Who Stole My Country?
By Bob DeMotte – 8 November 2008
Reprinted in Canada Free Press (CFP)
For many adults, the pains of childhood create an impenetrable thick fog. I once felt that having an eidetic memory was a blessing. As the years have passed, however, it has become more of a curse.
One day, in the winter of 1944, I sat with my mother in a darkened movie theater. At some point, the film was interrupted by what was then called Movie-Tone News. Back then, movies had intermissions.
I distinctly remember a frightening scene in that black and white news segment, of a large war-ship sinking. The announcer’s voice rambled on about the terrible loss of American sailors. My mother held me close as if to shield me from the horror.
During those dark days, I remember my parents covering the windows each night with black curtains. Then candles were lit. Americans living along the East and West coasts were forbidden the use of electric lights at night for fear that an enemy submarine might see it. It was all so far beyond a small boy’s understanding. I can easily recall the days of joy when that war was over.
I was soon a boy of eight. There were warm summer days when I’d lie in a wild strawberry patch, way out in a field. How easily I could make dragons and flowers out of billowing, while clouds. Occasionally, a large four-engine airliner would pass overhead. It was headed to dreamland and I longed to be up there, watching that innocent little boy eat strawberries far below.
But, of a sudden, I was forced to grow up. My mother got sick and became bedridden most of the time. I had to run errands, rub her back, and do all the other parental things a child shouldn’t have to do at that age. Morning and night, I was assigned to feed our farm animals.
In the spring of 1951, I was an energetic boy. Returning from a school trip to the Statue of Liberty and a few other less memorable sites in New York City, I was hit by a drunk driver after embarking from our bus. I was so near death that, after admission to the hospital, I vividly remember watching from above as doctor’s worked on my body. I don’t remember much after that, except that I’d been unconscious for fifteen hours.
Weeks later, I was able to finish Fifth Grade, but my mother was now in the hospital. It was a long summer. On a hot August afternoon, she died.
Soon, relatives and I were sitting in Trimmer’s Funeral Home. I recall standing next to the open casket. For what seemed too little time, I stared at her lifeless body. I silently prayed that she would lift just one of her fingers. Just one, to let me know she wasn’t like the rats I’d shot with my .22 out in the barn; or the groundhogs I’d killed.
For months, I spent innumerable nights staring out my bedroom window, into the starlit sky. When I saw what I believed to be a star twinkling more than all the others, I’d go back to bed knowing that my mother was watching me.
In the middle of my junior year in high school, I began taking flying lessons. My flight instructor, Johnny Chalka, let me solo after just six hours. As I climbed in the cockpit on that cold January day, Johnny said, “Don’t go above 2,500 feet and not more than a few miles from the airport.” That was all the encouragement I needed. When I buckled the seat belt in that beautiful J-3 with those huge yellow wings, I felt that freedom was only a rotating propeller away.
The airfield was several miles out of town but as my ticket to freedom raced down the grass runway, I knew my destination. Within no time, I was surveying the familiar countryside at 5,000 feet. God, this was heaven! There was the cemetery where my grandparents lie buried; there’s the road I run every afternoon as I practice for cross-country.
Soon, I was circling my favorite aunt’s farm. She was the one who listened to all my feelings in those dark years after my mother’s death. I was being magically lured by the distant smell of her pies, made especially for me. I mowed her lawn and took care of her garden for several summers. Lunch-time couldn’t have been better. I was hooked on her love of the Stella Dallas soap opera. It was all too soon interrupted as she reminded me to finish my work. She had no kids, but she talked to me like a mother.
Two weeks after graduation from high school, I loaded my meager belongings into my 1953 Plymouth and escaped the horrors of my first seventeen years. I didn’t know if I’d make it, but I was headed for San Francisco. If the country had been a thousand miles wider, I would have pushed onward.
Not long after getting there, my wanderlust spirit pushed me back and forth across this great land five times. I had incredible adventures hitchhiking everywhere. I was given rides by old women, a Mexican family migrating across Nevada with their pet chickens, a Calgary businessman who’d gone to Detroit to pick up his brand new ’59 Ford convertible, as well as farmers heading into town. My longest walk was in the middle of the night, between South Lake Tahoe and Reno. A frigid, full moon glistened across snowy fields. I recited The Night Before Christmas over and over to fend off the cold night air. Somewhere south of Reno, a couple of drunks picked me up. Several scary laughs later, we made it to Harrah’s.
I decided that, as I crisscrossed the United States, I would stop and visit as many monuments and attractions as I could. My eyes filled with tears more than a few times as I stood overlooking Little Big Horn, the Alamo, Gettysburg, the Dakota Badlands, Arlington Cemetery, Mt. Rushmore, and the Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City. I quickly inherited a heart-pounding sense of pride in my country, and the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform. I was doing what people in other countries could only dream of doing, if it ever crossed their minds at all.
In the fifty long years since, I never lost those feelings. So many memories echo through my mind today, but the image that most inspires my national pride is a short black and white film of the D-Day Invasion of Normandy.
Of all the footage taken during the war, the 3-second clip that stands out is that solitary soldier falling face down after running a few yards up the beach. He was but one of nearly 5,000 soldiers who died that day. But, he died for my flag, my memories, and my freedom. I hope to meet him and thank him for all he gave.
I’ve always stood up for the little guy. I guess that’s what mature people are supposed to do, as they learn from the mistakes of others. As such, I’ve appeared before state legislatures, city committees, and written hundreds of letters, all in an effort to thwart the greed and selfishness of the power-hungry.
As a parent, I taught my kids to be the best they could be; to work hard for what they have, to be honest in their relationships with others, to pay their bills, and learn to love and be loved.
Today, I am 73 years of age. This is, however, the saddest part of my life. It surpasses the loss of my mother, my once-perfect eyesight, my best friends’ deaths, my health, and lost dreams.
The America I have been so proud of for all my years is now lost. Lost to a minority who feel the need to be nurtured and provided for by something bigger than their sense of self-respect, their undeveloped sense of patriotism. They’ve sold their souls to those who will, in turn, lay the soul of America on the altar of an impotent United Nations, an International Court, a World Trade Organization, and the insidious Shariah Law.
Today, I have lost my country. I pray in silence that my children and grandchildren will forgive me for not giving more to protect them. I, like so many others, once believed that America’s best would never let us down. I was wrong. I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for every legislator who bows down to The One. This is not unlike the hoards who sold their souls to a mustachioed weasel more than seventy years ago. Within fifteen years of promising hope and change, his country lay in ruin.
Those brave men who died by the thousands on Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Solomon Islands, Pork Chop Hill, Gettysburg and Trenton, must be rolling over in their coffins. It was for nothing, America! It was all for nothing. My cursed foresight sees an America which will soon see an alarming increase in murder, suicide, unwanted pregnancies, crime and drug abuse as never envisioned. Red Dawn will no longer be just a movie.
The great numbers who now swarm and fight for a chance to suckle at the breast of political promises will result in an economic depression far deeper than that of the 1930s. I predict a huge separation of the races, of those who have and those who have not, of those who wish to thrive, and those who wish only to survive. I see walls around great communities with guards to protect the free. I see animals beyond devouring one another.
My one great sorrow is that I have lived to see this day. At least, I have sweet memories of a strawberry field, Stella Dallas, and that big yellow J-3.
Today, I am a man without a country.