Charles Knowlton (1927-2013)

My grandfather once promised to buy me a new bicycle.  He made that promise many years ago, right after a politician had promised him that all elderly Americans would soon be given a bonus. Neither of us saw those promises come true. For many generations, promises have been a mainstay of hope for people seeking a better life. Even today, we are bombarded by promises of better jobs, better living, a better economy, and so on. So, are there any promises in which we can take hope?

Many of us who lived through the 1950s and 1960s fondly recall The Andy Griffith Show. How we remember that Mayberry’s sheriff and his son did not have a care in the world when they went fishing! Thinking about them, I am impressed at how simple life should be and how extreme it has become. The recent explosion of technology and the growing political, social, global turmoil filling headlines today is a stark reminder to me of how far we have come—or fallen—from times of peace.

You’ve probably seen a house of cards. Some people can make amazing structures out of simple playing cards, leaning them together by fours until they have used a whole deck or more. However, no matter how fantastic the finished work is, we all know that nothing holds it together; the whole “building” is fragile and will eventually fall. Such is the nature of any edifice that lacks cohesive power: without a binding force, it will come apart, often with disastrous results. Thus we get our cliché: “It will fall like a house of cards!”

Those of us whose lifespan goes back to the Great Depression can still recall the image of grown men selling pencils on street corners. The common attitude saw life as a day-to-day struggle for existence. The United States had stalled in its tracks, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a monumental job on his hands seeking to stir up a nation to get out and try. What a contrast from today’s economic difficulties, which seem to bring out totally different attitudes: “You owe me!” and “It’s my right!”