The Squirrels of Mississippi
In a recent Just Thinkin’, I cited some of Roger Miller’s lyrics from King of the Road. My narrative prompted a newspaper contact to send me a note. I paraphrase but the response said, “After reading this week’s Just Thinkin’ which compared the behavior of the U.S. House of Representatives to some Roger Miller lyrics, I googled his King of the Road and listened. Now I can’t get the melody out of my mind. And it is all your fault!”
Just Thinkin’
In a recent Just Thinkin’, I cited some of Roger Miller’s lyrics from King of the Road. My narrative prompted a newspaper contact to send me a note. I paraphrase but the response said, “After reading this week’s Just Thinkin’ which compared the behavior of the U.S. House of Representatives to some Roger Miller lyrics, I googled his King of the Road and listened. Now I can’t get the melody out of my mind. And it is all your fault!”
I can live with that. A former student shared that the soundtrack his mind kept playing as our House attempted to elect a leader was Ray Steven’s Mississippi Squirrel Revival.
I agree that Mississippi Squirrel Revival does more to point out the manner in which a set of circumstances might be misinterpreted. As the squirrel is turned loose in the First Self-Righteous Church it becomes clear that things aren’t always as they seem. The church goers made logical interpretations. The explanations they offer themselves are just inaccurate.
These considerations made me realize the explanations I had assigned for our congressmen’s behaviors may or may not have been correct. Oh, the explanations I gave myself were logical. Logical and accurate are not obligated to be the same thing. Mark Twain once said, “It’s no wonder truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.”
I made a career of examining the reasons people act as they do in stressful situations. When it came to examining my own processes of arriving at such conclusions, I found Maya Angelou’s words to be useful. “There is a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.”
When I went to court to testify, I always carried a small black three ring notebook. On its cover I had printed “Knowledge it knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”
But giving folks the benefit of the doubt can be really tough at times.
The same column generated another yet seemingly unrelated question. “You’re not a member of the Greatest Generation are you.” I was uncertain if this was a question or a statement. But no, I’m not.
I’m not certain I had the right stuff to be a member of that generation. Between the Great Depression and World War II, few of these men and women got out unscarred. The women of the Greatest Generation. I want to write more about them some day.
Back to the question. “No, I’m not. I’m a member of the Silent Generation.”
There aren’t many of us. We were born between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers. My generation was born into a confluence of crisis, the depression and World War II. We were taught keep you head down and work hard.
“Work like hell so the devil can’t catch you.” A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. – Winston Churchill Hal McBride writes a column, Just Thinkin’, published each week.
