Just My Life

A significant part of my young life was lived in 1960's Germany.  A Germany where terrorism was well known.  A Germany where every teenager was a suspect and controlled accordingly.

To leave my village of Miesau requited a permit from the chief of the police.  My sister and I would often ride for miles on the country roads on our bicycles.  But, the day before we had to get a permit from the police stating the route and towns expected to be visited.

With pass in hand, I had to stop at the next village upon arrival and have the police mark in the time on the pass.  Yeah it was a pain.  However, I could sort of understand this because someone was bombing public gatherings and places where US GI's would gather.  I always figured this had to have been the work of the Baader-Meinhof gang, but it seems none of what happened around the Pfalz was to be attributed to them before 1971.  Makes one wonder who did do the bombings!  Luckily, I managed only one of those, when someone set off a bomb at the Kaiserslautern Saturday market.

But even in traveling through Europe, I was stuck numerous times in full blown anti-American riots in France.  No, I was German but that was good enough for the French to equate me to the Americans.  On one trip, two of my friends were dragged off the bus and butchered, with machetes, on a northern France castle tour.  And people wonder why I am not too excited to ever return to France.

But, in 19969, I found the US to not be much better.  The KKK was having a grand time in South Carolina.  I was unfortunately bused about forty miles to a black high school and on any given week, there would be at least one day in which our bus would be stopped, flipped over and set on fire.  Eventually, someone on Shaw Air Force Base would see the smoke and call for the fire engines ... and eventually a replacement bus.  Yes, it was frustrating if you had studied for the tests that day or had done your homework.  And then there were the bombings at the high school, both fake and real.

The world was a very hazardous place in which to live through my eyes.

When we moved to the mid-west, I hoped for something normal.  But, that was not to be.  My first weekend in my new town and someone stole a gas truck, dumped 5,000 gallons of high test fuel into the sewers and attempted to blow up the Fourth of July parade later that day.  They launched all of the sewer covers off of of the street for about a mile, but that was all.  (It was actually sort of funny, to be born so stupid....)

The governor declared a 9 pm curfew on all youth under 18 years old.  Sigh.  So terribly unfair, to just blame high schoolers when I am certain it was the college students whom did this one.   Yes, I and my friends were high on the lists of "offenders"!  Us troubled youth, you know, sentenced constantly to pick up trash for our offenses to mankind, but staying out too late at the Shakey's Pizza Parlor.

And I gave up on mankind.

Aircraft hijackings, car bombings, blowing up power transmission towers, acts of terrorism almost everywhere I have lived.  Of course the 1980's were nothing to write home about where I lived!  And I have thought on this.

Is violence the last resort of those whom have no longer a voice in society?
Is it a question of mental health?
Perhaps a certain class of drugs being used?
Out of control government /  politicians?
Or is it the loss of a sense of value for human life?
Is a blood lust just normal?

I think all of them are probably answers. to my question.


Today, as I write this, I have John Lennon's words cycling through my mind, "Just give peace a chance...".  Yes, naive perhaps, not going to happen, etc.  All the same statements from the 1960's echoing through my mind.

And yet ...