I'm reading a book by Studs Terkel, Coming of Age: A Story of Our Century, by
Those Who Lived it. Terkel must have had a hell of a good time putting it
together. It's a collection of people's stories of their own lives, and all the
people in it range from 70-99 years old. I think my head may explode -- these
people are on fire and they have so many ideas. It's notable that the only
people who aren't still completely alive, still working and fighting and living,
are the ones who were powerful businessmen, with executive offices. They're a bit
adrift. The rest were or are lawyers, labor organizers, stockbrokers, teachers,
doctors, salesmen, PR types and they are without exception fighters. (Even the
conscientious objectors and the pacifists -- they do their fighting in a different
way.)
They're not thinking we're all going to hell in a handbasket,
or that all technology is evil, but they do see changes that make them sad. To
synthesize a lot of individual views, the changes that bother them most are those
away from community, from human contact, and from pride in workmanship. These are
all people who had found their Proper Jobs, and in many cases are still doing
them, and who have seen their causes shrink or grow or mutate. One thing usually
missing in people my age and younger is a sense of history, and these people have
it by definition.
The most intense stories were those of the labor
organizers from the 1930s, the ones who got the UAW accepted by General Motors,
back when the UAW meant something, and they saw a groundswell of ordinary people
who got real changes made. They saw people who treated each other like family, who
would sacrifice their own comfort to provide food for each other's children, who
lived up to what they said they believed. It's obvious that the people who lived
through that had something seared into their soul that has never faded, and they
need to pass it on.
These people are not stagnant -- the old labor
organizers know very well that the unions these days are full of people in fancy
offices who are as much concerned with their own power as the managers they fight.
The old political idealists know Communism as practiced by the Soviet Union was
not the utopia the early followers of Marx dreamed of. The old TV producers know
money rules that industry. But there are still Quakers living in houses they built
on produce they grow, actresses still teaching high theater, philanthropists still
giving, and all of them still passing the torch to anyone who will carry it on.
I find that my own ideas tend to vary a lot, with whatever I'm
reading. I hope this book doesn't ever wear off.