the lesson his sister janice taught me after jimmy birdsong died:
THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS TOLD THE STORY...
OF THE INVASION IN AN IMPERFECT WAY. On Sunday, June 24th in 1950, seven divisions of North Korean troops and 150 Korean tanks crossed the 38th parallel. The Sunday newspapers made clear that there was a crisis of some sort, but were unclear as to what kind of a catastrophe it might turn out to be. President Truman was flying back to Washington from a vacation in Independence, Missouri, while General MacArthur was huddling with his staff at his headquarters in Tokyo. Dean Atcheson, the Secretary of State, had called an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council. Insofar as we kids were concerned, this wasn't another Pearl Harbor; it was some kind of distant battle between Koreans, a kind of civil war, which had nothing to do with us. So all of us from the neighborhood went to have a picnic in Denver's City Park. The older guys were laughing with their girlfriends on blankets. Jimmy Birdsong came running up laughing. He had gotten naked on a dare. The girls were giggling and blushing. Jimmy continued running around and everyone cheered.
By Monday everybody was talking about Korea. We were in another war. It didn't matter that there was no direct attack on Americans. We were a part of the United Nations. We might have to go. By Friday, the first American troops were on their way to the fighting. And by the fourth of July, the mood of the neighborhood had forever changed. It was clear now: the older guys like Jimmy were going off to war. President Truman was calling it a "police action," but everyone else called it a war. If you were 18, you could be drafted. In August, the reserves were called up, including many men who had fought in World War II. Soul had fallen, then the South Korean army was destroyed, and the American troops had faulty equipment. If you went away, you drew a number from the draft board that sent you to Korea to die.
By Monday everybody was talking about Korea. We were in another war. It didn't matter that there was no direct attack on Americans. We were a part of the United Nations. We might have to go. By Friday, the first American troops were on their way to the fighting. And by the fourth of July, the mood of the neighborhood had forever changed. It was clear now: the older guys like Jimmy were going off to war. President Truman was calling it a "police action," but everyone else called it a war. If you were 18, you could be drafted. In August, the reserves were called up, including many men who had fought in World War II. Soul had fallen, then the South Korean army was destroyed, and the American troops had faulty equipment. If you went away, you drew a number from the draft board that sent you to Korea to die.
On the 23rd day of November, Jimmy Birdsong died in Korea, while I was eating Thansgiving dinner with relatives in relatives in Greeley, Colorado.
In early December, I saw his sisters, Julia and Janice, sitting with his mother and father on the front porch of where they lived. They were silent, and I didn't know what to say; I kept walking. What could I say? That Jimmy had died for his country? He died for someone else's country. Could I say he was a good man and great American? I barely knew him because he was older than I was. He was one of us, part of the Neighborhood I had grown up in, but I never really got to close enough to know him all that well, other than show him the latest cartoon character I had drawn, and he told me that he thought I was good. When I went back to school in the fall, my mind was scrambled. Many classmates had brothers who had been drafted or called up. Almost everybody thought that communism had to be stopped. I tried to make sense of this. If it was important enough to fight communists, would it mean that one day I would be called up too and have to die like Jimmy did?
On the television, Cardinal Spellman kept warning about how America was in danger of destruction at the hands of the communists, those in Russia, those close to home. The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News were full of frantic warnings about commie pinkos. The unshaven Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin, his brows kissing in a thuggish way, was now working with another unshaven character from California named Richard Nixon. Cardinal Spellman loved them both. All three of these men wanted to forever rid America of evil doing communists. When the McCarthy Hearings began, and as I watched him on TV, my feelings of unease deepened. I remember seeing a comic book that showed communist mobs attacking Saint Patrick's Cathedral. That winter, other comic book heroes were going to war too. Steve Canyon enlisted in the air force, Bill Mauldin was sent to Korea, and his characters Willie and Joe found themselves at another war front after World War II. The comics grew darker. As did my view of the world.
On March 29th in 1951, an American couple by the name of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of espionage, and I read in The Rocky Mountain News that there would be a rally for their defense in City Park. I attempted to get some of the guys from school to go with me to the rally, and one of them said: What are you, some kind of a commie? I said no; but it was a kind of history and I wanted to see it. I went alone. The crowd was small. It was then that I spotted Jimmy's sister, Janice. She smiled at me and asked if I would like to walk back to our neighborhood with her. When the rally ended, we did just that; and as we began to wander toward our neighborhood Janice said: You do know that my mother and father are communists, don't you?
I wasn't certain how to respond.
Janice could sense that I was confused, and immediately changed the subject by asking me if she could buy me a malted-milk at the Dolly Madison Ice Cream Shop on Colfax Avenue. I sat alone with Janice in the booth, making small talk, listening to the jukebox: Teresa Brewer's "Music, Music, Music" and Nat King Cole's "Mona Lisa" and the Weavers singing "Goodnight Irene."
Does it bother you that my family are communists? she finally asked me.
I'm sorry, I said. I didn't know you were and I don't know what to say.
What religion are you? she asked.
Lutheran, I replied.
I don't know whether or not you will understand this, she began. But communism is our religion. My brother Jimmy's religion. And mine. But that does not mean that do not love America just as much as you Lutherans do. We do. If we didn't, Jimmy would not have gone off to war.
She started to cry.
People in the other booths were looking at us.
Being a Communist did not stop Jimmy from dying for our country, she said, then wiped away her tears with a paper napkin. She looked me directly in-the-eye: The real enemy for Americans, the people that you ought to be frightened of are the megalomaniacs like Senators Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon and Cardinal Spellman, who use religion and fear to divide us. To rip us apart. They want to blacklist writers and artists. They are the ones who take pride in executing people, destroying reputations, and ruining careers. Not us. She paused, Jimmy once told me that you enjoyed drawing cartoons. Is that true?
It is, I replied.
One day, Senator McCarthy will be gone, but the Great Fear his hearings have instilled will leave it's mark. Do me a favor, she said. I want you to promise me to always remember the words of Walt Kelly in his Pogo cartoon strip: "We have met the enemy, and he is us..."
...Janice had taught me a lesson I would never forget with words that I would forever remember....
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