We Gotta Get out of This Place!, page 3

Thank you everyone, for taking the time to read this thread and post your comments. A few comments to some who pointed out factual errors or poorly phrased facts that had the effect of error. Tom and Jerry made their broadcast debut on CBS in 1965, which was what I was referring to in terms of their "birth". It was an ambiguous statement, and one truly born of my own personal experience of Tom and Jerry, than one of research. In terms of the history of the blues, it has a long unrecorded history and of course the blues are a product of African slaves brought to America. I used the word "probably" when suggesting it was the first indigenous music of the United States, because I cannot prove this, and arguably jazz might truly be the first indigenous music of the U.S., but I thought it worth granting the blues a nod in terms of its influence, and that it is truly American music at its finest.

There were just a few who seemed perplexed, or confused on what this thread is really about. I suspect that for most reading this thread, they fully understand what it is about, and what it is about goes far beyond nostalgia. I was still in diapers when JFK was assassinated and have no conscious memory of this event, and both my parents were closer to Don and Sally Draper than they were Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda. Although, my mother used to always yammer on how she and my father were once friends with Harvey Milk, whom my mother always used to say was; "the nicest guy in the world", but I had no idea who this Harvey Milk was or why he mattered so much to my mother.

Both my parents were far bigger fans of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Patti Page, Patsy Kline, and even earlier musicians such as Glenn Miller. This was the music that played in the Zodeaux household while I was still a child. I didn't discover the absolute joy of rock n roll until I was around 13 years old. I was invited to see a play written by a playwright who has used me as an actor in an earlier play he wrote. This play was about a disaffected son of a publishing mogul. Early in the play, the son is being nagged relentlessly by both his mother and father, and as their nagging gets louder and more insistent, the son walks over to a turn table, takes a record out and puts it on the turntable, and suddenly the speakers were blasting with The Rolling Stones "I Can't Get No Satisfaction".

It took my breath away. I was stunned. I was shocked. I couldn't believe I had never heard such music that spoke so clearly and simply to the frustrations I was struggling with. These Rolling Stones sure as hell weren't The Carpenters or Captain and Tennille. With my next bit of allowance I went to the record store and bought High Tides and Green Grass and played that record over and over and over. By the time I was in high school, I had discovered much more than just The Rolling Stones, among these discoveries was The Animals. At 13 years old I hadn't a clue about politics, or law. I was being taught, however - in a public school - about the Civil Rights Movement, and throughout the remainder of that public school education, I was diligently taught all about my "civil rights".

It was long after I graduated from high school that I began to discern the difference between unalienable rights and civil rights. I went straight to college right after high school, and in a civic government class in college, I learned how very important our own signature on contracts are, so as I began to wake up to the reality that much of what I had been "taught" was nothing more than indoctrination and propaganda, I began digging underneath the surface of this thing we call The American Dream.

When I was a kid, no police agency ever came and shut down my lemonade stand, even though the foundations for such absurdity was all ready fully in place. I was taught how to file a valid tax return in my 9th grad business economics. No discussion of liability was ever had, and we were implicitly taught that if we earned income that this meant we were subject to a tax code that no one understands. When I got my first drivers license at 16 years of age, I have no recollection of reading any signs on the walls of the DMV asserting that driving was a privilege and not a right, nor do I recollect reading any such assertion in the driving test manual. It was only years later that I began to see these dubious assertions being made by government, and I cannot honestly say if that is because government had only just begun making these absurd assertions, or if it was because I was just beginning to notice them.

The "place" lies in that difference. I was once in a place where "America was the freest country in the world" and now I am in a different place. Geographically I reside in the same nation, but I exist in a different place than those of my childhood perceptions. I do not wish to return to my childhood, I instead wish to be free. That's the better place for us all.