The America I Grew Up In

I’ve seen posts today from Facebook friends sharing a picture of a farmer and his young son, and E.T. (actually, I think it is the dog), looking across a field of wheat at sunset. Overlaid on the picture is the text, “I MISS THE AMERICA I GREW UP IN.”

The farmer is wearing overalls and a straw hat, and a kerchief is hanging out the back pocket of his overalls. The sun is a bright spot of yellow in front of the boy, and most of the rest of the sky is red, not blue. They are standing at the same vantage point from which cinematographers always choose to film the Los Angeles skyline. Mount Hollywood?

I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up in the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles, I didn’t grow wheat, or watch the sunset from that vantage point, or wear overalls with a kerchief hanging out my back pocket, or wear a straw hat. (Those are fashion choices I adopted in my junior year of college, along with “Up on Cripple Creek,” because I was looking for a differentiator. I also affected a corncob pipe, but that didn’t work either.)

One person who posted the Sunset Farmer picture is a family member, and most of their reactors are also family members. None of the reactions include the “angry” symbol, so I assume they all agree. SMF.

I watched a Bill Murray zombie movie tonight – “The Dead Don’t Die” – because, well, Bill Murray.

In one scene, Steve Buscemi is sitting at the counter in a small town diner wearing a red cap that says, “Make America White Again.”  He complains that the coffee is “too black.” Sitting across the counter opening from him is Danny Glover. Danny looks over.  Steve says, “You know what I mean.” Danny says something like, “No, I don’t.”

When you think of “The America I Grew Up In,” do you visualize the America of all-white lunch counters? Separate black and white water faucets and toilets?  Separate but equal schools?  Is that my kin’s America?

The America I grew up in story went like this:

• Russian Missiles in Cuba
• Police on TV using fire hoses to disperse Black civil rights protesters
• US Naval blockade of Cuba
• Fire drills turned into bomb drills
• The National Guard in Alabama enforcing school desegregation
• A President assassinated
• The Beatles
• Vietnam
• Timothy Leary
• A Black Civil Rights leader assassinated
• A leading Presidential candidate assassinated
• Two men walked on the moon
• The National Guard in Ohio shot and killed 4 students on the campus of Kent State University
• The Beatles split up
• A President resigned

I do not want to go back to the America I grew up in.   I like in the America where a black woman can have her own bank account and be Vice President.

Spoiler alert coming.

The diner waitress and the cleaning lady are the first to get eaten by zombies.

Steve and Danny both get beheaded by zombie killers.

And Bill Murray and Adam Driver get taken down by a horde of zombies in the graveyard as sunrise approaches. Because the sun is not coming up fast enough. Because the earth’s rotation has been altered by fracking.

Only Tom Waits, as “Bob the Hermit,” survives. (Oh, and Tilda Swinton as an extraterrestrial.)

I’ll take the America of today, even with the zombie movies.