LETTERS FROM HOME: TUNING IN SOMEWHERE BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND SPRINGSTEEN

March 9, 2000

Dear Patty,

My mother somehow convinced my father to accompany us recently to a performance of a play by Shakespeare. Maybe the fact that the director set the play in the '60s made my dad willing to believe it could possibly be more interesting than the Thursday night TV fare. After all, he lived through the '60s, too, albeit cursing Flower Children and anti-war protesters.

Dad served in the Navy in World War II and Korea. He did his duty. He didn't understand how anyone could refuse to fight for his country, no matter what.

He often suggested I join the Navy, too. At the time I thought he must have been crazy. Did I look or act like a guy who wanted to wear a uniform and salute people? The answer was no, which surely was his point.

Now I think he must have been looking the Vietnam War in the eye, noted my blas relationship with college and thought the Navy might offer a refuge from harm.

I got lucky in the lottery and wasn't drafted. How lucky I saw for myself as people I knew got killed or returned changed and unable to talk about why.

We Baby Boomers are just beginning to appreciate the sacrifices and heroism of our parents. In the 1940s, they saved the world for their unborn children. Their choices were black and white. Then the world turned gray, perhaps because we had exhausted the possibilities of yes or no.

Yes or no is a dualistic world that ignores the true and profound paradoxes of life, beginning with the fact that good and evil exist in us all.

In California in the late 1980s, Bruce Springsteen's new live album lived permanently in my car's tape player. One of its best moments is his spoken recollection of the conflict between he and his father during the 1960s, mainly over Bruce's long hair and "hobby."

"Turn down that damn guitar," the elder Springsteen would demand.

Springsteen did get drafted. He stayed up three nights in a row before his physical, hoping to fail. He did fail, but because of an old knee injury.

When he got home, his dad was sitting at the kitchen table. He had two things to say when he learned his son wouldn't be going to war:

"That's good son. That's good."

On the tape, Springsteen and the E Street Band then start playing the anti-war song "War." "What is it good for? Absolutely nothing."

Shakespeare, no doubt, is more eloquent on the subject.

Some politicians tried to adopt "Born in the USA" as a patriotic song. It is a song about misguided patriotism, about war machines grinding human fodder, about boys who never got to be men or came home wounded to their souls.

War has been the crucible that forms many men's lives, whether we fight in one or not. We either suffer for fighting or agonize over not having to fight or choosing not to fight. I pray for the day this is no longer so.

The most difficult thing to do every day is walk in peace upon the earth, says the Buddhist teacher and poet Thich Nhat Hanh.

Dad disappeared during the intermission of the play. When it was over, my mother pointed to him lounging in the back row of the theater where there's room to stretch out. "He said he couldn't understand a word they were saying," mom explained.

Maybe so. Shakespeare requires a finer tuning than his favorite TV program, "Walker, Texas Ranger."

But with both strength and wits, Walker protects the innocent and sets injustices right. If my dad believes in that, what do I care whether Shakespeare leaves him looking for the remote control?

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.