The child is father to the man....
I was kind of noodling about this idea--about the influence of who we were on who we are.
I grew up in such a strange time--and such a remarkable time. What was happening in the world was just as relevant to our own lives as what was happening in our homes. I grew up within a culture where world events shaped our own souls--a world where we were just learning, through our black and white television sets, that we could be touched by events a world away, and that we could care about people on the other side of the planet just as much and just as easily as those things that happened in our own neighborhoods, or even our own homes.
My nostalgia is different than a lot of people's who are younger than me. Oh, there are memories of family events and school and friends and such--but I have to say that there are lots of memories that touch my heart that came only through the television screen, or from the funny little speaker on my transistor radio, tuned mostly to the AM band, where a lot of the true, dear friends of my childhood lived.
Those memories are often more real than who my friends were in the fourth grade.
I came to believe, as a glorious example, that there was really no higher, more real, and truer love that one could find than this:
More romantic than violins, more misunderstood than rocket science, more beautiful than anything in the world--more simple and sweet than a sleeping baby.
And more real and solid than a mountain.
I believed, fervently, that finding a love like that is the greatest achievement in anyone's personal life.
I still do.
I felt a lot about Chet Huntley the way I felt about my Dad--that he was a solid, consistent, comforting presence that showed up around dinner time every night, to the strains of the second movement of Beethoven's Ninth (you can listen to it here by poking the "second movement" clicky, just the first few moments of it, and know that this is how I knew it was dinnertime--it still makes me remember good smells from the kitchen and getting ready to sit down at the table in the evening, and my Daddy still in his white shirt, but with his tie off and the collar open).
David Brinkley was kind of his loyal sidekick--I still remember him when he was fresh-faced and young, rather than as one of the elder statesmen of the news media.
So much happened in the Huntley-Brinkley years--so much that I cared about, passionately, even as young as I was. So much happened on that tube that shaped my life--Kennedy, Vietnam, the Mercury astronaut program, Martin Luther King,the riots (there was one year when I was little that we were nervous about going to the Jersey shore, as we always had in the summer, because the threat of a riot, where the whole city burned, was very real) and peace marches and concerts where all of the gods of music culture assembled for next to no money at all because it was all about the MUSIC--all of these moments that shaped the face of a nation shaped my own, at a time in my life where the influences were most likely to have the greatest impact.
And I find, as I think about things, that the child who watched the news with Huntley and Brinkley every night while contemplating her lima beans, is very much the parent of who I am now. That there were ideas and cultural movements at that time that still have the power to inspire me.
Ideas I never really let go of, and that make me who I am.
Which is why I often get discouraged when I watch current American politics and the current candidates, because they, all of them, feel flat and dead and false and uninspired to me.
I don't believe in them--not the way I believed in the American Camelot.
Of course, there has been, since that time and especially after Richard Nixon (who often, at this point, looks like a saint, considering the kind of dirt and sludge being dug up about current leaders), a general increase in cynicism in me regarding politics and culture--every idol has feet of clay, and every icon ultimately turns tarnished and sullied under the scrutiny of the prurient eyes of today's press, who straight-facedly report on Brittney Spears as if she were anything close to important.
Hey, I grew up with John Glenn. I grew up with real heroes.
I somehow can't work up a lot of sweat about Brittney Spears, and find our current obsession on all of that glittery, tinsel-y, celebrity schlock absolutely laughable--if I weren't too busy puking.
But the child is the father of the man, and inside me there is still the person who longs to hero-worship something of those things back then, something that even vaguely resembles it. Something simple, and strong, and comforting in its presence.
Something real, and dignified, and uplifting.
Something like Chet Huntley, who, in his final broadcast, said:
"At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I would say to all of you: be patient and have courage, for there will be better and happier news one day, if we work at it."
And he believed that.
So do I--it was what I was taught in my most formative years.
Which is why I sometimes look at the world and wonder how we got so far from there, in such a short time.
"Goodnight, Chet..."
"Good night, David. And good night for NBC News."
I grew up in such a strange time--and such a remarkable time. What was happening in the world was just as relevant to our own lives as what was happening in our homes. I grew up within a culture where world events shaped our own souls--a world where we were just learning, through our black and white television sets, that we could be touched by events a world away, and that we could care about people on the other side of the planet just as much and just as easily as those things that happened in our own neighborhoods, or even our own homes.
My nostalgia is different than a lot of people's who are younger than me. Oh, there are memories of family events and school and friends and such--but I have to say that there are lots of memories that touch my heart that came only through the television screen, or from the funny little speaker on my transistor radio, tuned mostly to the AM band, where a lot of the true, dear friends of my childhood lived.
Those memories are often more real than who my friends were in the fourth grade.
I came to believe, as a glorious example, that there was really no higher, more real, and truer love that one could find than this:
Click to viewMore romantic than violins, more misunderstood than rocket science, more beautiful than anything in the world--more simple and sweet than a sleeping baby.
And more real and solid than a mountain.
I believed, fervently, that finding a love like that is the greatest achievement in anyone's personal life.
I still do.
I felt a lot about Chet Huntley the way I felt about my Dad--that he was a solid, consistent, comforting presence that showed up around dinner time every night, to the strains of the second movement of Beethoven's Ninth (you can listen to it here by poking the "second movement" clicky, just the first few moments of it, and know that this is how I knew it was dinnertime--it still makes me remember good smells from the kitchen and getting ready to sit down at the table in the evening, and my Daddy still in his white shirt, but with his tie off and the collar open).
David Brinkley was kind of his loyal sidekick--I still remember him when he was fresh-faced and young, rather than as one of the elder statesmen of the news media.
So much happened in the Huntley-Brinkley years--so much that I cared about, passionately, even as young as I was. So much happened on that tube that shaped my life--Kennedy, Vietnam, the Mercury astronaut program, Martin Luther King,the riots (there was one year when I was little that we were nervous about going to the Jersey shore, as we always had in the summer, because the threat of a riot, where the whole city burned, was very real) and peace marches and concerts where all of the gods of music culture assembled for next to no money at all because it was all about the MUSIC--all of these moments that shaped the face of a nation shaped my own, at a time in my life where the influences were most likely to have the greatest impact.
And I find, as I think about things, that the child who watched the news with Huntley and Brinkley every night while contemplating her lima beans, is very much the parent of who I am now. That there were ideas and cultural movements at that time that still have the power to inspire me.
Ideas I never really let go of, and that make me who I am.
Which is why I often get discouraged when I watch current American politics and the current candidates, because they, all of them, feel flat and dead and false and uninspired to me.
I don't believe in them--not the way I believed in the American Camelot.
Of course, there has been, since that time and especially after Richard Nixon (who often, at this point, looks like a saint, considering the kind of dirt and sludge being dug up about current leaders), a general increase in cynicism in me regarding politics and culture--every idol has feet of clay, and every icon ultimately turns tarnished and sullied under the scrutiny of the prurient eyes of today's press, who straight-facedly report on Brittney Spears as if she were anything close to important.
Hey, I grew up with John Glenn. I grew up with real heroes.
I somehow can't work up a lot of sweat about Brittney Spears, and find our current obsession on all of that glittery, tinsel-y, celebrity schlock absolutely laughable--if I weren't too busy puking.
But the child is the father of the man, and inside me there is still the person who longs to hero-worship something of those things back then, something that even vaguely resembles it. Something simple, and strong, and comforting in its presence.
Something real, and dignified, and uplifting.
Something like Chet Huntley, who, in his final broadcast, said:
"At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I would say to all of you: be patient and have courage, for there will be better and happier news one day, if we work at it."
And he believed that.
So do I--it was what I was taught in my most formative years.
Which is why I sometimes look at the world and wonder how we got so far from there, in such a short time.
"Goodnight, Chet..."
"Good night, David. And good night for NBC News."