Where Are You From?

Where I live, one of the first questions you’re going to ask a person you’ve just met is, “Where are you from?” sometimes shortened to, “Where you from?”

Where you’re from will give us an inkling into what kind of person you are. If you’re local, say within a twenty-five mile radius, like Big Buck, Skullbone, or Skunk Holler, you’re quickly accepted as being “one of us.” But the closer you get to the Mason-Dixon Line (if you’re not familiar with where that is, then you are hopelessly lost and disconnected from the history we were taught in grade school), and especially if you’re from north of that line, then you will have to work harder at proving yourself to be trustworthy.

For me, it’s one of the harder questions to answer because my family crisscrossed America while I was growing up, starting in Michigan, to Alabama, to North Carolina, back to Alabama, and then to Tennessee where I finished high school and have lived ever since.

But I’ll tell you where I’m from:

I’m from the 50s & 60s, where father always knew best and every kid wanted to live in Mayberry…where we practiced bomb raids by getting under our desks or walking to the local bomb shelter in order to survive what we were told was the certain chance of a nuclear bomb launched by Russia…

We played outside until dark, then returned to our yards to catch fireflies in mason jars…we listened to Elvis, the birth of rock and roll, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin…

The President of the United States was assassinated in broad daylight in front of hundreds of people…U. S. soldiers massacred nearly 500 unarmed civilians in a place called My Lai, Vietnam…

Everyone went roller skating on weekends and couldn’t wait until the announcer said, “Couples only for the next song.” Unless, of course, your girlfriend could skate better than you and you were afraid of making a fool of yourself in front of her and everyone watching…Gas was twenty-five cents a gallon…

Anti-war protesters took over university buildings, throwing desks and papers out the windows…one protester was shot and killed by a National Guardsman…black Americans were controlled by water cannons, billy clubs, and police on horseback, and vigilantes…

The Beatles…

You mowed your lawn with a push mower and trimmed it with scissors…hot rods were raced on backroads…and your girlfriend wore your athletic jacket…

Yeah, that’s where I’m from…so, don’t be offended if I don’t join you in getting upset about the current condition of the world and your pronouncement that “it’s the worst it’s ever been.”

The world has always been chaotic and always will be because it’s inhabited by humans…there is good and there is bad…light and darkness…good vs evil…

My advice when you start feeling panicky about the state of things is to remember you’re not the only one who has felt that way about our world…but yet we’re still here…for the time being.

I like the line from an old Negro Spiritual: “There’s a better day a’ comin’.”

* Taken from The Wit and Wisdom of David Johnson, Volume I1: The Hairy Catfish Caper.