most grateful that this paper was not scheduled for ladys night. Lets move right along to bedroom behavior.

From the year 1530:

When you undress, when you get up, be mindful of modesty, and take care not to expose to the eyes of others anything that morality and nature require to be concealed.

From the year 1555:

If you share a bed with another man, keep still.

If you are forced to share a bed with a person of the same sex, which seldom happens (remember, this is 1555), you should maintain a strict and vigilant modesty. When you have awakened and had sufficient time to rest, you should get out of bed with modesty and never stay in bed holding conversations or concerning yourself with other matters . . . nothing more clearly indicates indolence and frivolity; the bed is intended for bodily rest and for nothing else.

I have in my library another book, titled Twentieth Century Etiquette: A Ready Manual For All Occasions, by Annie Randall White, which includes, as noted in the introduction, Suggestions for Oriental teas, church festivals, charity socials, costume parties, bazaars, Germans (Germans?), indoor games, outdoor sports, tally-ho parties, masquerades, etc., etc. It was published in 1900. Germans, by the way, is a type of dance.

In the books preface, the definition of etiquette is quite succinct: Etiquette is not a servile yielding up of ones individuality, or a mere cold formality. It is rather the beautiful frame which is placed around a valuable picture to prevent its being marred or defaced. Etiquette throws a protection around the well-bred, keeping the coarse and disagreeable at a distance, and punishing those who violate her dictates, with banishment from the social circle.

This book is sprinkled with hundreds of recommendations for the well-bred, most of which would be considered trite and quaint by modern standards, but should, in my NOT so humble opinion, be required study in our schools.

In the Chapter Home The Life Immortal, under the heading Avoid Evil Speaking, we are given this advice:

Another evil to be avoided in the home circle is the habit of discussing bad stories heard or silly gossip. A son reared under the roof-tree where evil speaking is indulged in, goes into the world poorly equipped to take up the cudgel in defense of the innocent or maligned. Their opinions have been warped and poisoned, until they look with distrust upon all. And a young girl who hears her parents repeating scandals or imputing base motives to apparently good actions, will necessarily, unless she has an inborn purity which leads her to abhor the practice, become a captious, envious gossip, and be shunned as such.

In the chapter Greeting and Leave-Taking, the author shares with us several forms of greeting common to people of foreign countries in the 1900s:

Oriental peoples are very punctilious (that is, meticulous) in their greetings.

The Bedouins salutation has all the tender grace of a blessing, as he places his right hand upon his breast, and bowing low, says, If God wills it, you are well.

The grave and stately Spaniard greets you with God be with you. The gentleman in Poland, as he leaves you, touches his lips to your shoulder, and bids you to Be ever well.

Men of distinction in Japan wear over their shoulder a scarf, the length of which determines their rank. When two gentlemen meet, they bow until the ends of the scarf which each one wears touch the ground. Of course the one with the shortest scarf has to bow the lowest.

A Monbotto of Africa, when he meets a friend, holds out the right hand, and cracks the joints of the middle fingers.

Eskimos salute by rubbing noses together. But probably the most startling mode of salutation is that of the Moors, who greet a stranger by dashing toward him at full speed as if to unhorse him, and when near, suddenly fire a pistol over his head. One must be gifted with considerable presence of mind not to be alarmed at such an effusive greeting.

The Egyptians salutation may be very appropriate for that region, but would offend ears polite in our own land. He very earnestly asks you, How do you perspire? dropping one hand to the knee.

Turks have a more stately greeting. They fold their arms upon their breasts, and bend the head very low.

Remember the advice a few pages back on proper table etiquette in medieval times? Fast forward to 1900, and there are few differences. For example:

Never sop up your gravy or preserves with bread. And do not scrape your plate so as to obtain the last bit, or drink as though you were dying of thirst. It is quite an art to drink gracefully. Dont throw your head back and raise the glass perpendicularly, but carry your glass to your lips, and by lifting it to a slight angle you easily drain its contents.

In the chapter headed Special Suggestions, a variety of general hints are grouped for easy reference:

A dispute about religion is foolish. When it is known that there are fifteen hundred millions of people on the face of the earth, speaking 3,034 tongues, and possessing one thousand different religious beliefs, it will easily be seen that it is a hopeless task to harmonize them all.

Never pick the teeth, scratch the head, blow the nose, or clean your nails in company.

Do not lean your head against a wall. You might soil the paper.

Nicknames are unknown in good society.

Heres one for Dr. Bill Peare, who, had he been around in 1900, would have been banned from the corridors of all respectful institutions:

Do not whistle in the street cars or in a room, or in the elevator or in fact anywhere when you are in the presence of others. There are professionals who make their living by whistling. You are not one of those.

Bob Deal has certainly heard this next suggestion:

Do not write long letters of condolence to those in affliction, or give them a sermon, advising them to bow to the will of Providence.

From a Huntington Public Library book on customs and living habits of people from around the world, Ive collected a number of examples of manners and etiquette that are as diverse as the languages they speak.

In Belgium, it is rude to talk with ones hands in ones pockets.

In Austria, touching the index finger to ones forehead or temple is an insult.

In Bulgaria, it is impolite for men to cross an ankle over the knee or for anyone to put feet up on furniture, and it is rude, as a matter of cleanliness, to touch the lower leg, ankle or foot when eating.

In Cuba, the lack of eye contact, especially in formal conversation, is considered a sign of insincerity or spite. People stand close when talking, often touching or tapping one another when making a point.

In Afghanistan, people typically Sit with legs crossed, and it is impolite to let the soles of the feet face someone else. It is also impolite and considered unclean to use the left hand for passing items, as it is traditionally reserved for cleaning after using the toilet. In many areas, belches are considered a sign of a satisfied diner.

In Australia, winking at women is considered inappropriate. The gesture of forming V with the index and middle fingers, palm facing in, is vulgar. Sniffing several times when one has a cold is impolite.

In Azerbaijan, when an older person or a women enters a room, those present stand to greet him or her. It is impolite to cross ones legs, smoke or chew gum in the presence of others.

In Bangladesh, to show respect to an older person or someone of higher social standing, one usually looks down and speaks only when spoken to. Bangladeshis are sensitive about ones foot touching books or other reading materials. Should a person accidentally touch a book with a foot, the person apologizes by touching the book with the fingertips of the right hand, and then touching the chest and then the lips. Wood for the construction of bookshelves must be quite rare in Bangladesh.

In Benin, when women complain, they often hit the side of their thighs.

Dont get me wrong, Bill. Im not picking on you, but if you ever visit Cape Verde, where they all tend to whistle their favorite tunes in public, youll fit right in.

In Central African Republic, surprise or shock is expressed by slapping the forehead with an open hand, saying either Aye! or Mama!

In Japan, laughter does not necessarily signify joy or amusement; it can also be a sign of embarrassment.

So what about the good old U.S. of A today? In the January 26, 1997, Washington Times, Eric Adler wrote in an article headlined Land of the free, home of the knave, that we are caught up in an uncivil war. Baseball star Roberto Alomar spits in the face of an umpire. Politicians pelt their opponents with slurs and name-calling. Once forbidden words pop up on prime-time television. Teachers are sick and tired of disrespectful students. Students are fed up with belittling teachers.

Its difficult to trace the growth in uncivilized behavior, he says, and there are signs that public discussion about civility is prompting moves to more civil behavior in some quarters. The polls, however, indicate that most Americans think civility has spread like a malignant growth.

In a nationwide poll conducted earlier this year for U.S. News and World Report magazine, 1,005 adults were asked their thoughts about the countrys slippery submerge into the sludge-filled sinkhole of rudeness.

Eighty-nine percent considered incivility a serious national problem; 78 percent felt that it had worsened in the past 10 years. Of those who thought that civility has declined, 84 to 91 percent said that it has helped to foster violence, divide the nation and erode values.

Jackson County. Mo., prosecutor Claire McCaskill noted that had Roberto Alomar found himself in a less controlled, dangerous environment, his spitting into the face of another could have been responded to with a bullet to his head. We see dead people all the time as a result of a slur, a slight, what young people call being dissed, she said.

And complaining about bad manners is as old as bad manners themselves. Mark Twain once wrote, Its a mistake that there is no bath that will cure peoples bad manners. Drowning would help.

So when did Americans become so ill-mannered? Its impossible to pinpoint, most experts say, and others suggest that asking when isnt even the right question. Americans have always been considered a bit rough-hewn, they suggest, as a result of their rich past in both pioneering and conflict. So the better question, the experts say, is when did the consequences for incivility first begin to break down?

The experts tell us that it all started in the 60s and 70s. No surprise here. Regardless of the gains made in civil rights, womens rights and other areas, standard rules of conduct took a thrashing.

My generation pointed to the hypocrisies in our parents lives. Political figures and public policies were unmasked as corrupt. What then happened? Automatic respect Stopped being rewarded to parents, teachers, political leaders, police and other authority figures.

Loose was the name of the game. Looser language, looser clothes, looser language on the movies and on television. The scriptures of decent behavior were re-scrutinized. Put blunt1y, we Americans are enamored with ourselves. The me generation has run amok. So no matter what one does, how one dresses, talks, thinks, smells, curses, belches or spits is OK because, Hey, thats me!

As much as we complain about incivility, we still celebrate and reward the bad boys and bad girls who make their own rules, flout authority, spit into the wind.

Pope John Paul II may be praised and admired as saintly, but its the Dennis Rodmans, Howard Sterns and Madonnas whom Americans and the media help make rich and famous. Bad manners and challenging the status quo equal big bucks. So rather than wearing a scarlet letter for transgressions, we reward bad behavior with book contracts and appearances on the Jenny Jones show.

In closing, to further stress the futility in attempting to get people to show a little respect for one another, even a modicum of manners, I remember, and have recounted numerous times, an incident with my grandmother, God rest her soul.

My grandmother on my fathers side, a farm girl, was a bit rustic, and was known to be generally lacking in the social graces. She never learned to use please or thank you at the dinner table when asking for an item to be passed to her. I took it upon myself one Sunday afternoon to correct her. After filling her plate, grandmother looked up at no one in particular and grunted the word Salt! Everyone was supposed to know that that meant she wanted the salt passed to her. Grandma, thats please pass the salt, please, I said. Oh all right, she responded. Please pass the salt. I gave her the salt, and before I could remind her to thank me for waiting on her, again she looked up at no one in particular, and without so much as a blink, grunted, Pepper!

Review of Pepper, by Rick Beemer

By Dave Carnes

February 25, 1997

Mr. Beemer presents in Pepper an amusing and thoughtful exploration of manners. Such an inquiry should not be considered unusual for an author who brings Roberts Rules of Order to these meetings.

Why do manners or etiquette observations provoke such interest? Perhaps it is our desire to be both an individual and a member of the group at the same time. As Americans, rugged individualism typifies our heritage. That heritage laughs at concerns about custom or politeness. As we remove ourselves from a visible society we become anonymous. As we shelter ourselves in our automobiles (especially with tinted windows) we become Milo Meeks. Anonymity empowers not just lack of manners but it infatuates the ego and dwarfs the id.

Manners run the gamut from those considerate to those absurd. Certainly 16th century manners may appear base to a cultured group such as 20th century Americans. Even the medical profession was guided by Rules of Caring of the Sick as early as the 8th century in Ireland:

No games are played in the house.

No tidings are announced.

No children are chastised.

Neither women nor men exchange blows.

There is no fighting.

The patient is not suddenly awakened.

No conversation is held across him or across his pillow.

No dogs are let fighting in his presence or in his neighborhood.

No shout is raised.

No pigs grunt.

No brawls are made.

No cry of victory is raised. Nor shout in playing games.

No shout or scream is raised.

Mr. Beemers reference to body language manners such as those in Belgium, Austria, Bulgaria, etc. was especially interesting. As you cast your eyes about this meeting tonight you may observe local customs in effect. Eyes fixed rigidly on the speaker; the muffled cough; the sudden erectness of the upper torso when catching oneself falling asleep; the consolidation of the group in laughter.

The paper further explores the decline of civility in America. Mr. Beemer refers to the rough-hewn aspect of our ancestors. Conflict seems to be a legacy in the U.S. The 60s and 70s were decades of great change. Rules for social behavior gave way to individual rights. Trust was eroded. The group was broken down. Constituencies were divided. It was a natural consequence that manners and civility languished. There, in effect, was no group whose disapproval mattered. When rules of etiquette are broken, imprisonment is not the punishment. Manners are enforced only by disapproval of the group. If there is no recognized group or the individual disrespects the group, etiquette has died.

Certainly, manners may be frivolous at times. But is civility ever frivolous? I believe the discussion of civility and manners may encompass vast differences. Where manners may be artificial, civility is deep and enduring. Civility draws from respect and concern beyond the individual. Manners and etiquette may embody silly whims that one level of society uses to stratify another level. As our culture evolves, one hopes civility will endure and manners that promote the common good will mature with our society. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others. He also wrote Your manners are always under examination , and by committees little suspected, a police in citizens clothes, but are awarding or denying you very high prizes when you least think of it.

This Old

Bag O’ Bones

A paper delivered to the Cosmopolitan Club,

Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2005

Reviewed by Dwight Ericcson

While still editor of The Huntington County TAB, and just a couple of weeks prior to starting a new job as community/media relations specialist at Parkview Huntington Hospital, I had made arrangements to interview a local chiropractor to write a story on his success in treating people for repetitive-motion problems and lower back pain.

This chiropractor has a long track record of working with local industries, and important to the story I was to write were the reports he received from industry human-resource directors, one who noted, for example, “significant reductions in lost work days and time taken for an employee to return to work with no physical restrictions.” That quote came from the H.R. director at Eagle Pitcher Plastics in Huntington. Additional testimonies will come later in this paper.

After interviewing the chiropractor, it dawned on me that perhaps my new employer might find my good-news piece on a profession frowned upon, even hated by many in the medical field, to be a bit bold and presumptuous, being that I was the new kid on the block, or ward, if you will.

Chiropractic is not a subject I’ve lost sleep over pondering its validity, but it dawned on me after my interview with the chiropractor that chiropractic seemed to be getting somewhat better press these days, compared to its first 100 years or so, when chiropractors were loathed by most in the medical profession.

Chiropractic was not, I was told by several local Huntington physicians, a subject ever addressed in all the years of their medical education. My impression is that physicians either have strong positions in opposition to chiropractic, or don’t consider it an issue and have no opinion. I have yet to meet a physician who enthusiastically endorses chiropractic, but I’m sure they exist, however far and few between, and it may be that those who have no qualms with chiropractic keep quiet on the subject to avoid ridicule from their colleagues. Neither would I be surprised to discover there are physicians who utilize chiropractic services themselves.

Before getting into the nasty back and forth name calling that has been ongoing with physicians’ and chiropractors’ Hatfield-and-McCoy-like relationship over the years, a brief history.

Chiropractic as we have come to know it has existed for more than 100 years. The first recorded chiropractic adjustment was performed on Harvey Lillard in Davenport, Iowa, on Sept. 18, 1895, by Dr. Daniel David Palmer, a Canadian-born teacher and healer, a rather colorful character who during his lifetime would be a schoolteacher, a farmer, a grocer and eventually a practitioner of “magnetic healing” for a number of years before founding chiropractic.

As a quick sidebar, it should be noted that magnetic healing had nothing to do with magnets. Rather, it was a cross between massage and meridian therapies, which is based upon the concepts of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. Magnetic healing rose up as an alternative to mainstream medicine at the end of the Civil War. It should also be noted that while this alternative concept of healing was being developed, it was still common for medical doctors in 1895 to use blood letting as a method for curing diseases.

Harvey Lillard, the man who was the recipient of the “crack heard ’round the world,” if you will, was a janitor in Palmer’s building where he practiced his magnetic healing. Palmer himself wrote an account of that event:

“Harvey Lillard … had been so deaf for 17 years that he could not hear the racket of a wagon on the street or the ticking of a watch. I made inquiry as to the cause of his deafness and was informed that when he was exerting himself in a cramped, stooping position, he felt something give way in his back and immediately became deaf. An examination showed a vertebra racked from its normal position. I reasoned that if the vertebra were replaced, the man’s hearing should be restored. With this object in view, a half-hour’s talk persuaded Mr. Lillard to allow me to replace it. I racked it into position by using the spinous process as a lever and soon the man could hear as before. There was nothing ‘accidental’ about this, as it was accomplished with an object in view, and the result expected was obtained. There was nothing ‘crude’ about this adjustment; it was specific, so much so that no chiropractor has equaled it.”

Palmer theorized that decreased nerve flow had been the cause of the hearing loss, and that a misplaced spinal vertebra may have caused pressure on the nerves. He further reasoned that, were the spinal column correctly positioned, the body would be healthy.

As might be expected, word got around and soon there was much excitement, including exaggerated claims from zealots. Palmer at first thought he had discovered a cure for deafness, but because chiropractic challenged the traditional medical concept of health, a campaign was begun to discredit and eliminate the profession.

For those interested in the etymology of words, apparently one of Palmer’s patients, a minister, combined the Greek word for “hand” (cheiros) and “done by” (pracktos) to coin the word chiropractic (“done by the hand”).

In 1897, Palmer opened a school. By 1902, 15 people had graduated from the Palmer Infirmary and Chiropractic Institute.

Chiropractors, just as early medical doctors, were not licensed by the government; they simply opened practices after graduating from chiropractic schools. By that time, however, medical doctors were required to be licensed.

That medical doctors were licensed and chiropractors were not created a host of problems for chiropractors throughout the first half of the 20th century. In 1906, in Davenport, Palmer and hundreds of other chiropractors were convicted of practicing medicine without a license. Palmer served 23 days of a 105-day sentence and paid a $350 fine.

One year later, one of Palmer’s former students, Shegataro Morikubo, was arrested in Wisconsin for practicing medicine, surgery and osteopathy without a license. In a landmark decision, the judge and jury agreed that Morikubo was not practicing medicine, surgery and osteopathy. Rather, he was practicing chiropractic.

B.J. Palmer, Daniel Palmer’s son, introduced the use of x-rays in 1910. In 1924, he introduced the neurocalometer to more scientifically reveal the location of out-of-position spinal bones. A neurocalometer is a device, used by upper cervical chiropractors, to get a heat differential reading from the right to left side of the body. Heat is supposed to be an indication of neuro-patho physiology.

Beginning in 1944, World War II veterans could receive benefits. Using the G.I. Bill, returning soldiers enrolled in chiropractic colleges by the thousands.

Chiropractic is now only second to medicine as the largest primary health care provider in the western world. The Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport grew from 24 students in 1906 to 3,100 in 1923. Today, there are 23 chiropractic institutions throughout the world with enrollment exceeding 10,000 students.

Chiropractors are provided on 44 military bases in the United States, as well as in a growing number of Veterans Affairs hospitals. Some 15 million people in the United States regularly visit chiropractors, according to the National Institutes of Health’s Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Although chiropractors claim that increased acceptance of chiropractic by other health care professionals has resulted from advanced diagnostic procedures, scientific research and sophisticated equipment, chiropractic continues to be criticized in some circles as mere quackery.

The medical profession has a long history of opposing alternative healing professions. In addition to chiropractors, in the past medicine has fought to limit the practices of homeopaths, naturopaths, osteopaths, podiatrists, optometrists, dentists and psychologists.

In that group, osteopaths, whose system of healing emphasizes manipulation, do not exclude other agencies, such as the use of medicine and surgery, and over time they allowed themselves to eventually be absorbed by medicine.

Morris Fishbein, who was perhaps chiropractic’s greatest nemesis during his tenure as secretary of the American Medical Association from 1924 to 1949, devoted his career to an anti-chiropractic campaign in professional publications and in the general media. Fishbein even called chiropractors “rabid dogs” and referred to them as “playful and cute … but killers,” and portrayed chiropractors as members of an unscientific cult.

H. Doyle Taylor, who in 1971 was the director of the AMA Department of Investigation, and secretary of its Committee on Quackery, continued aggressive AMA activity to contain chiropractic by introducing a proposal to stop or eliminate the licensing of chiropractic at the state level.

The Committee on Quackery’s objectives for containing chiropractic revolved around four points:

Ensure that chiropractic coverage under title 18 of the Medicare Law was not obtained; work to see to it that a chiropractic accrediting agency was not listed by the United States Office of Education; encourage contained separation of the two national chiropractic associations that existed; and encourage state medical societies to take the initiative in their state legislatures to lobby for legislation that would negatively impact chiropractic.

The Committee on Quackery also distributed propaganda to the nation’s teachers and guidance counselors and managed to eliminate the inclusion of chiropractic from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Health Careers Guidebook. In addition, the committee established specific educational guidelines for medical schools regarding the “hazards to individuals from the unscientific cult of chiropractic.”

In 1975, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Goldfarb vs. The Virginia State Bar that learned professions are not exempt from antitrust suits. The Court next ruled that the Federal Trade Commission can enforce antitrust laws against medical societies. These two suits paved the way in 1976 for five chiropractors to file an anti-trust suit against the AMA and several other health care agencies and societies in Federal District Court (known as the Wilkes Case).

Similar suits were filed in New York and Pennsylvania in 1979. The pressure of these lawsuits forced the AMA, even before these suits went to court, to propose a modification of its Medical Code of Ethics, which prohibited M.D.s from associating with chiropractors. It was not until 1980, however, that the Ethics Code was changed to reflect that each individual doctor may decide whether to accept a patient from or refer a patient to a chiropractor or other limited practitioner.

The lawsuits caused so much fear in the medical profession that Mike Wallace of “60 Minutes” was unable to find an M.D. to take the anti-chiropractic side for a 1979 documentary piece on chiropractic.

In 1980, the Wilkes suit went to court, and the AMA and other defendants were found not guilty of all charges. That decision was overturned and a new trial was ordered by the U.S. Court of Appeals in February 1983.

Judge Susan Getzendanner found the AMA and others guilty of an illegal conspiracy against the chiropractic profession in September 1987, ordering a permanent injunction against the AMA and forcing them to print the court’s findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Several other defendants settled out of court, helping to pay for the chiropractors’ legal expenses and donating to a chiropractic nonprofit home for disabled children.

This decision was upheld in the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1990 and again by the U.S. Supreme Court that same year.

Even with the success of the Wilkes Case and other anti-trust litigation, the AMA continues to this day to wage a campaign against chiropractic, but today’s attacks take the form of over-stated concerns for the safety of chiropractic health care.

A request for the definition of “subluxation” posed to the dapper butler who graces the search engine askjeeves at www.ask.com produced 154,900 hits, but worried that I might throw my body out of whack investigating each and every site from what would be a painfully long period of time in a sitting position, I went with the first hit.

The quick definition is: “Subluxation is a term used by Doctors of Chiropractic to describe the misalignment of the spine resulting in nerve pressure or irritation.”

Stephen Barrett, M.D., who heads an organization called Quackwatch, a Web site containing information about health fraud and quackery, offers a medical definition of the same term: Subluxation “is incomplete or partial dislocation — a condition visible on x-ray films, in which the bony surfaces of a joint no longer face each other exactly but remain partially aligned.” He also states that no such condition can be corrected by chiropractic treatment.

Barrett is a retired psychiatrist who has achieved national renown as an author, editor and consumer advocate. In addition to heading Quackwatch, he is vice-president of the National Council Against Health Fraud, a scientific adviser to the American Council on Science and Health, and a Fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP).

Barrett operates 19 Web sites; edits Consumer Health Digest (a weekly electronic newsletter); is medical editor of Prometheus Books; and is a peer-review panelist for several top medical journals. He has written more than 1,000 articles and delivered more than 300 talks at colleges, universities, medical schools and professional meetings. His 49 books include “Dubious Cancer Treatment,” “Health Schemes, Scams, and Frauds,” “The Vitamin Pushers: How the ‘Health Food’ Industry Is Selling America a Bill of Goods,” and “Reader’s Guide to ‘Alternative’ Health Methods.” His media appearances include Dateline, the Today Show, Good Morning America, ABC Prime Time, Donahue, National Public Radio, and more than 200 other radio and television talk show interviews.

Barrett notes that some chiropractors describe subluxations as “bones out of place” and/or “pinched nerves”; some think in terms of “fixations” or a loss of joint mobility, he says; some take a middle ground that includes any or all of these concepts; and there is even a small minority who renounce the notions altogether.

Barrett also says that chiropractors disagree on whether or not subluxations are visible on x-rays. “Straight” chiropractors, as he calls them, believe they are visible and that everyone gets them; most others (“mixers,” he calls them) define subluxations loosely and see them when it suits their convenience, such as when they need to acknowledge them to get paid by Medicare.

In 1972, to enable payment, chiropractors held a consensus conference, says Barrett, that redefined subluxations to include common findings that others could see. Their document describes x-ray manifestations of 18 types of subluxations, including “flexion malposition,: “extension malposition,” “lateral flexion malposition,” “rotational malposition,” “hypomobility,” “hypermobility,” “aberrant motion,” “altered interosseous spacing” and “foraminal occlusion.”

Barrett maintains that some of the terms are just fancy names for minor degenerative changes that occur as people age.

In 1998, the Association of Chiropractic made an attempt to unify chiropractic terminology and issued the following definition:

“A subluxation is a complex of functional and/or structural and/or pathological articular changes that compromise neutral integrity and may influence organ system and general health.”

Barrett calls the definition “poppycock” and states that the vast majority of spinal problems do not affect the body’s organs or general health. If you would like to have some fun, he suggests, ask a chiropractor to list the diseases or general health problems that spinal manipulation can cure.

The battle between the medical profession and chiropractic has a long and bitter history, so it’s only fair after hearing from Barrett that we hear from the other side as well. My information in defense of chiropractic comes not from chiropractic history books or the Internet, but from a local chiropractor, one who has meticulously documented his work over an 11-year period.

The information he provided me was compiled while working with and interviewing several employers in Huntington County and finding out what their most important workers’ compensation concerns are.

Getting employees back to work as soon as possible after an injury, he says, is one of the greatest concerns of employers, and he claims that his office returns injured employees to work without restrictions faster than any other provider in the area. Having treated more than 1,200 workers’ compensation injuries since 1992, he states that his office has averaged less than one-half day lost from work for repetitive motion injuries, two-and-a-half days for lower back injuries and less than two days for miscellaneous strains and sprains.

The following statements are documented comments that appear in letters sent to the chiropractor from employers.

From United Technologies: “In comparison, we have noted the expedient return to work with the chiropractor’s treatment of our employees versus those who have been treated by the conventional methods.”

From Pro Resources Inc.: “The employees we sent to the chiropractor were rarely restricted to light duty and almost never lost a day of work.”

From Eagle Pitcher Plastics: “There has been a significant reduction in lost work days and time taken for an employee to return to work with no physical restrictions.”

From Shuttleworth: “The injury costs prior to this chiropractor were what I would consider out of control … sending patients from one doctor to another almost weekly, including physical therapy, at high cost. Our lost work days and cost of medical treatment has dropped tremendously under this chiropractor.”

I counted 20 letters of reference from managers, occupational health nurses, H.R. directors and the like at organizations and industries in Huntington County and surrounding cities, such as Albion and Columbia City. Each person had nothing but praise for the chiropractor’s ability to treat their employees and avoid costly surgeries and physical therapy, and get them back to work quickly.

The cost savings for workers’ compensation to employers, especially as the nation sees rising health care costs for companies and their employees skyrocket, has been significant.

One H.R. director wrote: “Between 1989 and 1992, our repetitive motion injuries cost almost $200,000 for surgery and over $100,000 for back injury surgery with lost days totaling 1,000 days, all for just 11 employees. From June 1992 through June 1993, a total of 33 employees were treated in the chiropractor’s office for a total cost of $12,067. None of these 33 employees have required surgery.”

The safety director for another company noted, “Even though there are several medical facilities around this area, we send our associates over 40 miles away to the chiropractor’s office because we know he will give quality treatment with terrific results.”

Only 1 percent of the more than 1,200 workers’ compensation injuries for low back, rotator cuff and repetitive motion injuries treated in the chiropractor’s office required surgical intervention. Also, in many cases, he was successful in avoiding surgeries for employees already scheduled for surgery prior to their initial visits to his office.

The employers, from what I can tell, believe that traditional medical treatment for many of their common employee injuries seem to result in long-term, expensive surgery and physical therapy.

Our friendly chiropractor claims that covering up the symptoms through the use of muscle relaxers, anti-inflammatories or pain killers ignores the true cause of the injury, the biomechanics. He likens it to placing a bucket beneath a leaky roof to catch the water, which addresses the symptoms of the leaky roof but does nothing to correct the condition. He believes that by ignoring the mechanics of the condition, it is more likely to recur. By treating the biomechanics of the injury, the recurrence rates are far less, he says.

His results, supported by detailed statistics, bear this out.

It’s not surprising to me then, that employers allow their employees to seek out chiropractic treatment, and that many insurance companies, too, are more than happy to concur.

The results of chiropractic care, of which I just spoke and which are supported with additional data, are difficult to argue away.

Second, health care costs in the United States, although the best anywhere, are skyrocketing, and by several measures, health care spending continues to rise at the fastest rate in our history.

Total national health expenditures increased by 7.7 percent in 2003 (the latest year that data is available) over 2002 — four times the rate of inflation in 2003.

In 2004, employer health insurance premiums increased by 11.2 percent — nearly four times the rate of inflation. The annual premium for an employer health plan covering a family of four averaged nearly $10,000. The annual premium for single coverage averaged $3,695.

Between 2001 and 2003, increases for national spending for prescription medications averaged 14 percent.

Many experts agree that our health care system is riddled with inefficiencies, excessive administrative expenses, inflated prices, poor management, inappropriate care, waste and fraud. These problems significantly increase the cost of medical care and health insurance for employers and workers, so it’s no wonder employers and employees are looking around.

I have a proposal I’m sure will not be taken seriously, but I make it anyway. It seems to me that the best alternative for the medical profession is to embrace chiropractic and make it its own. Why? A couple examples of how slow we are to try new things.

It took centuries for obstetrics to get to where it is today, early on thought to be beneath the dignity of physicians, and social customs throughout the ages made physical diagnosis awkward, keeping the physician’s eyes and ears away from his patient of utmost chaste importance.

Untrained midwives did the work, and it wasn’t until the 17^th century that the first school for midwives was established in Paris. William Smellie, considered the father of English obstetrics, attempted to bridge the gap between modesty and medicine as he delivered babies under sheets that extended from the mother’s shoulders to his. Over time, physicians took ownership and gave the process of birth dignity and insurance that the best possible care is taken to bring children into the world.

Joseph Goldberger’s theory in the early part of the 20^th century on pellagra (puh-LAGG-ruh), Italian for “rough skin,” was that it was a dietary disorder. It was thought by the medical establishment to be an infectious disease.

Pellagra attacked people who, largely because of poverty, had diets that were often restricted to corn meal, salt pork, lard, and molasses. Milk, meat, and eggs were conspicuously absent but, when these were added to the diet, their conditions dramatically improved.

In institutions such as orphanages and prisons, Goldberger observed, the children and inmates contracted the so-called disease, but the staff never did. He knew that infectious germs did not designate between inmates and employees.

Goldberg requested shipments of food, which were fed to children in two Mississippi orphanages and to inmates at the Georgia State Asylum. Results were dramatic. Those fed a diet of fresh meat, milk and vegetables instead of a corn-based diet, recovered from pellagra. Those without the disease who ate the new diet did not contract pellagra.

Another of Goldberger’s experiments demonstrated that the existence of a particular substance that when removed from the diet of healthy individuals resulted in pellagra. With the cooperation of Mississippi’s governor, Earl Brewer, Goldberger experimented on 11 healthy volunteer prisoners at the Rankin State Prison Farm in 1915. Offered pardons for the participation, the volunteers ate a corn-based diet. Six of the 11 showed pellagra rashes after five months. Their symptoms, in addition to the rashes, included weakness, diarrhea, weight loss, irritability, depression, confusion and memory loss.

Although many of Goldberger’s colleagues sung his praises, others continued to doubt him. He was challenged in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and had even been referred to by another that he was “half-baked.” Still others thought the whole experiment a fraud.

More than thirty years later, after his death in 1929, it was found that the missing nutritional element was niacin, or Vitamin B3.

My point is that all good things take time, and I believe that it’s only a matter of time before chiropractic will be fully embraced by the medical profession, but only after the turf battles, the egomaniacal name-calling, the legal wrangling and false accusations take a back seat to sensible and intelligent dialogue.

Were I the CEO of a large hospital complex, I would propose an extensive program of research to address how chiropractic and medicine could co-exist and cooperate with each other professionally under one umbrella.

Wouldn’t it be nice if a physician — blessed by the medical establishment on high — could recommend a chiropractor to a patient if, in his professional opinion, his recommendation would result in effective treatment for the patient and less cost for the patient and his employer as well? And wouldn’t it be nice if a chiropractor — aware of the limitations of his profession — would recommend a physician to a patient if, in his professional opinion, the patient required medical attention he could not provide?

I think also of patient allegiance. Wouldn’t the CEO of a large hospital complex, one that competes for patients with other large hospital complexes, build trust and loyalty in the community by providing a chiropractic option?

And, were I the CEO of a large hospital complex, there would be a chiropractor’s clinic on the premises of each and every hospital associated with the corporation, and it would be marketed as aggressively as cardiac and cancer care. 

I think, then, were someone like me, an old bag o’ bones, to require serious surgery for a worn-out heart or for a disease that only a medical specialist could address, I would remember that large hospital complex whose affiliate doctor had sent me to a chiropractor for a minor problem rather than prescribing unnecessary surgery, saving me, and especially my employer, thousands of dollars.

That, I believe, would be a huge public relations success story.