“You will do it now, young man. I don’t want you winding up on the third shift at Flagg-Utica.”
Flagg-Utica was a local textile plant.
“I haven’t bought anything new to wear in years so I could save for your education,” my mother would continue on her guilt trip, “and you don’t have the gratitude to do your homework.”
Somehow, I never could figure how failing to read three chapters in my geography book about the various sorts of vegetation to be found in a tropical rain forest had anything to do with facing a life as a mill hand. But with enough guilt as a catalyst, you can read anything, even geography books and Deuteronomy.
I suppose our parents also were trying to protect us when they voiced their displeasure with Elvis. They knew he was something different, too, and they were afraid of where he might lead — thinking evil thoughts about girls in Sunday School, for example.
We want you to have it better than we did, they said, and that covered just about everything. They wanted us to have money and comforts; they wanted us to have knowledge and vision; they wanted a better world for us, one free from war and bitter sacrifice.
They are old now, my parents’ generation, and I suppose they think they got what they wanted. I did my homework and I got the education my mother saved for, and I live in an air-conditioned house with a microwave oven, an automatic ice-maker, and a Jenn-Air grill on the stove. I also have two color television sets with remote control, a pair of Gucci loafers, and a tennis racquet that cost more than the 1947 Chevrolet my mother once bought. I eat steak whenever I want it, I’ve been to Europe a couple of times and nobody shot at me, and I have a nice car.
The car. It’s a perfect manifestation of having achieved the success my parents wanted for me, but such success can be bittersweet. While we’re having it better than our parents did, they now may feel, in some instances, that we’ve actually gone further than they intended. They may suspect, as the phrase went, that we’ve forgotten “where we came from.”
Allow me to explain.
After I got my first job out of college, I bought myself a Pontiac. Later, I bought another Pontiac, bigger and with more features than the previous one. Then I lost my head and bought one of those British roadsters that was approximately the size of a bumper car at the amusement park but not built nearly as solidly.
After the sports car had driven me sufficiently nuts, I decided to go back to a full-sized sedan, something fitting a person who was having it better than his parents did.
I got myself a Cadillac.
Nobody in my family had ever owned a Cadillac, so I figured if I had one, there could be no question that I had fulfilled my mother’s wishes by making something of myself.
I had a former schoolmate who sold Cadillacs, so I went to see him and priced a couple. I couldn’t have paid for the back seat, much less an entire Cadillac.
“Have you thought about leasing?” my friend asked me.
As a matter of fact, I hadn’t. As a matter of fact, I never had even heard of leasing an automobile.
“It’s the latest thing,” said my friend, who explained that I wouldn’t have to fork over any huge down payment, and for a modest (by Arab oil sheik standards) monthly installment, I could be driving around in a brand-new Cadillac.
I bit.
“You want power steering and power brakes, of course,” said my friend.
“Of course.”
“And do you want leather upholstery?”
“Of course.”
“And how about wire wheelcovers and a sun roof?”
“Of course.”
“And eight-track stereo?”
“Of course.”
“Let me see if I have this straight,” my friend summarized. “You want the kind of Cadillac that if you drove it home to Moreland and parked it in your mother’s yard, half the town would want to come by and see it. Right?”
“But, of course,” I said.
I drove my new Cadillac with the power steering and the power brakes and the leather upholstery and the wire wheelcovers and the eight-track stereo off the lot and directly home to Moreland.
“It must have been expensive,” said my mother.
“Not really,” I explained. “I leased it.”
“Couldn’t you have done just as well with a Chevrolet? I always had good luck with Chevrolets.”
“I just thought it was time I got myself a Cadillac,” I explained. “I’ve worked hard.”
“I know that, son,” said my mother, “but I don’t want you just throwing your money away on fancy cars.”
Suddenly, I felt guilty for driving up in my mother’s yard in a Cadillac. I was feeling guilty because I didn’t think a Chevrolet was good enough for me anymore. I could hear the old men sitting around the stove:
“Got yourself a Cadillac, huh? Boy, ain’t you big-time?”
“Hey, look who got hisself a Cadillac, ol’ college-boy here. Boy, where’d you learn high-falootin’ things like drivin’ a Cadillac? Didn’t learn that from your mama, I know that. She never drove nothing but Chevrolets.”
The only person who came by to see my car while I was visiting my mother was Crazy Melvin.
“What kind of car is it?” he asked me.
“Chevrolet,” I said.
“Thought so,” said Crazy Melvin as he walked away.
Guilt was a very big part of my generation’s adult life. If you didn’t do well enough, you were guilty because you’d let your parents down. But if you did too well, and came home driving a Cadillac and wearing sunglasses, you felt guilty because you obviously had forgotten your roots and had turned into a big-city high-roller that you had no business turning into.
The old men at the store: “You drivin’ that Cadillac is like puttin’ a ten dollar saddle on a thousand dollar horse.”
Despite the Cadillac, which now has more than 100,000 miles on it and is five years old (I figure if I drive it long enough, my mother will appreciate the sound common sense I used in not trading for a new car until my old one was completely worn out), despite the education, despite all the gadgetry I own, despite the fact that I didn’t wind up on the third shift at Flagg-Utica, I’m not so certain that I am having it better than my parents’ generation did.
Let me clarify this point: I wouldn’t have wanted to go through World Wars and the Great Depression, and I like my creature comforts and the cruise control on my car, but did my parents ever have to eat a plastic breakfast at McDonald’s while some guy mopped under their table spreading the aroma of ammonia?
Did
