1941

Some seventy six years ago your writer was earning his Merit Badges as a new Boy Scout, and was reminiscing over his first year in the “World of Work.” He was thinking over his bi-weekly salary that put a handsome $20. in his pocket twice a month—before taxes.

Yet to come that year was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the realization that our country was now engaged in World War II.

Now, nearly nine decades later, ushered into his life is a war-time era, replete with realities that never had existed before.

Manhood came earlier than expected for thousands of America's young men back then—some of whom would never return home.

Lounging around in countless senior citizen homes are gray-haired men and women who still have vivid memories of this earlier era, and fears of what could happen again, in their lifetime today.

So, what can our senior population expect over the next few years?

No sooner had the dust settled in World War II countries, than the Nation was involved in the Korean Conflict, followed by Vietnam. America has been engaged in “Helper Wars” of one stripe or another, and the country has been involved in one war or another ever since.

Now we have the strife in the Middle East that has consumed the lives of many of our young men and women, and there's virtually no end in sight.

And to complicate the turmoil, our country is being torn apart internally by political egomaniacs who are more concerned with their tiny part of the world than with the good of their own country. It's almost comparable to a resurgence of the Confederacy—and that was not beneficial to the concept of a United States.

Will we ever be permitted to again reap blessings our nation once promised?

Our nation's future looks bleak. Our very nation, the one our forefathers fought and died to preserve, is on the brink of a future so bleak we choose not to think about it.

Yet, here we are, thinking small, consuming our lives with petty peeves and personality assaults similar to our childhood playground spats.

If we don't grow up soon, and begin acting like adults, we'll be forced to watch our nation dissolve into a dismal future about which we'd prefer not to envision. We might want to consider St. Peter fleeing Rome; away from the prospect of crucifixion, only to meet Jesus on his way back to Rome to be crucified again. On seeing the Savior, St. Peter uttered the immortal question: “Quo vadis?” (Where are you going?)

Our choice now is to stand firm—as one—to insure that those who would do us harm; rather than to flee. To give up the nation our forefathers fought to build and preserve is not what America is all about; or is it?

You may be over the hill if you have a stretch medicine cabinet.