My Part Of The World That Eisenhower Made

I learned a lot last night. I was late (again) picking up the kids coming from Grandpa and Grandma's after I got off work, and by the time I arrived they weren't even there! Their cousin/my niece Breanna had taken Sarah and Jeffrey and Josceline and Mason and Preston over to the playground at Sunnyside Elementary near the house, so I got to chat with Robert and Sharon and Donovan, a family friend who's staying there for a few weeks, for a few minutes.

Robert – Martha's dad – in Hawaiian shorts is an image that stays on the brain … I asked them if the kids could stay a little later than they usually do tonight because I got a call – actually, I got the message through Martha as my cell phone is spotty right now until I get my replacement Friday – that our parish education committee is meeting at seven-thirty, a time I can actually arrive at! Sharon's response: “Of course; what are we gonna do, throw them in the street?”

OF COURSE they wouldn't do that! But after seeing the new bike – actually it was priced at $25, but Donovan pointed out several flaws and the used merchant agreed to give him the bike – for Jeffrey I picked up the kids, we grabbed some dinner, and went home to eat. Then I learned Breanna took the kids to see Despicable Me 2 in the afternoon and also got them each a new pair of shoes; also, Martha came home last night with a new pair of shoes for her.

Nothing vain about it, she's been having a lot of problems with foot blisters lately – and ten new pairs of socks for each of us (all in those eight packs with two pairs free). I had gotten the kids to bed about an hour before, but they tried to stall as they so often will (come on, did YOU ever want to go to bed when your parents said even when you knew school was the next day?). I read Oh, The Places You'll Go! with Jeffrey while Sarah volunteered to take a bath before bed.

September 27, 1979. This was the night I stayed up late – Dad let me, in a rare bending of the rules – to watch an episode of Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century (Gil Gerard as Buck Rogers, Erin Gray as Wilma Deering, Twiki ba-dee-ba-dee-ba-deep voiced by Mel Blanc) that lasted until 10 and either I was really dragging the following day or Mrs. Stanmier my second-grade teacher asked me directly did I stay up late last night, and I admitted I did.

I still remember the cadence of her voice when she said, “10 o'clock is too late for a second-grader to stay up at night!” I think the rest of the class looked at me like I was an idiot for admitting that … and I'm not sure what prompted me to write about it now. I meant to tell you about the autobiography of Dwight Eisenhower I finished reading yesterday – a condensation of sections of his previous writings from his birth to leaving the White House. In Review: Pictures I've Kept (LOC 68-57660) turned out to be an astonishing read for me, and accessible!

When I was browsing last night before the kids went to bed I came across a side by side photo of Robin Williams who plays Eisenhower in the current movie The Butler next to the man himself. Not in the flesh, of course – Eisenhower died in 1969 – but from Williams' made up appearance he makes a better Truman, but I digress. We also reviewed some news from Germany, apparently reported by the BBC from the reporter's accent.

One item was a video about a just-ended hostage situation in Bavaria (southeastern Germany, where Munich and Nuremberg are) and the other was an article about German Chancellor Angela (pronounced Anhila, apparently) Merkel making a stop during her campaign trip at Dachau, the site of the death camp, and placing a wreath there. And some moaned not because she stopped there – the first time a chancellor in office has, I thought I read – but that it was during a campaign.

Sarah asked me what Dachau was. I explained it was a place during World War II where many people were put in prison for what they believed and not what they did, and a lot of them didn't come out. (She's seven, how deep do you expect me to go?) I said some of those people in Dachau also came out when they were liberated from the camp, and THEN my daughter asked me: “What does 'liberated' mean?” My answer was to be set free.

And we all need to do that ourselves.

David