Someone I met during the time I used to be a regular at morning business breakfasts told me the best decade of her life was between the ages of 50 and 60. The context of that revelation was my mention (at the time) that I wasn’t looking forward to turning 50. But, given her positive orientation—she was telling me that I had things in place to have a rousing decade of my own.
Back in January 2012, the future did seem bright enough to don shades. However, the subsequent years have disavowed me of that optimism. I think that decade for me has been a nightmare, really.
I’m not one given to nostalgia for the sake of being nostalgic. I do enjoy reading about the past, though. I’m a historian at heart and learning more about “the good ole’ days” is something I still enjoy in a life where joy has been diminished by time and tragedy.
I wrote a blog post about the past (back in the past) and I quoted a Danish author, Martin Lindstrom who wrote that consumers “in the face of insecurity or uncertainty about the future want nothing more than to revert back to a more stable time.” That would seem to be the time we’re living in. No?
When we were first told to shelter-in-place by our all-knowing governor, I was taking a class at USM centered on the Civil War and then, the Reconstruction period following a war that cleaved our country in two. Spending time immersed in reading and study focused on the middle part of the 19th century was strangely comforting—especially when all certainty in the present had been suspended.
While I’ve attempted to stay current on the latest arbitrary decisions made by our political overlords, I admit that my stomach for the propaganda served up by mainstream news sources has soured. If ever there was a time to call out “fake news” when consuming what passes for journalism today, now would be that juncture.
Withdrawing to my basement and picking up the guitar each day has helped maintain some equilibrium of normalcy. So has the occasional foray back into the past.
Last week, my sister-in-law visited my better half one day while I was at work. She dropped off some items that had been the property of my wife’s parents (my in-laws). One of the items was a small 3.25” X 6.25” booklet with the simple title of The Book of Presidents.
The Book of Presidents (1956) by Barclay Chemical Co.
On the back page of the booklet, I learned that the Barclay Chemical Company of Cambridge, Mass. had underwritten its production. They noted that “This booklet is being sent to you with the hope that you will find the information it contains of special interest at this time.”
Presidents (back page)
The time when the book had been produced was just after the 1956 re-election of Dwight D. Eisenhower, our 34th president. For the young skulls full of mush out in the streets, Mr. Trump is our 45th president. Not sure if they still teach these things in school, but George Washington was our 1st president, and for the sake of some context, Thomas Jefferson was #3, Abraham Lincoln was #16. But none of these things probably matter any longer. But I digress.
The booklet was interesting to me because it delineates aspects of the presidency: one of the three elements of our tri-partite system of governance. One of these is the president’s oath he takes upon being sworn into office.
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Granted, this oath probably means nothing in light of the events of the past two weeks. No one seem to give two shits about things like the Constitution anymore. The main focus seems to be settling scores and grievances, first and foremost.
But for me, a student of history, I moved from the presidential oath to the Powers of the President that the booklet listed. From there, I became fixated on the booklets pages that showed voting for the president by party, from 1916 to the prior election in 1952 when Eisenhower, the decorated military general, won his first term. I found it fascinating that the listing (by state) shows how party voting by state has shifted over the past 60 years. From 1916 through 1952, it was a given that Southern states would vote Democrat. Nixon, utilizing his “Southern strategy” changed all that and now, the South is staunchly Republican (and conservative, too).
One interesting “blip” I noted on this voting theme was the 1948 election, when Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat and campaigned on a state’s rights platform. This was during an era when segregation and Jim Crow was the law of the land in the southern half of the country. That’s all changed for the better and it appears that racial progress has been made, at least using history as my lens. I’m sure, however, someone who doesn’t consider anything other than Twitter for their fact-checking is apt to tell me to “check my white privilege” on anything I write, using thought and history as my basis. That’s so 1956. Yes, 2020 is truly a glorious time for sure, when up is down, out is in, good is bad, etc. (See George Orwell)
My sister was the one who pointed out to me that companies like Barclay serviced the pulp and paper industry providing industrial water conditioning, especially for the massive boilers that mills utilized in papermaking. My dad was a unionized paper maker and a boiler engineer at Pejepscot Paper. The mills provided a good living for men like my dad, who were willing to work southern swing shifts and tolerate the industrial environment common in the mills that lined Maine’s waterways at one time. Those jobs and the times that made them possible are a thing of the past.
I’m not sure my father is nostalgic or not about those days. I’ll have to ask him the next time I see him.