Among a few of my treasured books is the Harry T. Peters beautifully illustrated 1942 edition of “Currier & Ives, printmakers to the American People.” National recognition began with “Awful Conflagration of the Steam Boat Lexington.” In what may have been the first illustrated extra in history “The Extra Sun” edition of the New York paper of January 13, 1840 was followed by Currier & Ives becoming truly Printmakers to the American People.

Then there is my beautifully illustrated large volume “The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics” reaching back in time to headlines of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, but kids were looking in newspapers of that era for the Katzenjammer Kids, Happy Hooligan, and Buster Brown.

Another captivating book is “The Faith of America” illustrated by Norman Rockwell. The Guideposts edition of the book has many of the most famous of the Rockwell paintings beginning with his “Looking Out to Sea” of 1919. For a trip down “Memory Lane” few things are as evocative of America as it used to be than looking at the Norman Rockwell paintings.

As a kid I was a genuine connoisseur of the funny papers, comic books, and film cartoons. I have a photo my mother took of my brother Ronnie and me sitting in the yard of our home on the corner of Cottonwood and Padre in Southeast Bakersfield with the funny papers of the Bakersfield Californian unfolded on our laps. The picture is dated 1940. But prints like those of Currier & Ives were also captivating to me, and no issue of the Saturday Evening Post was complete without a Norman Rockwell picture gracing the cover.

During that bygone time of Currier & Ives before everyone was accorded victimhood status of one kind or another in a politically correct America gone loony with litigation and run by lawyers where no one is accountable for anything but demanding unearned bread from the tax trough or lawsuits, to turn the pages in this beautifully illustrated book is to step back in time to an America before Lincoln’s War and the years immediately following. But talk about politically incorrect! There is enough in the book to make the ACLU go ballistic! Not that those old comics and Norman Rockwell’s paintings wouldn’t have the same effect. I doubt you will find a book of Currier & Ives prints in any school library today, and if so it will doubtless be heavily edited.

By now most people are aware American History is no longer taught in our schools. In many schools the old civics classes have been omitted as well. But to play the Devil’s attorney for a moment, teachers in a “Press one for English” America would be hard pressed today to teach with a straight face what it means to be a “good citizen,” especially when so many pupils don’t even speak English. This together with what poses as “leadership” in America today would seem to make any attempts to teach “civics” passé.

During the 60s when I was a high school teacher at Jordan in Watts it was difficult enough to talk to pupils about American History and good citizenship. I was teaching in a hopeless community to hopeless pupils, none of whom was ever going to trust “the man.” Cops and authority figures in government were the enemy, and it would have been laughable to attempt to tell the young people in my charge “I’m from the government; and I’m here to help you.” At a time when these same young people could see Ozzie and Harriet with wonder asking themselves what kind of world such people lived in I was expected as a teacher to uphold the “values” of America Ozzie and Harriet represented.

There is a parallel to my experience in Watts and that of nations like China. By now most people are aware China is building coal-fired electric plants at the rate of nearly one every two days. Scientists have issued their verdict global warming is caused by such burning of fossil fuels, but no matter how America reduces emissions China will outpace America in pollutants and there seems nothing to be done about it. Iran sits on a pool of oil but insists it needs nuclear reactors for electrical energy. Right. The rain forests continue to be devastated for economic reasons and there is nothing to be done about that. Our oceans are increasingly polluted and there is nothing to be done about that. And when we ask ourselves why nothing is to be done about these things threatening our planet the answer invariably comes down to economics, the kind of economics where the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer. And what is to be done about that?

Those years ago while teaching in Watts I faced the same conditions prevailing in third world nations. The young people knew their prospects of a future were extremely limited, surrounded as they were with cruel poverty and rampant crime and violence. Now these many years later I have seen the conditions prevailing in Watts begin to prevail outside the ghettos and barrios of America, conditions robbing young people everywhere of hope for a future. Utopians dream and futurists give forecasts. But the kind of cooperation needed to save our planet is beyond the kin of either.

Sometime ago I stood at my backdoor looking at the mountains, the trees and rocks here around my little place in the Kern River Valley and the thought came to me “This is no longer my America, this is not the America I was born and raised in. It has become a foreign land to me.”

Leafing through the history of America to be found in Currier & Ives, the old funny papers and comics, the paintings of Norman Rockwell and to have lived in an America these things represent seems a fairytale. And had I not lived in such an America it would indeed seem a fairytale. But I lived the America of WWII, of “Gidget” and “To Kill A Mockingbird.” I’m not a person given to believing in fairytales; I’ve had full immersion in the good, the bad, and the ugly of America.

But I knew an America that other nations trusted, an America that stood tall, that stood for the virtues to be found in our history as a Christian nation with Biblical foundations, I knew an America where our history and citizenship classes were taught by teachers that believed in these things, and I will continue to write of that America as well as what America has become. Why? Because I am a writer; this is what I do, this is what I am.

I do wonder about people like Edgar Cayce; if not charlatans what function do such people serve? I wonder about Atlantis and all the myths of ancient literature and stone monuments, I have books about unknown mysteries, witchcraft, ghosts, the paranormal and such, so very much to wonder about. The world is full of mysteries and wonder, and to look up at the stars is to look into the face of mystery and wonder. I think to myself; that might be where we come from, that might be our heritage, to reach the stars someday. But the world does not seem to share that thought.

It takes education, it takes freedom from want and poverty to dream the large dreams filled with the possibilities of humankind at its best. The America I used to know held promise of leading the way to the stars. But that America no longer exists except to the memory of those like me who lived it. And too many other nations, especially the nations of Islam seem determined to eradicate America altogether. But nowhere do we see the nations of the world agreeing to cooperate in overcoming ignorance and poverty, and the world is too small now with half its population living in ignorance and poverty to succeed without the cooperation of all nations.

It is a melancholy journey, my leafing through the books and looking at the photographs declaring the America I once knew. And it has been my melancholy task to write some of the chronicles of that America despite such stories in so many cases reading like a fairytale. But like my critique of To Kill A Mockingbird on behalf of children, it seems a duty to do these things, both a duty and a responsibility though truth to tell I don’t know why. Just to read my largely autobiographical novel “Donnie and Jean, an angel’s story” about two children growing up in WWII Bakersfield is to step back into a time that may as well be of fabled Atlanteans. The story of the two children is true, but who can say such stories will join those of Atlantis.