Life could be a dream

Even at my age it’s still awesome.

There on stage for Father’s Day at Mount Vernon, singing an inspiring version of “Amazing Grace” with 30 other retirees in a chorus I hadn’t even heard of when I left the daily work grind a dozen years ago with nary a look behind, it dawned on me: Life remains a wondrous adventure.

And as I see old friends depart the scene, I appreciate my own adventure even more. How fortunate that I have been able to:

--Celebrate my namesake’s high school graduation. Benjamin Roscoe Blankenship IV graduated from Brooke Point High School this month, becoming the first but hopefully not the last Aquia Harbour native and grandson of mine to do so.

--Take son Buddy’s advice nearly a dozen years ago and apply to write a column for the Stafford County Sun. Nearly 500 articles later, it’s still a pleasurable diversion.

--Join with neighbors Joe Duffey and Charley Chaplin (r.i.p.) a decade ago in forming the monthly breakfast club, ROMEO (Retired Old Men Eating Out) in Stafford, which regularly attracts some 25 friends and neighbors.

--Benefit greatly from technology. Specifically I’m thinking of the medical and personal computer kind.

In the 1980s my wife had a root canal operation on a tooth. She suffered a lot. A few years ago I had one. It wasn’t bad at all. More seriously, I might not be here today were it not for heart stents, developed only within the past few years. Now I have four, inserted after I suffered severe chest pains late last summer. I now weigh less and feel much better than for several past years.

Also, how can I say enough about the benefits the PC brings to a retiree? It was the first thing I bought after leaving my cushy longtime federal job as a boss with secretary. True, I had fooled around with a typewriter, but with my PC, composition became a delight rather than a chore, and still is.Further, e-mail would become the great way to communicate with former classmates and the Internet would add entertainment and education.

I can easily do without a cell phone, but not my PC. Or my riding mower.

That’s something else that is simply grand. It reminds me of my days as a teen, driving my dad’s Farmall M tractor, happily plowing his fields on the farm outside the town where we lived. But then, when it came to mowing the lawn, the boy-powered push mower was my hell on wheels, never sharp enough. I hated it.

Which reminds me: Mark Twain once wrote something I didn’t find to be true. "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

I never questioned my dad while growing up. He knew it all. Trouble is, after I got my own family and tried working for him, he still knew it all. In a sense he thought I should still be mowing the grass with the push mower.

Nevertheless, my whole life has been a series of lucky choices and coincidences. My military service was between wars. My first and only serious love affair lasted just six months and ended with marriage, which has lasted 51 years. My writing talent was unearthed when I was forced, as a junior officer, to contribute a weekly column to the local newspaper about our Army post’s activities. Later, my successful career in the federal service directly resulted from being fired from a PR dead-end job with a D.C trade group.

And now this. Early this summer on our front porch, Carole Lee and I sat in wonderment. As usual, we had bought hanging-basket flowers. One of the baskets attracted nesting robins. Noting unusual about them, but earlier homemakers on our porch had been doves and wrens, if memory serves. Soon, we discovered four large blue eggs. The robins were very possessive. They would hardly budge when we’d pass by. Finally, all four eggs hatched. All the large chicks thrived despite my forebodings, since the nest was so crowded.

Sigh. Way too soon and before we knew it, all the happy family had flown away. Sure enough, and soon enough, so will we.
______

* “Life could be a dream If only all my precious plans would come true If you would let me spend my whole life loving you Life could be a dream sweetheart”
— from Sh-Boom, by the Crew-Cuts
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Car tip: Behave is pulled over

Oh no! While washing the messy tree pollen and bird droppings from my car the other day, I chanced to glance at my state inspection sticker.

Uh, oh, It had expired two months ago. This most recent sign of senility, so vividly expressing itself to myself, made me thank goodness we older folks don’t often get pulled over by Sheriff Charlie Jett’s troopers for infracting the traffic laws.

For instance, I must confess my most common violation consists of speeding up to beat the red light. Seems that “yellow” for many of us means “hurry.” Yet, I’ve never been stopped for doing it. Admittedly I once got a ticket in the mail, back when Fairfax County was raising money by secretly operating red-light cameras at intersections. I coughed up $50 without complaint. At least no cop was there to check on my state sticker.

But now the state is permitting red light cameras again, so I’d better change that driving habit. Otherwise, I’ll be adding to the financial incentives our local governments now have to put traffic cameras everywhere. Down in D.C., it’s a major funding source.

All over Virginia, local bureaucrats are surely drooling over the anticipated loot. One idea for keeping them from turning the red light cameras into a money factory arose in a letter to the Washington Post the other day: Don’t fine violators in cash; add points to their driving records. Watch the bureaucrats squash that notion like a bug. The only time in recent years I got pulled over was late one night while driving through Stafford’s wayside area on U.S. 1. Slowing to a nervous stop, due to the flashing lights in my rearview mirror, I tried to imagine what I might have done to merit this attention, from a state trooper no less.

A pleasant young woman wearing that ridiculous cavalry hat shone her flashlight in my face and asked me if I had been drinking. Not a thing, I responded truthfully. Well, sleepy perhaps, since I had been observed weaving a bit in the lane? Maybe so, I responded. With a cheerful admonition to pay closer attention to the road, she waved me on.

I feel certain, in retrospect, that she was trooper Jessica Cheney, the young lady who later got killed by another driver just a bit further north on U.S. 1, across from the skating rink, while directing traffic around an accident. The Route 610 bridge over the Interstate was named in her honor.

What if it had been a male, black trooper instead who stopped me that evening? Or what if I had been the black? I suspect it would not have made any difference. Yet, recent stories about traffic stops being racially influenced make me wonder.

Although a federal study finds that police are equally likely to pull over drivers regardless of race, blacks and Hispanics are much more likely to be searched and arrested. True, the study doesn’t constitute “proof that police treat people differently along demographic lines...”

But we can guess, so let’s do. White folks live a lot longer than others, and when we older citizens get stopped, we react—from long training—with respect for the law; in other words, like sheep. Younger drivers and minorities with contrary attitudes invite closer scrutiny. They’re also more likely to be drinking or snorting (whatever that means), I’d guess.

Also, I suspect some ad-hoc profiling goes on among the law enforcers. And “driving while black” must be a particular burden, as claimed, along with the Hispanic accent.

But all that is hearsay to me. While I have had a few accidents over the years, the cops have been kind. They have earned my respect. I have nothing but good to say about Stafford’s deputies, maybe because I’ve never had reason to think otherwise. I understand our county has a reputation among I-95 drug runners for being mighty tough on their kind, so they tread softly (acting white?) while passing through.

Toughness can come in handy on occasion. In my family’s early years here in Aquia Harbour, a young man from outside was harassing my daughter. We had alerted our local police to the fact he might try to come to our house and harm her.

Sure enough, he was spotted entering our community and the patrol man on duty assured us he would be herded right back out. Soon the culprit drove slowly past our house, followed closely by a squad car.

Later I learned the cop had stopped him, pulled him from his car and slammed him up against the hood, with the gentle admonition that he’d be shot on sight in the future. Thanks, former cop; the culprit never drove by again. Overzealous enforcement tactics?

Whatever.

Quotes to make you think

For your summertime browsing, check these quotations, gleaned from a growing and burdensome mass on my desk of torn-out items from newpapers, magazines and Internet blogs. They may make you think. I hope so. As President Kennedy once commented, "Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

I’m uncertain how well, if at all, these morsels may relate to one another except that they caught my fancy for one reason or other. See if you can detect any biases in my selection.

* Our elite softies: “Among our opinion-shapers and political leaders, passivity toward the illegal-alien invasion aligns roughly, though not exactly, with passivity toward global jihad…Contrast this passive stance…to the hyperactive policies urged by many leaders on global warming – a theoretical threat supposedly justifying bigger government, vast expense, and widespread sacrifice. What you see is an American elite that has lost its nerve, its head, its soul, or all three.”-- Author John Andrews of the Claremont Institute.

* Build the fence? “Even if the border could miraculously be made airtight…it would do nothing to stop foreigners from coming on tourist or student visas and then staying after they are supposed to have left…as many as 45 percent of the foreigners here illegally arrived with the blessing of the law.”—columnist Steve Chapman.

* Jay Leno: “The President said today he would go along with Congress' request to establish benchmarks regarding Iraq. For example, the Iraqi government would have to show results by certain dates before theyare given any more money. Forget Iraq. Why don't we try that here?”

* White House critique: “I suspect the White House and its allies have turned to name calling because they are defensive…they know they have produced a big and indecipherable mess of a bill [on immigration]—one that is literally bigger than the Bible, though as someone noted last week, at least we actually had a few years to read the Bible.”—columnist Peggy Noonan.

* Bush Bashing: “As for President Bush, it was the cowardice and incompetence of his Administration that led Mr. Libby to this pass [jail sentence for perjury]. Feeling ‘terrible’ won’t keep his man out of prison.” –Wall Street Journal editorial.

* We’re getting cleaner. Notes blogger Henry Payne. “…as Joel M. Schwartz reveals in a National Center for Policy Analysis study, ‘pollutants have been reducing steadily for the past several decades.’ Schwartz points out that air quality in America's cities is better than it has been in more than a century. Between 1980 and 2005, lead air levels dropped 96 percent, sulfur dioxide reduced 63 percent, and carbon monoxide concentrations fell 74 percent…All this improvement has come at a time of increased motor vehicle use, energy production and economic growth.”

* Hooray for Jamestown. John Rolfe arrived in Jamestown in 1610. “He began experimenting with tobacco seeds he'd brought from the Caribbean. By 1630, Virginia was exporting 1.5 million pounds of tobacco to England. Jamestown became a profitable colony shortly after Rolfe started growing tobacco, and England's foothold in the New World was secure. To the PC crowd, Jamestown is all disease, genocide, slavery and ecological devastation. To wiser heads, it represents the American values of hard work,self-sufficiency, entrepreneurship and community” --New Hampshire Union Leader

* Cause and effect: “It’s one of those delicious moments when Washington’s hypocrisy is on full and unembarrassed display. On the one hand, some of America’s leading politicians condemn high gasoline prices and ...On the other, many of the same politicians warn against global warming and implore us to curb our use of fossil fuels…” –columnist Robert Samuelson.

* T.S. Eliot (1888-1965): “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm—but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

* No fire in the belly? “…the emergence of Thompson shows that a fatigued Republican Party is not interested in making any difference at al—just in hanging on. What commends Thompson…is his TV fame. If that’s all it takes, Thompson can look forward to being more than a president. He’ll be an American Idol.”—columnist Richard Cohen.



* Re:Inequality. “A new study by the Congressional Budget Office says the poor have been getting less poor…low-wage households with children had incomes after inflation that were more than one-third higher in 2005 than in 1991…The earnings of these poor households are about 80 percent higher today than in the early 1990s.”—Wall Street Journal

Who knew?

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Shut the door, then assimilate

We enjoy being around people like us. But when others move in, it can make us uncomfortable until they become more like us.

When they adopt the same rules we do in our community, then we tend to become friends and not just neighbors.

Thus in my gated community of Aquia Harbour—a historic first and largest for Stafford County—we share a common bond in paying for extra security and amenities and having a say in management.

Soon after I moved here in the late 1970s, I was at a monthly meeting of our homeowners’ board of directors. There sat director Kenneth Cundiff, who happened to live right down the street. So this is an integrated community, and that’s OK, I thought. For I found Ken and his wife to be great folks. First of all, they loved Aquia Harbour, too, despite our early travails.

There were other black residents in those early years, like today, and all just as neighborly. The question here of racial exclusivity or harmony has never arisen to my knowledge. Instead, our community’s tendency to unite, often against outside pressure, has served us well.

Early on, the county had threatened to withdraw school bus service unless we fixed our roads, which remain--although greatly improved—as convoluted as a plateful of spaghetti. Residents had to act in our common interest and did, and still do.

Today, we are trying to draw in our skirts to fend off encroaching civilization on our perimeter--in view (literally) of the new Hills at Aquia development arising on our western flank and Brents Mill II on our north. Too bad we couldn’t have played the Army’s trump card recently in prohibiting nearby residential development in Spotsylvania deemed too close, on a national defense rationale, to Fort A.P. Hill.

We’ll just swallow hard and try to get along with the snooty newcomers. It’s good for Aquia Harbour folks to remember that once we were considered snobs by the rest of the county. We were the rich new arrivals. Well, maybe not rich, but undeniably new.

Now with these new latter-day Harbours encroaching, let us be reasonable. After all, how high falutin can a tract be that will soon have a car dealership in its front yard?

So mark me down as a cranky community booster. For despite all, Stafford County has done good by me and mine. I even like the supervisors and the county officials.

And especially our precious historic sites. Right down the hill from us lies Aquia Church, still alive and kicking. It was founded about the same time as “historic” Alexandria. Adjoining the Harbour is Government Island., now county owned, and once a quarry used in the construction of many historic buildings in Washington, D.C.

Virginia, despite our recent Democrat governors, still occupies a warm spot in my heart. Our state remains fairly prudent and honest. We’re doing well economically, and yes, our forefathers spawned the world’s greatest democracy.

A few of my own roots trace to early Virginia. Several years after Jamestown’s founding, a fecund farmer named Blankenship cropped up in Chesterfield County, upstream on the James, and there sired a flock of kids via several wives..

So I’m proud of this year’s 400th anniversary celebration. Granted, Virginia once led in holding slaves and running baby farms to provide new ones. But it wasn’t the sole culprit. New York City once was the second leading U.S. city in holding slaves.

It’s also true that slaves played a huge role in getting the colonies and our early nation on its feet.

So should we apologize for their past treatment? Some states have. But why stop there? The Yankees should apologize to Stafford’s pioneers for leaving our devastated county in dire straits after the Civil War. Also, let’s hear regrets from the descendants of a group of blacks in New Orleans who reportedly kept other blacks as slaves. And don’t forget the noble American Indians, some of whom also were known to keep a few slaves from other tribes.

In overcoming such past sins, we’ve adjusted and assimilated. Now we must try to absorb even the illegal immigrants. It should be doable; it’s already happening. So let’s swallow hard and shout Ole!

We’ll succeed, though, only if we first cut off the inflow. Here’s Seth Leibsohn, in National Review Online: “Let’s put illegal immigration on the course of ultimate extinction by tolerating no more furtherance, or rewarding, of it…”

Simple. Yet, “No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.”—Mark Twain.