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Robert A. Mills

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MARTYRDOM
9/7/2009 9:50:08 AM

In 1942 I was in the 5th grade at Sumner Elementary (they were called “grammar” schools back then) in Buffalo, NY, and there was a kid named Merrill who was a whiz at Civics (they call it Social Studies now.) I liked Merrill a lot, but he hated me. I think he hated me because I thought FDR was our “permanent” leader. After all, he had been president since I was born, and when he died in 1945, I thought we’d lose the war (despite Aldo Ray, Sonny Tufts, Alan Ladd and Robert Taylor) and America was done.

Anyway, Merrill hated me, and twice he beat me up after school. I can’t remember why he waited for me outside the school, but there he was. On both occasions, he decked me with one blow to the head, and I went home crying.

It wasn’t until I had graduated (by the skin of my teeth) from high school and was waiting to be drafted into the Army so I could go to Korea (I never was and never did,) that I suddenly realized why Merrill hated me.

It wasn’t me he hated. It was FDR.

And he beat me up because he couldn’t beat up FDR. FDR was in Washington, and Merrill was in Buffalo. And so was I! I was easily accessible.

Merrill, however, was a genius when it came to Civics. He not only knew who all the presidents were, he knew their vice presidents, their Supreme Court chief justices, their various cabinet secretaries—even whom they defeated to become president in the first place. More than that, he could define the Monroe Doctrine and the Whisky Rebellion! And he knew to the gallon how much fuel the Spirit of St. Louis held! And he knew FDR withheld helium from Hitler and thus caused the holocaust of the Hindenburg in New Jersey.

That was it. Merrill hated me because I was enamored of FDR. He had no choice but to beat me up. He would probably have killed me if killing had been what kids did to each other in school back then.

My biggest regret was that I never got to hear any of FDR’s “fireside chats.” They were always on at the same time as Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy or Easy Aces or The Shadow, three radio programs my Croatian grandfather never missed (we only had two radios back then, and only one worked: his.)

Grandpa is long gone, but I wonder what he would think of the rhubarb rustling in the weeds over the curious faction of our populace who is wrestling over the moral dilemma of our current President having the audacity to speak directly to our classrooms of today? Just who the hell does he think he is! FDR?

Times have changed and so has Social Studies (I’d better be careful about my use of the word “social”—can writers still get blacklisted?)

I can hear Grandpa with his Slavic accent expounding on current events: “Wassa mutter wid dese dummies? Dey alect da schvartzer to get some decent politicks finally inna Whit Hoose, den dey wone let him talk wid da kids aboot gettin der brains on right! Country’s onna way tuh hell inna baskethand. I come here cause dey wone let no kids go tuh school inna Old Country, and now dey scream here cause somebody say dey should stay dere inna schools! Lemme tell you: keep dem kids outta school, dey gonna say Obama da bess pressdent since Tomas Jesserfon! Wassa next ting dey gonna do? Start burnin da books?”

I think the noble Squire of Hyde Park would have gotten on famously with Stephano Laschowitz. He was a little difficult to understand at times, but then, so was FDR. Would he have gotten away today calling Old Age Benefits “Social” Security? Would my nemesis Merrill have excelled in Civics if it had been called “Social” Studies?

I don’t know. But I’ll tell you one thing: I know FDR (I got beat up over him,) and Merrill was no FDR!

Not even close, and certainly no cigar. Besides, close only counts in horseshoes.

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