Fifteen Years of the Blue Truck

Rainbow over a Texas highway.

It's hard to believe, but I published my first post in this blog 15 years ago today at this hour.  I started it on a whim, with no particular plan, and have continued it on the same principle ever since.  For a long time, it was a convenient vehicle for my ranting and raving about the state of the world and the sadly misguided people in it - to put it mildly - but the last few years I have mainly given up ranting, which serves no purpose (good advice is never welcome to misbehaving ears) and keep blogging just to have something constructive to do in retirement.  I know it is no great shakes, certainly - your Head Trucker has never been a crowd-pleaser - but it pleases me, if no one else, and that's enough.

I appreciate more than I can say the kind attention of my faithful truckbuddies, who have stuck with me all these years, the ones who regularly comment and those who rarely do so, but merely lurk in the corners.  Being effectively housebound at this late age, and resolutely opposed on general principles to what is called social media - a corrosive pestilence that will have to be suppressed sooner or later - the Blue Truck gives me a happy connection from time to time with like-minded friends, and that's a very nice thing to have.

To celebrate this anniversary, I reprint here from my second blog post an excerpt from E. M. Forster's essay "What I Believe," written in 1938 when the dictators and their rat-faced minions were preparing to carve up the world among themselves, bringing death and destruction to millions all around the globe.  Thank God for the stalwart leaders and peoples of the democracies who stood up to them and thwarted their evil plans.  We who are now old men have lived our whole lives in the long, sunlit afternoon of the postwar order - which, alas, seems daily to be coming apart at the seams, pulled and ripped in all directions by extremists and fanatics of the right and of the left.

In our fathers' time, the democracies were the golden mean, the middle path between the two extremes; and when the democracies finally realized there was nothing else to do but fight or die, they discovered their enormous strength and used it to subdue the wicked and restore peace, liberty, and justice to the world.  But is there still a middle way to be found?  Does anybody even want to find it?

I have my thoughts, but this Cassandra prefers not to waste breath by speaking them.  Nor is it safe to speak freely anymore about any but the most trivial topics.  Instead, I offer this excerpt from Forster's essay, which reflects something of my own thinking.  I don't agree with Forster on everything, but this passage resonates in my own heart.

"The victory of our queer race . . ."

I believe in aristocracy, though - if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke. 

I give no examples - it is risky to do that - but the reader may as well consider whether this is the type of person he would like to meet and to be, and whether (going further with me) he would prefer that this type should not be an ascetic one. I am against asceticism myself. I am with the old Scotsman who wanted less chastity and more delicacy. I do not feel that my aristocrats are a real aristocracy if they thwart their bodies, since bodies are the instruments through which we register and enjoy the world. Still, I do not insist. This is not a major point. It is clearly possible to be sensitive, considerate and plucky and yet be an ascetic too, and if anyone possesses the first three qualities I will let him in! 

On they go - an invincible army, yet not a victorious one. The aristocrats, the elect, the chosen, the Best People - all the words that describe them are false, and all attempts to organize them fail. Again and again Authority, seeing their value, has tried to net them and to utilize them as the Egyptian Priesthood or the Christian Church or the Chinese Civil Service or the Group Movement, or some other worthy stunt. But they slip through the net and are gone; when the door is shut, they are no longer in the room; their temple, as one of them remarked, is the holiness of the Heart's affections, and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide-open world.

Hugs and good wishes to all my truckbuddies - thanks for riding along in the Blue Truck.

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Thoughts on Stonewall 50, Part 1

While making my coffee this morning, I looked out the window at the cars zooming by on the busy boulevard - from a distance, they are not so much different from those of fifty years ago.  Traffic lights still wink red and yellow and green, just as they did then.  Little birds flit among the trees, and nimble squirrels jog along the fence top just as their long-ago ancestors were wont to do.  The sun shines just as brightly now as in the past, the sky is just as blue, and puffy white clouds still float along in their insouciant way.  The grass and the trees are just as green, the cheerful zinnias and flaming crepe myrtles still as delightful to the eye as ever they were.

Inside our humble bungalow, long since remodeled countless times by who knows how many previous tenants, the potted plants in the windows, the plastered walls, the simple furniture, the striped blue-green-gold tablecloth and old-fashioned china, the kitchen shelves full of pots and pans and dishes and canned goods, are none of them very different from what might have been here fifty years ago.  It doesn't look at all like the Jetsons' home.  A time traveler suddenly popping in from a half-century ago would no doubt be quite unimpressed - apart from the microwave, the computers, and the big flat-screen TV, he would surely think there was really nothing to write home about. How disappointing!

And yet despite the seeming similitude, all is changed, and changed utterly.

The other day, M. P. told me at breakfast that he had just seen an online ad by Michael's, the nationwide arts-and-crafts chain, announcing their Pride Month sales.  And we were both struck for a moment with awe and wonder at how very much things have changed for gay people just in our lifetimes.  Now, at least with some retailers, gayness has joined the pantheon of other commercialized holidays, in the good old American tradition, along with Mother's Day, Father's Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  What a breathtaking development.

I understand that certain weenie-whiny children of the snowflake generation decry the evils of "corporate sponsorship," but it cannot be doubted that when Wal-Mart decks its shelves with all sorts of rainbow merchandise, gayness has arrived, it is part of the mainstream of American life, along with apple pie, baseball, Budweiser, and Twitter, like it or not.  (And some don't like it a bit, but I'll get to that presently.)

The petulant Eloi of the modern world, college age and younger, have no memory of the 20th century - they have no real idea of what it was like to live before Stonewall, before gay bars, before AIDS, before gay books and newspapers and magazines and soccer clubs and churches and websites (and free porn 24/7), and all the social media hookups anyone could want, and even marriage - all those out-and-proud things that were simply unimaginable fifty years ago.  Unimaginable, do you hear me, children?  Pure fantasy - things that if we thought of them, we would immediately also think, "Oh, that will never happen."

But it did, every bit of it.  And it's still happening, as each successive generation takes things a bit further.  Now there is even - will wonders never cease? - a gay presidential candidate who is taken quite seriously, at least by the Democratic Party.  Utterly unimaginable in 1969 - and for quite a long time afterwards, too.

Because, of course, it usually takes time for big changes to seep from the culture-churns of the Blue Coasts down into all the hills and valleys, nooks and crannies of the Big Red Middle.  In some ways, I think it is still as true today as it was fifty years ago that people in New York and Los Angeles are living in a future that will not arrive in the far provinces until five or ten years from now - though the ubiquity of television, internet, and smart phones certainly hastens the process, especially among the young hipsters in every part of the country.

But then, impatient youth in every era, in every century, has always yearned for the limpid, dreamy future to arrive as quickly as possible, while age, weary and wizened, yearns for the comforts and certainties of a vanished past.  It's human nature.  We want what we don't have.  And all too often, we don't miss what we do have until we lose it.

This fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots brings up a number of reflections I will share with my truckbuddies over the next few days.  Having been under the weather with one little ailment or another the last couple of months, I just don't have the oomph to type it all out in one sitting.  And of course I would enjoy hearing your comments on this momentous anniversary, too.

Just to jog your memory of prehistoric times, you can watch The Boys in the Band, written just before Stonewall - when "gay rights" were as yet completely unthought-of by most people.  When I saw it again a year or so ago, I was startled to realize which character I most identified with, from the fuller perspective of maturity.  What about you?

Cheat sheet - the cast and characters

Kenneth Nelson as Michael (the host)
Frederick Combs as Donald (Michael's best friend)
Leonard Frey as Harold (the guest of honor)
Cliff Gorman as Emory (Oh Mary, don't ask!)
Laurence Luckinbill as Hank (divorced guy)
Keith Prentice as Larry (Hank's lover)
Robert La Tourneaux as Cowboy Tex
Reuben Greene as Bernard (black guy)
Peter White as Alan McCarthy (straight guy - ?)

Ten Years on the Road in the Blue Truck

Today is the tenth anniversary of my little blog, strange to say.  Where does the time go?  I started it on a whim, and have continued it ever since on the same principle.  Consequently, it has never amounted to much - a poor thing, Sir, but mine own - nevertheless, it has been for the most part a happy little hobby, an agreeable routine to pass the time with amid the changing seasons of life.

Your Head Trucker doesn't amount to much, either - just an old dog lying on the porch, watching the mad world go by.  If any of my 3,690 posts has uplifted my truckbuddies, shown you something you didn't know, or raised a smile on your face sometime or other - then my small efforts have not been entirely in vain.

To mark the occasion, I am serving up once again one of my favorite slices of literature for your diversion:  an excerpt from E. M. Forster's collection of essays, Two Cheers for Democracy (1951), which I posted ten years ago today.  The waiters will be handing out glasses of champagne while you read - no tipping and no pinching!  Enjoy.

I believe in aristocracy. . . — if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.

I give no examples — it is risky to do that — but the reader may as well consider whether this is the type of person he would like to meet and to be, and whether (going further with me) he would prefer that this type should not be an ascetic one. I am against asceticism myself. I am with the old Scotsman who wanted less chastity and more delicacy. I do not feel that my aristocrats are a real aristocracy if they thwart their bodies, since bodies are the instruments through which we register and enjoy the world. Still, I do not insist. This is not a major point. It is clearly possible to be sensitive, considerate and plucky and yet be an ascetic too, and if anyone possesses the first three qualities I will let him in!

On they go — an invincible army, yet not a victorious one. The aristocrats, the elect, the chosen, the Best People — all the words that describe them are false, and all attempts to organize them fail. Again and again Authority, seeing their value, has tried to net them and to utilize them as the Egyptian Priesthood or the Christian Church or the Chinese Civil Service or the Group Movement, or some other worthy stunt. But they slip through the net and are gone; when the door is shut, they are no longer in the room; their temple, as one of them remarked, is the holiness of the Heart’s affections, and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide-open world.

Grateful thanks to all my truckbuddies for riding along with me in the Blue Truck.

Royal Platinum Anniversary

A new photograph of The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh released by Buckingham Palace to mark their 70th wedding anniversary today.

HM The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary today without any public pomp and ceremony, just a quiet dinner for 150 friends and relations at Windsor Castle, their weekend country getaway. The fact of a platinum anniversary is no more astounding and inspiring than their long, unfailing life of duty and service together.

Hats off and three cheers for the royal couple. May God bless them.

A photograph of then-Princess Elizabeth and Lt. Philip Mountbatten, RN, on their wedding day, November 20, 1947.

Fifty Years Ago

Yes, I know what day it is, but no, I don't want to write about it. I was there - not in Dealy Plaza, but in 1963, staying home from school with the sniffles and sitting up on my parents' bed watching TV when the first bulletin broke in on a soap opera - and the dark story slowly unwound itself across the screen all that long November afternoon, brilliant with southern sunshine. I remember it all quite clearly, the four days of sadness, and though I did later read several books and many articles about it all, now the trials and tribulations of my own life across six decades have left me too familiar with sorrow to want to borrow any.  It was a tragedy, not a piece of entertainment to be endlessly revisited.

RIP JFK. If the gaping crowds will ever let you.

It Cuts Both Ways

The problem with getting older is how the anniversaries pile up. Dates that cling and sting in the memory. You go along thinking you've brushed them all away. And then it all comes back at the sound of a familiar, forgotten tune: things the heart can never forget.