Since we are preparing our hot dogs and watching war movies, I will make this as short as my wife would want.
War movies; the best in my youth were those from WWII. It was big, my dad and everybody’s dad was in it, and we won big time and without question. The worst, from the time I had become a young adult, were the ones on Vietnam, since it was smaller, I personally knew some contemporaries who had gone and who were more or less just like me, and we lost – although Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now were outstanding. Then there was the Korean War. Smallish, some dads had gone, and it was not exactly a loss or a win. A ‘meh’ in the world of 60’s and 70’s war movies. Yet last week it was the Korean War that I thought of the most.
Our trip to Michigan was fully legal as well as OK with the infamous regime of Governor Whitmer, as we have a second home – well, a small cabin we could call home – where we could “shelter in place.” We did, or at least we mostly avoided civilization, and it was wonderful. There were almost no people at the popular tourist spots and none, absolutely none, at the campsites, which left us all twelve miles of Twelve Mile Beach to ourselves. The water of Lake Superior was just above ice temperature, but was so beautiful from the dune bluffs that it seemed to reflect the perfect heaven that has been promised to us – if. If we do the things and don’t do the other things that we have been told about in Sunday school and Catechism class which many of us attended decades ago. Attended so long ago, that is, that the Korean War had barely been over, but still we heard so little about it even then.
We know of the two Koreas now as seen on TV, one crowded and bustling and prosperous and the other quiet, slow, and depopulated. We cringed when we heard of the torture of that foolish young man who pulled a fraternity prank in Pyongyang and ended up brain dead, and then just plain dead. It was our forces in Korea in the early 1950’s that allowed for the former, the South, to exist at all, its start as uneven and ugly as could be, its result as good as a people with Korea’s past could make it. It was a forgotten war that gave 50 million people the possibility of individual purpose, and it is not forgotten in Seoul.
Nor was it forgotten when we traveled through Wisconsin to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Until a few months ago, the bridge that crossed the Menomonee River into Michigan had meant crossing to a greater freedom, regardless of the frivolity, for in Michigan one could then legally buy weed, and in Wisconsin, no. Not that I care anymore for the stuff, but one could say that it was a blow – a puff? - for freedom. But the bridge means something else now. Since the state supreme court of Wisconsin invalidated our governor’s extended stay-at-home order, the state has been bustling, for better or for worse. Time alone will tell, although the newspapers now run features every day showing people in bars and at restaurants, drinking and dining like there is no tomorrow, which the reporters wish us to think there will not be, if. We shall see, but the difference now between one side of the bridge and the other could hardly be starker. It once meant freedom going north, if only in the mind, but now…
It was like crossing from South to North Korea, or so my son and I agreed. Bustling on one side, a mask or two here and there, and starkly empty on the other side. There was almost no traffic and little commerce just with a simple crossing of the river, and a brief stop in a pharmacy had us wearing masks under penalty of law. It was this that made our stay farther up north so wonderful, so quiet and peaceful, but the trip overall so weird, even chilling. Michigan was what our state was two weeks ago. It may not be like it is now in two weeks, but it might, and it is a reminder of what we might be or could be as a nation. South Korea on one side, North on the other, the contrast so obvious, the energy levels so clear; a divided country, the contrasting perspectives taken by the people and leaders also so clear.
My opinion, too, might be split if that quiet had led to more contemplation and God consciousness – but the churches to the north are also closed. I think I saw that on TV too.
I will not say the obvious in conclusion, but rather give my thanks to the soldiers who died often without knowing what they were dying for. How many could foresee the state of the people in North Korea then, or even the corrupt dictatorship that has evolved in Vietnam? If anything, those poor soldiers have shown us that the patriotic cliché of America is often true: that one must be willing to give one’s life for freedom even if the lines drawn are only clear in the parchments of 1776 and 1789. To them I give my belated and unworthy salute.
Since we are preparing our hot dogs and watching war movies, I will make this as short as my wife would want.
War movies; the best in my youth were those from WWII. It was big, my dad and everybody’s dad was in it, and we won big time and without question. The worst, from the time I had become a young adult, were the ones on Vietnam, since it was smaller, I personally knew some contemporaries who had gone and who were more or less just like me, and we lost – although Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now were outstanding. Then there was the Korean War. Smallish, some dads had gone, and it was not exactly a loss or a win. A ‘meh’ in the world of 60’s and 70’s war movies. Yet last week it was the Korean War that I thought of the most.
Our trip to Michigan was fully legal as well as OK with the infamous regime of Governor Whitmer, as we have a second home – well, a small cabin we could call home – where we could “shelter in place.” We did, or at least we mostly avoided civilization, and it was wonderful. There were almost no people at the popular tourist spots and none, absolutely none, at the campsites, which left us all twelve miles of Twelve Mile Beach to ourselves. The water of Lake Superior was just above ice temperature, but was so beautiful from the dune bluffs that it seemed to reflect the perfect heaven that has been promised to us – if. If we do the things and don’t do the other things that we have been told about in Sunday school and Catechism class which many of us attended decades ago. Attended so long ago, that is, that the Korean War had barely been over, but still we heard so little about it even then.
We know of the two Koreas now as seen on TV, one crowded and bustling and prosperous and the other quiet, slow, and depopulated. We cringed when we heard of the torture of that foolish young man who pulled a fraternity prank in Pyongyang and ended up brain dead, and then just plain dead. It was our forces in Korea in the early 1950’s that allowed for the former, the South, to exist at all, its start as uneven and ugly as could be, its result as good as a people with Korea’s past could make it. It was a forgotten war that gave 50 million people the possibility of individual purpose, and it is not forgotten in Seoul.
Nor was it forgotten when we traveled through Wisconsin to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Until a few months ago, the bridge that crossed the Menomonee River into Michigan had meant crossing to a greater freedom, regardless of the frivolity, for in Michigan one could then legally buy weed, and in Wisconsin, no. Not that I care anymore for the stuff, but one could say that it was a blow – a puff? - for freedom. But the bridge means something else now. Since the state supreme court of Wisconsin invalidated our governor’s extended stay-at-home order, the state has been bustling, for better or for worse. Time alone will tell, although the newspapers now run features every day showing people in bars and at restaurants, drinking and dining like there is no tomorrow, which the reporters wish us to think there will not be, if. We shall see, but the difference now between one side of the bridge and the other could hardly be starker. It once meant freedom going north, if only in the mind, but now…
It was like crossing from South to North Korea, or so my son and I agreed. Bustling on one side, a mask or two here and there, and starkly empty on the other side. There was almost no traffic and little commerce just with a simple crossing of the river, and a brief stop in a pharmacy had us wearing masks under penalty of law. It was this that made our stay farther up north so wonderful, so quiet and peaceful, but the trip overall so weird, even chilling. Michigan was what our state was two weeks ago. It may not be like it is now in two weeks, but it might, and it is a reminder of what we might be or could be as a nation. South Korea on one side, North on the other, the contrast so obvious, the energy levels so clear; a divided country, the contrasting perspectives taken by the people and leaders also so clear.
My opinion, too, might be split if that quiet had led to more contemplation and God consciousness – but the churches to the north are also closed. I think I saw that on TV too.
I will not say the obvious in conclusion, but rather give my thanks to the soldiers who died often without knowing what they were dying for. How many could foresee the state of the people in North Korea then, or even the corrupt dictatorship that has evolved in Vietnam? If anything, those poor soldiers have shown us that the patriotic cliché of America is often true: that one must be willing to give one’s life for freedom even if the lines drawn are only clear in the parchments of 1776 and 1789. To them I give my belated and unworthy salute.
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