Disaster Among the Heavens - Don E Peavy Sr (best books for students to read .TXT) 📗

ears of people hungry for freedom as if it was yesterday when the Great Communicator uttered it. Visions still linger of the Edwin Hawkins Singers dancing atop the Iron Curtain singing “Oh Happy Day” as the gates of the Gulag Archipelago swung open and East met West and West hugged East and the USSR was no more and now all people struggled together as hunger and civil strife invaded the land. Oh what a day! They were happy but hungry! Their eyes glistened with the radiance of the sun yet their bodies trembled from the cold! The iron curtain was no more and now they could see clearly -- they had discovered their true enemy. It was neither America nor the West. It was their neighbours!
The people of the former USSR now discovered the other in what had once been their neighbour. Perhaps they had been willing to see beyond these others as they looked toward the wickedness of the West. But now that the West was no longer a threat, they turned their gaze upon their once neighbours and discovered the other – the one unlike them who posed a threat to their own identity.
As the bear emerged from the cold and danced a jig, our hunters came home and declared an end to the hunt -- they had found Red October. In response, our government declassified the history of the ages (except for the X Files which would remain closed for three additional decades and the opening of which would usher in the post-modern age in which the truth would be said to still be “out there”) and hordes of intellectuals descended upon our nation’s capital to peruse those secrets that were now out in the open. The words of Johnny Taylor sounded hauntingly in the background while Tom Brokaw announced this new policy of openness to an inquiring people wanting to know the details of the darkest recesses of the political mind.
Professors running on tenure tracks, reporters in search of a story, writers in search of a novel, producers in search of a movie; philosophers sauntered in from the dark woods; theologians made the Kirkegaardian leap into the post-modern age -- some leaped even further into a post-Christian age; and all rushed to Washington, D.C. -- the new Mecca of the intelligentsia. Yes, it was a great day for our nation’s capital but a sad day for Boston – the previous intellectual centre of the nation. But then, the time had come to bring Boston’s party to an end as the fat lady had not only sung, she and Don Meredith had stumbled off into the sunset.
Brighter shined the sun. Clouds danced across the sky casting shadows that fleeted across the land. Puffs of wind stirred stilled flags atop steel poles. Public schools gave up May Day activities in favour of junkets to our nation’s capital. Everybody who was somebody wanted to go to Washington, D.C. Even the stars which glistened so lovingly in the skies of the West traversed the blue ether and made their way to the new place where the action was. Hippies folded their tents, took a bath, and followed – metamorphosing to yuppies along the way. And I, your narrator, joined them.
Our arrival was a blessed day for many. Hotels sprung up overnight. Muggers, con artists, and prostitutes once forced to stand in welfare lines, now beamed with joy as they returned to full employment. Taxis, parked for decades, now tried to start their engines as the Department of Transportation declared record ozone days. Yes, it was a glorious occasion. And as we intellectuals and pretenders to intelligence marched hungrily but triumphantly into our nation’s capital, the Edwin Hawkins Singers danced in front of the Lincoln Memorial and sang the refrain, “Oh Happy Day!”
I said it was a glorious day and it was. As I move from the general to the specific, stay with me -- for we are about to go where no one has gone before. I am about to relate to you a tale of woe--a story of two worlds. Listen attentively. For never has there been such a tale of woe since death did claim Juliet and her Romeo.
Our story began almost the moment we marched into Washington, D.C. I say marched because one cannot just walk into such a place. With the cherry blossoms dotting the highways and byways, the monuments towering above the skyline, and the cast testimonies to architectural ingenuity, all of these coalesce to give one a sense of awe. As Lait and Mortimer described it, our nation’s capital is a “made-to-order architectural paradise.” Frommer adds that it is a “squishy lowland at the convergence of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers [where one marches] in the footsteps of history.”
There is the Washington Monument that towers into the heavens with all the force of what feminists have called a phallic symbol of western patriarchy, protected by law and tradition from being topped by any other edifice. There are also the Jefferson and Lincoln tributes in stone and marble that reminds us of how insignificant most of our lives are. Thus it is that one does not walk into Washington, D.C. -- one marches -- either to the beat of the drums of the city or to one’s own heartbeat.
As I entered the political capitol of the world, I thought how blessed I was to have come this far in my life’s journey. Here was I, the fifth African-American child of twenty-two children born to a single set of proud and loving parents, bred in poverty in the segregated South, a high school dropout, a reformed criminal and a conservative Republican -- any one of which was reason enough to justify failure. Rather than suffering in failure, here I marched up the sublime streets of Washington, D.C. with not a care in the world, armed with a general equivalent diploma and three college degrees -- a proud member of the new intelligentsia. Even as I marched, I was aware that I too was a monument of the greatness of America. Little did I know, though I was about to learn, the price that had been paid for my construction.
I marched straight to that neo-classical building which approximates the majesty of the grand Parthenon – The National Archives Building. As I ascended the steps and marched through the Doric columns, I felt the same awe and aversion that gripped Dorothy and her companions as they crept up the hallway to the terrifying sounds of the Wizard of Oz. I was awed by the power and majesty of this place, yet terrified by a foreboding fear as if I were passing from the light to the dark—from life to death. Still, I marched on.
“Good morning, sir,” a heavily armed secretary greeted as I walked in. Her guarded beauty suggested that there was more to her than her weaponry. I envisioned an avionic moment.
“Good morning, Madame,” I replied, even though a clock on the far wall showed the time as 1400 hours.
The space into which I had entered was a dimly lit Rotunda. The walls were draped by scenes of the Founding Fathers. Guards were positioned on either side of the original four pages of the Constitution. There were other display vaults positioned around the room containing the foundational papers of the United States of America, including the Declaration of Independence.
“What are you looking for?” she asked. I wondered if she noticed my eyes undressing her.
I was impressed. I like a woman who gets right down to business. I find that quite stimulating. And so I began to see her with different eyes.
She was blond by choice. She touched off at five feet, eight inches and weighed 120 pounds. Her lips were seductively red and lined with a thin trace of black. Her breasts were well defined and firm. I checked my map to make sure I was not in Silicon Valley.
“Well?” She startled me back to the moment.
“Oh, sorry, I’m here to review Appendix A of the Kerner Commission Report. You might remember it was the work of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders,” I said. I tried to impress her with my words. Being a graduate student, I had nothing else to commend myself to her.
“Oh, yeah? Funny, you don’t look like an intellectual,” she said. Her lips curved into a smile.
“Anyway, Appendix A will not be released for 50 years after the initial report. If you can count, you should know that is not until 2018.”
“But I was told all documents have been declassified and Appendix A is among those documents. Please, Missus, I have travelled a long ways. I have come all the way from the Nation of Texas.”
“This is not the Smithsonian! We do not make mistakes here. You are much too early to see Appendix A.”
I was confused. Were her words a compliment or an insult? Her lips said kiss me but her guns said die for me. Was this some feminine mystique that said disregard my words and read my mind? Was this the proverbial woman’s way of speaking: saying one thing when she means another? Yet, as an enlightened member of the new order, I could not entertain such patriarchal musings. And so I did what most confused people do -- I smiled and asked her to point me to the men’s room.
She led me to a long, dark corridor, where rows of restrooms lined each side of the aisle. On one side were rooms for men and on the other rooms for women. These were topped by signs which indicated who could enter. There was one for generals, another for enlisted persons, another for senators, another for foreign leaders, and so forth. At the very end was a small sign which was written in freshly painted orange, “Intellectuals.” I decided that the walk would be too tiring and so I allowed the secretary to give me over to one of the security guards who was even more armed than the secretary.
The security guard had an Uzi for a handgun, a bazooka strapped over his shoulder, and carried a combination rifle and grenade launcher in his hand. He was short for one so heavily armed and sported a three-day beard and moustache. His shoes were shined but run over at the heels and his uniform was starched and pressed. He directed me to a room where a small sign on the door said, “Dress Rehearsal.”
I opened the door and entered the room. I looked in the direction of the security guard just before closing the door and saw him take off his cap and run his fingers through gray, balding hair, replace his cap, then reclaim his place next to one of the display cases. He took no further notice of me and I closed the door and returned to the matter at hand.
Inside the room, I was asked to strip naked by a middle-aged man wearing a blue doctor's outfit. It was the kind worn in an operating room. The man had a white mask hanging loose around his neck. I protested. The room looked and smelled more like a football locker room than a place where government business is transacted. It was divided into cubicles by multi-coloured room dividers and a metal locker and wooden bench was in each cubicle. On the walls were copies of historical documents