Thoughts on Veterans Day

My dad was a soldier.  Not for long, and he wasn’t a hero.  He did receive an honorable discharge, before his full two years were served due to being needed back on the farm after his father had been stricken with a stroke.  Also, the war being over, the military was letting soldiers go back home.

Dad was drafted when he was 19.  World War II was nearly over at the time (early 1945).  He hated it, and expressed that disdain for the rest of his life.  He hated the way he was treated by the drill sergeant in basic training.  He hated the way the men talked.  (He was raised on a farm in Ohio, in a church-going family that never drank or cursed, surrounded by similar families.)  He hated to get up early.  He had played horn in school, and was “drafted” to be the troop bugler at one point when he was overseas.  His letter home giving that news said, “The worst thing you can imagine has happened.  I have been ordered to play reveille…”  I gathered from his comments about the military as I was growing up that he believed it to be a necessary evil.  The only thing he expressed pleasure about was the award he had received for sharpshooting.

His unit had found out that Hitler was dead and the Germans had surrendered during their ocean voyage from the U.S. to Europe.  He was part of the clean-up crew.  I don’t have stories to relate, because he never talked about it.  I imagined that he was part of the effort to provide basic supplies to devastated villages, or capturing displaced German soldiers who would be processed and sent back to their homes.  I really don’t know.  The only things we have in the family keepsake trunk at my sister-in-law’s house are a couple of letters home and a large Nazi flag.  The letters make it evident that he was a very young and naïve 19-year-old.  He said “Boy, those girls sure are pretty!” about the local folk that they’d see swimming in the river as the boat he was on moved through the country.

He’s buried now in the local cemetery, just a few hundred yards from the spot where the little church used to be, where both he and I grew up.  Lots happened in the years after that service to his country.  He took over the farm after his father died, paying his mother a pension for life.  He married and had 3 kids and 8 grandchildren.  The farm became successful, but only after some very hard times.  One family anecdote is how, when I was an infant, he had to take a few bushels of corn from storage to sell at the local feed mill so that he could get money to buy groceries.  He developed it into a dairy farm and hoped that either my brother or I would take it over.  We failed to come through on that, and he sold the cows after a partnership arrangement with a neighbor didn’t work out.  He was in his late 60’s.  That was a sad day for us all.

His grave is marked with a granite gravestone for him and my mom, and there is also a bronze U.S. veteran’s marker on his side of the plot.  It honors his service, no matter how short.  His service was significant in that it was value-added at the time, and it was a great sacrifice for him and his parents.  He wasn’t there when his father had a stroke.  His not being there may have even been a factor in that stroke – only God knows about that. 

All veterans, both living and dead, who served their country honorably and with great sacrifice, deserve to be honored on this and all Veteran’s Days.  I’m glad that it remains on the 11^th and that our nation continues to celebrate it reverently – not as just another day off to go shopping, but to show respect and appreciation.  May we never again have to send young men and women into harm’s way.  Many of us wish that, and there are people in the world spending their lives and careers trying to make it be so.  More power to them.  My hope is that they are ultimately successful.  I support organizations that lobby to strengthen that approach (e.g., Friends Committee on National Legislation); and even at work, we (NASA) have a joint project with USAID based on the premise that it’s better (and cheaper) to make friends in the Third World than it is to remain aloof (or domineering) and end up in a conflict.  Peacemaking efforts honor veterans, too, as we recognize the significance and great human cost of their sacrifices by trying to prevent future generations from having to do the same.  "Blessed are the peacemakers..."

Where did this blog's title come from?

Many of my friends and family are aware of the fact that I am a fan of the Grateful Dead.  Based on comments, most of them seem to think that I am just one of those ex-hippies, nostalgically longing for the old days of doing nothing but listening to music, smoking dope, and dropping acid.  Although there is a slight grain of truth to that, for me that aspect of the Grateful Dead concert scene was mostly a drag.  Too many idiots yelling out requests in between songs and whooping it up at inappropriate times.  Too many hippies, seemingly with no earthly idea of what it might take to get by in the world as an adult, outside the venue asking for free unused tickets or if you have a joint to give them.  Those became the stereotype Dead fan even though they were in the minority.  As I looked around, I could see that most concert-goers were like me – not outlandishly dressed and seriously interested in experiencing the concert from a music-fan’s point of view.  And, I might add, that description usually would also fit the band members, who came out onto the stage most unpretentiously and looked pretty much like you and me (well, younger, in those days).

Despite the stereotypes and generalizations, the Dead were all about the music.  They were serious musicians who wrote great songs (though usually non-commercial due to some kind of weird twist in the lyrics) and instrumentals, and who performed with a jazz format – lots of improvisation, lots of fascinating non-verbal communication about where the music was going next.  Each concert was unique.  Some were better than others in terms of tightness in the vocal harmonies and instrumentals, which (consistent with the stereotype) was indeed probably correlated with what they had put into their bodies that evening.

When the band was really “on,” that whooping it up that I mentioned above would mostly die down after a couple of pieces.  Even the uninitiated, immature ones would realize after a little while that they were watching a process that was transcendent.  Jerry Garcia was certainly not an angel in the usual sense of the phrase, but I felt like I was observing, and even a part of, a holy process as I listened and watched.  The songs – the core of the material – had been previously composed.  The basic aspects of the arrangements had been obviously agreed upon in advance.  But the order of things and how one idea evolved into another, particularly Jerry’s guitar solos and the surrounding accompaniment, was more like performances of the John Coltrane Trio than the Grand Funk Railroad.

And then there are the compositions themselves.  To get a feel for that, may I recommend to the reader a “tribute” album of Grateful Dead songs done by other artists, “Deadicated,” which came out in 1991.  It only contains a few of the greatest songs (and a couple that I would not have included), but there’s something about the care that these artists put into these recordings that tells you how much the songs meant to them.  (Click here to see the list of musicians and songs.)  One of my favorites is not on that album but is the source of the name of this blog, Stella Blue.  The first two phrases are above:  “All the years combine, they melt into a dream.”  The lyrics evoke nostalgia and a romanticization of sad and lonely times that for some reason hugely appeal to me.  The music that carries the words is beautiful – a soulful melody and pleasant modulations.  It’s a very slow piece, and one that I made a recording of, with me singing and playing all the parts.  (See one of my Facebook or “singmiller” YouTube videos.) 

Stella Blue

By Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia

All the years combine, they melt into a dream,

A broken angel sings from a guitar.

In the end there’s just a song comes cryin’ up the night

Through all the broken dreams and vanished years.

Stella blue.  Stella blue.

When all the cards are down, there’s nothing left to see,

There’s just the pavement left and broken dreams.

In the end there’s still that song comes cryin’ like the wind.

Down every lonely street that’s ever been.

Stella blue.  Stella blue.

Bridge:

I’ve stayed in every blue-light cheap hotel, can’t win for trying.

Dust off those rusty strings just one more time,

Gonna make them shine, shine.

It all rolls into one, and nothing comes for free,

There’s nothing you can hold for very long.

And when you hear that song come crying like the wind,

It seems like all this life was just a dream.

Stella blue.  Stella blue.

Well, that’s it for my first blog entry.  I opened this blog account several months ago and just now got around to writing something.  If the reader was curious where the blog title came from, now you know. 

Other wonderful songs not on the Deadicated album are Eyes of The World, Brokedown Palace, Attics of My Life, If I Had The World to Give, and It Must Have Been The Roses.  I could go on and on, of course.  (And maybe I will – Scarlet Begonias, Shakedown Street, The Other One…)