Privilege
"On a quiet night, the wind, it can play tricks on your ear
Like some unsolved mystery, we all guess at the ending,
But nobody comes near
Are we all minstrels playing in a three-ring circus
Searching for a purpose that's not there?"
-- On A Quiet Night by The Association
Dottie, Hugh, Ron and Rick lived in a modest house on Roosevelt Street in Altadena. Mom was a full time housekeeper and Hugh commuted every day to North American Rockwell Corporation, in El Segundo. It was a 55 minute drive back then because the traffic was much lighter, but it was also exhausting because the freeway was not complete and the connectors were two lane roads.
I had a little tricycle and my big brother would help me negotiate the driveway and sidewalk. When dad came home he would change clothes and play with us for an hour or so, almost every day.
Eventually I would walk to Daniel Webster Elementary School, about three blocks from home. I still, to this day, have friends from that school. I drove by it recently. It hasn't changed a bit in 65 years!
The Elkin family was involved with the Pasadena New Years Day Rose Parade because as a college beauty, my mom had won a spot in it. She was a Rose Parade Princess in 1941. She was awarded lifetime tickets to the parade events and the game played at the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day. As I watch recent Rose Parades, I still get a chill, especially when the fly-over occurs at the opening ceremony. As a kid, it brought me to tears with immense pride. Still does.
By any notion I had a good childhood. I was raised in a nuclear family. My dad had a good job and still had lots of time to spend with the family. My mom was a full-time, stay-at-home mom who also found time to socialize, recreate and have private time. We started out in a tiny house on a quiet tree lined street with lots of other families. I had friends up and down the block and others through my folks friends' families.
As a young family we all went to the beach together. It was a one hour drive from Altadena to Huntington Beach. My dad had lots of friends from all over So Cal due to his work and childhood upbringing in Arcadia. He and my mom attended Pasadena High School, and dad went on to Pasadena City College. Huntington Beach was a middle point and a nice big sandy beach with great nearby restaurants. Most of the folks that frequented that beach were serious car buffs as was my dad, so it was always fun to watch that group brag and drag.
Occasionally we would drive down to Baja to spend a long weekend at Estero Beach. It was a Mom and Pop resort 75 miles south of Tijuana, just outside of Ensenada that offered cheap bungalows and a unique combination of water sports. It sat on a small bay with a long peninsula. On the Pacific Ocean side of the peninsula we could surf. On the eastern bay side we could snorkel and water ski. Usually we would have three couples and kids, so it was a good mix of personalities and abilities. My dad's friend had a 17' Chris Craft inboard ski boat, so we all learned to ski in Mexican salt water.
Other weekends we would visit my dad's boss who owned a cabin at Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino mountains. A much more luxurious situation with bungalow beds and tons of water toys. He also had a nice boat and everyone skied and fished. Those trips were the exception, not the norm.
Later, my folks hooked up with friends who had a camping spot on the Colorado River at Big Bend Arizona. There were many Mondays that I had to call in sick from school because I was so sunburned. I would have headaches and nausea from sun poisoning. Years later me and my 17 year old tagalong friends would wait until the adults passed out around 9:30 and we'd drain the leftover keg of beer and pass out ourselves.
When I was 6 years old my folks got both my brother and I into snow skiing. At first I hated it, too much hassle! Everything froze up, the skis were too long and I could barely operate the bear-trap bindings. Whenever I fell it was a major task to dig out of the snow, clear my goggles, empty my trousers and gloves of snow and reset the bindings! I ended up quitting early and spending the balance of the day in the lodge doing puzzles and eating french fries.
I eventually found a schoolmate whose parents were just as hooked on skiing as mine, so we figured out how to make the sport interesting. We skied through the trees, we found jumps, and when we were really bored, we took the rope tow just short of the departure point and let the rope slip between our hands and skied backwards, screaming "Oh, I can't hold on!" That would knock everyone behind us off the rope! We terrorized the slopes, and loved every minute of it! Suddenly it was fun, and we ended up learning new skiing skills too.
My dad insisted we go to Mammoth Mountain in the High Sierras, even though it was a 6 hour drive. He knew the owner Dave McCoy and wanted to support his enterprise. We would leave early Friday after he came home from work around 4:30, and arrive in Mammoth Village around 10:30 that night. Then head home around 4:00 on Sunday. After two 7 hour days of skiing I don't know how my dad stayed awake. Sometimes, that return trip would be terrifying because the last 50 miles was along the Angeles Crest Highway, a 2-lane winding mountain road that would often be cloaked in dense fog. My mom would hang her head out the passenger side window and scream if my dad drove too near the steep cliffs.
We also went fishing over the summer at least a couple of times a year. That was a sport I never got interested in, but by that point I was content to sneak away, smoke a couple of Camels, and flirt with cute teenage girls in the campgrounds. I was good at making the best of otherwise boring situations.
Towards the end of high school, my brother had gone off to join a fraternity at the University of Southern California. We hardly ever saw him again. But I had started to get many of my friends hooked on skiing too, so it became a bandwagon effect. We would have lots of friends going skiing on the same weekends or over holidays. It was a great way to bond with my family because my friends were always welcome and we all enjoyed each other's company. Everyone could ski at their own pace, or follow our group. At the lunch break we would all meet up and afterward we would inevitably end up in the Yodler Restaurant and Bar for cheese and pretzels, a beer or just a toddy.
I was, without doubt, privileged. My dad was a well compensated aeronautical engineer. He was deeply involved in the beginnings of the space race. We had means, but I never felt privileged. I was like most of my Southern California contemporaries, very well dressed, well fed, and well traveled. We went to Mexico regularly. When we did, we struggled to communicate, but we were always respectful of Mexicans because we were in their house.
One of my high school friends lived a block away. We started to spend a lot of time together and he invited me to come over for dinner. It was strange, because his parents spoke little or no English. They had immigrated from Germany after the war. His dad also worked in aerospace. Everything about their household was different: The food they ate, how they prepared it. Their furniture and how it was arranged. They maintained many of their German customs, so I went along. Later I learned that my friend's dad was part of Hitler's Nazi rocket development program and his brother was the world famous Werner von Braun!
When I occasionally found myself in black neighborhoods, usually because I suddenly needed gasoline and took a wrong turn, I just kept to myself. I was only threatened if someone approached me and began asking intimidating questions, which did happen.
"You are not from this part of town, are you?"
"I just needed some gas!"
"Good idea to move on, whiteboy!"
"No doubt!"
I prefer to think that all of us know we have no control over where and to whom we are born. That I only have negative impressions of others if they cause me to. That goes for any ethnic group or gender. I believe people deserve my respect until they undermine that by acting aggressive, disrespectful or offensive.
In that sense, I have always felt privileged to be so liberal with my judgmentalism. As an American, I am privileged like no other citizens in the world. All Americans, no matter what their skin color, heritage or gender, should consider themselves unfairly privileged!
The question then becomes, do we Americans abuse our privilege? Do we abuse people of other cultures? Do we disrespect other nations or their citizens just because they were born somewhere else? If that were true, why is it that America has such a massive illegal immigration problem? Why is it that people from all over the world walk hundreds of miles in flip-flops, attempt to cross deep rivers or horrid deserts, and break into our country?
If you lived in squalor with no opportunities to improve your lot in life, wouldn't you consider going where the grass is greener?
Millions of people become Americans legally. Those people make enormous sacrifices to leave their place of birth, their ethnic roots, sometimes their families, to go to a new place where they must essentially start all over! They are not walking into a war zone, at least in their minds. No one is that desperate. They are not volunteering to be abused by angry privileged Americans. And no one I know would ever try to stop anyone that legally attempts to become one of us!
In my family, we welcome everyone to join us in living a good life. We enjoy helping people to learn how to recreate: How to ski, to surf, to fish or to camp out. We share our knowledge, our tools or our friendship to expand our relationships, our circle of friends and we encourage all of our friends to do the same! My friend up the street, whose dad was at one time a Nazi, ended up becoming one of my very best friends. He was unbelievably unselfish, always lending a hand, and never once did I question his heritage or his intentions. I loved him like a brother because we had much in common beyond being neighbors.
It is painful to think that because I am capable of living well, I should therefore be punished by those that were not. In my experience, once someone that has never gone camping gets exposed to it, they suddenly realize it is fun and something they want to do more of. It makes no sense to me that anyone who has never gone camping would try to stop me and others from camping because it was insensitive to those that don't go camping!
Maybe my logic is flawed.
Maybe we should just ban all forms of fun. All forms of self entertainment that require funding. If we just created a society where there was no money, no privilege, and no fun, we would have equity! No resentment, no conflict, no differentiation that would cause any anxiety, or any resentment, so the world would be in harmony, all of the time. We would all live in La La Land.
The Elkin family lived in a self made La La Land.
***
Like some unsolved mystery, we all guess at the ending,
But nobody comes near
Are we all minstrels playing in a three-ring circus
Searching for a purpose that's not there?"
-- On A Quiet Night by The Association
Dottie, Hugh, Ron and Rick lived in a modest house on Roosevelt Street in Altadena. Mom was a full time housekeeper and Hugh commuted every day to North American Rockwell Corporation, in El Segundo. It was a 55 minute drive back then because the traffic was much lighter, but it was also exhausting because the freeway was not complete and the connectors were two lane roads.
I had a little tricycle and my big brother would help me negotiate the driveway and sidewalk. When dad came home he would change clothes and play with us for an hour or so, almost every day.
Eventually I would walk to Daniel Webster Elementary School, about three blocks from home. I still, to this day, have friends from that school. I drove by it recently. It hasn't changed a bit in 65 years!
The Elkin family was involved with the Pasadena New Years Day Rose Parade because as a college beauty, my mom had won a spot in it. She was a Rose Parade Princess in 1941. She was awarded lifetime tickets to the parade events and the game played at the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day. As I watch recent Rose Parades, I still get a chill, especially when the fly-over occurs at the opening ceremony. As a kid, it brought me to tears with immense pride. Still does.
By any notion I had a good childhood. I was raised in a nuclear family. My dad had a good job and still had lots of time to spend with the family. My mom was a full-time, stay-at-home mom who also found time to socialize, recreate and have private time. We started out in a tiny house on a quiet tree lined street with lots of other families. I had friends up and down the block and others through my folks friends' families.
As a young family we all went to the beach together. It was a one hour drive from Altadena to Huntington Beach. My dad had lots of friends from all over So Cal due to his work and childhood upbringing in Arcadia. He and my mom attended Pasadena High School, and dad went on to Pasadena City College. Huntington Beach was a middle point and a nice big sandy beach with great nearby restaurants. Most of the folks that frequented that beach were serious car buffs as was my dad, so it was always fun to watch that group brag and drag.
Occasionally we would drive down to Baja to spend a long weekend at Estero Beach. It was a Mom and Pop resort 75 miles south of Tijuana, just outside of Ensenada that offered cheap bungalows and a unique combination of water sports. It sat on a small bay with a long peninsula. On the Pacific Ocean side of the peninsula we could surf. On the eastern bay side we could snorkel and water ski. Usually we would have three couples and kids, so it was a good mix of personalities and abilities. My dad's friend had a 17' Chris Craft inboard ski boat, so we all learned to ski in Mexican salt water.
Other weekends we would visit my dad's boss who owned a cabin at Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino mountains. A much more luxurious situation with bungalow beds and tons of water toys. He also had a nice boat and everyone skied and fished. Those trips were the exception, not the norm.
Later, my folks hooked up with friends who had a camping spot on the Colorado River at Big Bend Arizona. There were many Mondays that I had to call in sick from school because I was so sunburned. I would have headaches and nausea from sun poisoning. Years later me and my 17 year old tagalong friends would wait until the adults passed out around 9:30 and we'd drain the leftover keg of beer and pass out ourselves.
When I was 6 years old my folks got both my brother and I into snow skiing. At first I hated it, too much hassle! Everything froze up, the skis were too long and I could barely operate the bear-trap bindings. Whenever I fell it was a major task to dig out of the snow, clear my goggles, empty my trousers and gloves of snow and reset the bindings! I ended up quitting early and spending the balance of the day in the lodge doing puzzles and eating french fries.
I eventually found a schoolmate whose parents were just as hooked on skiing as mine, so we figured out how to make the sport interesting. We skied through the trees, we found jumps, and when we were really bored, we took the rope tow just short of the departure point and let the rope slip between our hands and skied backwards, screaming "Oh, I can't hold on!" That would knock everyone behind us off the rope! We terrorized the slopes, and loved every minute of it! Suddenly it was fun, and we ended up learning new skiing skills too.
My dad insisted we go to Mammoth Mountain in the High Sierras, even though it was a 6 hour drive. He knew the owner Dave McCoy and wanted to support his enterprise. We would leave early Friday after he came home from work around 4:30, and arrive in Mammoth Village around 10:30 that night. Then head home around 4:00 on Sunday. After two 7 hour days of skiing I don't know how my dad stayed awake. Sometimes, that return trip would be terrifying because the last 50 miles was along the Angeles Crest Highway, a 2-lane winding mountain road that would often be cloaked in dense fog. My mom would hang her head out the passenger side window and scream if my dad drove too near the steep cliffs.
We also went fishing over the summer at least a couple of times a year. That was a sport I never got interested in, but by that point I was content to sneak away, smoke a couple of Camels, and flirt with cute teenage girls in the campgrounds. I was good at making the best of otherwise boring situations.
Towards the end of high school, my brother had gone off to join a fraternity at the University of Southern California. We hardly ever saw him again. But I had started to get many of my friends hooked on skiing too, so it became a bandwagon effect. We would have lots of friends going skiing on the same weekends or over holidays. It was a great way to bond with my family because my friends were always welcome and we all enjoyed each other's company. Everyone could ski at their own pace, or follow our group. At the lunch break we would all meet up and afterward we would inevitably end up in the Yodler Restaurant and Bar for cheese and pretzels, a beer or just a toddy.
I was, without doubt, privileged. My dad was a well compensated aeronautical engineer. He was deeply involved in the beginnings of the space race. We had means, but I never felt privileged. I was like most of my Southern California contemporaries, very well dressed, well fed, and well traveled. We went to Mexico regularly. When we did, we struggled to communicate, but we were always respectful of Mexicans because we were in their house.
One of my high school friends lived a block away. We started to spend a lot of time together and he invited me to come over for dinner. It was strange, because his parents spoke little or no English. They had immigrated from Germany after the war. His dad also worked in aerospace. Everything about their household was different: The food they ate, how they prepared it. Their furniture and how it was arranged. They maintained many of their German customs, so I went along. Later I learned that my friend's dad was part of Hitler's Nazi rocket development program and his brother was the world famous Werner von Braun!
When I occasionally found myself in black neighborhoods, usually because I suddenly needed gasoline and took a wrong turn, I just kept to myself. I was only threatened if someone approached me and began asking intimidating questions, which did happen.
"You are not from this part of town, are you?"
"I just needed some gas!"
"Good idea to move on, whiteboy!"
"No doubt!"
I prefer to think that all of us know we have no control over where and to whom we are born. That I only have negative impressions of others if they cause me to. That goes for any ethnic group or gender. I believe people deserve my respect until they undermine that by acting aggressive, disrespectful or offensive.
In that sense, I have always felt privileged to be so liberal with my judgmentalism. As an American, I am privileged like no other citizens in the world. All Americans, no matter what their skin color, heritage or gender, should consider themselves unfairly privileged!
The question then becomes, do we Americans abuse our privilege? Do we abuse people of other cultures? Do we disrespect other nations or their citizens just because they were born somewhere else? If that were true, why is it that America has such a massive illegal immigration problem? Why is it that people from all over the world walk hundreds of miles in flip-flops, attempt to cross deep rivers or horrid deserts, and break into our country?
If you lived in squalor with no opportunities to improve your lot in life, wouldn't you consider going where the grass is greener?
Millions of people become Americans legally. Those people make enormous sacrifices to leave their place of birth, their ethnic roots, sometimes their families, to go to a new place where they must essentially start all over! They are not walking into a war zone, at least in their minds. No one is that desperate. They are not volunteering to be abused by angry privileged Americans. And no one I know would ever try to stop anyone that legally attempts to become one of us!
In my family, we welcome everyone to join us in living a good life. We enjoy helping people to learn how to recreate: How to ski, to surf, to fish or to camp out. We share our knowledge, our tools or our friendship to expand our relationships, our circle of friends and we encourage all of our friends to do the same! My friend up the street, whose dad was at one time a Nazi, ended up becoming one of my very best friends. He was unbelievably unselfish, always lending a hand, and never once did I question his heritage or his intentions. I loved him like a brother because we had much in common beyond being neighbors.
It is painful to think that because I am capable of living well, I should therefore be punished by those that were not. In my experience, once someone that has never gone camping gets exposed to it, they suddenly realize it is fun and something they want to do more of. It makes no sense to me that anyone who has never gone camping would try to stop me and others from camping because it was insensitive to those that don't go camping!
Maybe my logic is flawed.
Maybe we should just ban all forms of fun. All forms of self entertainment that require funding. If we just created a society where there was no money, no privilege, and no fun, we would have equity! No resentment, no conflict, no differentiation that would cause any anxiety, or any resentment, so the world would be in harmony, all of the time. We would all live in La La Land.
The Elkin family lived in a self made La La Land.
***