By JIM CAHILLANE

Thursday, May 3, 2012

WILLIAMSBURG – A recent New Yorker article made a good point about American culture – that memory reasserts itself every so many years. “The prime site of nostalgia is always whatever happened, or is thought to have happened, in the decade between forty and fifty years past.”

For example, the article pointed out today’s interest in the 1960s as portrayed by the TV show “Mad Men.” Looking to the ’40s, it noticed movies about the turn of the century, like “Meet Me in Saint Louis,” a film made in 1944 about a fair held in 1904. This year’s presidential election could prove the point.

In my later years, I have, if not a 40-yard stare, memories of 40- and 50-year-old events, and of people who influenced my youth.

The playwright Alan Bennett recognized this phenomenon in his 1968 play, “Forty Years On” starring John Gielgud as a confused headmaster. The law of averages, or six degrees of separation, ensures that most of us will encounter a celebrity during our lives. One of mine was Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s father, George.

Sit down, children, as I take you back 50 or more years to a time when General Motors, Ford and Chrysler ruled the American road, except for little American Motors, Volkswagen and a few other imports with limited appeal. As it happened, my father had a franchise with the Hudson Motor Car Co., which, because it merged with Nash Motors in 1954, demanded of our family business a challenge disguised as opportunity.

I’m talking 1955; our daily task was to make a living selling the less popular cars built by Nash and Hudson – newly renamed American Motors. The Nash Co. built quirky economy cars in a one-time Wisconsin mattress factory hundreds of miles from Detroit.

In 1956, I visited the factory town of Kenosha, Wis. My memory is of dirty streets with working-class bars. Inside the plant, cars were built the old-fashioned way – no robots, but lots of workers in grey overalls.

An engine block would appear at one end of a roller-equipped assembly line. Each process was done by hand before the worker rolled it along to the next guy. When the engine was completed it was bolted to the drive train. Then the whole assembly was lifted into place from underneath. That surprised me because, in my experience, engines went in and out from the top. Obviously, I wasn’t going to make my mark in manufacturing.

American Motors’ new CEO was a Hollywood-handsome master pitchman. George Romney inherited a dealer body of disgruntled Nash and Hudson guys who competed with each other. We had to compete with a King Street Nash dealership owned by the late Cliff Buchholz. If Cliff ever made a mistake, it was when he took on Toyota then dropped it. Similarly, we sold Honda bikes and scooters but never moved into selling their tiny automobiles.

Which brings me back to George Romney. George could, in a wildly out-of-date phrase, sell iceboxes to Eskimos. In this case, we dealers were the people of the north and we bought his argument that Ford, GM and Chrysler were selling “gas-guzzling dinosaurs” and that Americans were foolish to waste their money on cars that got 10 miles per gallon.

George relabeled his models Ramblers and promised to deliver value for a buck. Regular gas was selling for 31 cents a gallon, but Romney’s conviction in speeches and advertising was that America was wasting its valuable resources. He came up with innovative programs for dealers. If we junked a worn out trade-in, he paid us to do it. Customers who bought a new Rambler received a rebate in the form of a U.S. Savings Bond. Long before the Internet, every salesman in every dealership had a comparison booklet that took on the competition feature by feature.

This year, President Obama will be up against Mitt Romney, the son of George, who sold millions of four- and six-cylinder economy cars. George’s believers became the early adopters of recycling and living a simpler life.

Not long afterward, George Romney was elected Michigan’s governor and in 1967 started a run for the White House. He lost GOP party favor and his presidential bid after saying the Pentagon and State Department diplomats had given him a “brainwashing” during a Vietnam briefing.

History’s 2012 joke could be on the Democrats, if they refuse to compete for every last vote against Willard “Mitt” Romney.

Fifty years ago, Mitt’s dad was one of America’s greatest salesmen.

Jim Cahillane is a freelance writer who lives in Williamsburg.
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Article VI of the U.S. Constitution prohibits any religious test for office in the United States. “O beautiful for spacious skies,” as Mitt Romney attempts to sing these days, expressing his love for America and later lauding Michigan’s right-height trees, lakes and cars in one of his odd rambles. Then he blows it by stating that President Obama has “fought against religion in America.” Poor Mitt, making religion fair game backfired when Billy Graham’s son went on Morning Joe. The Rev. Franklin Graham described Mitt as “a nice man with a nice family” but nope, not a Christian. I recall Mitt’s father George Romney loving his job as CEO of American Motors; but he stuck to preaching the virtues of compact cars. Speaking of odd, Romney’s opponents are named Newt, Rick and Ron. Newt’s a 68-year-old former House Speaker with two previous wives and a recent convert to Roman Catholicism. He just called President Obama “dangerous, and a threat to national security.” An audience cheered. Ron Paul is a libertarian who would decimate the federal government and its constructs – like roads and the Department of Education. The beauty part of campaigning is that if you can reduce complex issues to a sound bite you’re guaranteed to make the evening news and the talk shows that run all day. Similarly, if you can, without proof, assign base motives to your opponents, as well as the president of the United States, you tar yourself as a bigot or an ignoramus.

Which brings us to Rick “Sanctus” Santorum. Rick is a defeated Pennsylvania senator, a super-conservative Roman Catholic who proclaims strong beliefs. His angry speeches have earned him two new nicknames: Mullah Rick and Savonarola – a pitiless preacher who, it’s been said, burned sinners “for their own good.” Rick’s sanctimony earns him my less than flattering title of a “Big Catholic.” I don’t think there’s a dictionary definition, but like many things, you know it when you see it. I would never compare a B.C. to the faithful who attend daily or weekly Mass, and who try their best to live by the golden rule. No, to me a “Big Catholic” is a bit of a faker who finds it difficult to be humble in his daily encounters. He knows he’s right. He’s quick to judge other people. He critiques and pronounces for all. The Quran’s sharia law, or the Old Testament’s eye for an eye, sounds practical to him. He has a bad case of amnesia regarding Christ’s teaching to “love thy neighbor.” He’s too invested in his hypocritical worldview. Here are a few of Millionaire Rick’s prescriptions:
1. Home school your kids. (But collect from the local school district.)
2. Use the earth; don’t husband it. (Vote for a “bridge to nowhere.”)
3. Healthcare for everyone is a frill. (I will repeal Obamacare.)
4. Wives shouldn’t work outside the home. (He has seven kids.)
5. The president promotes a phony theology. (Barack’s a Muslim.)

What up with that?

The tea party folks are boiling mad, which as it turns out is the right way to make proper tea but is one lousy recipe for governing. I suspect their rant translates into “Where did all these people of color come from?”

To answer that question you could do worse than read a book titled “The Help.” It’s set in 1961 and has just been made into a movie. I saw the real thing in 1951 when I joined other Valley innocents on a troop train into the Deep South. I soon learned that America is a big country with varying cultures, including a few that in your ignorance could get you killed. Any laughs found in “The Help” come at a high price.

As more of an observer than a participant these days I wonder at the gun killings which too often comprise our local and national news in headlines that last a day, unless, of course it’s a member of Congress like Gabby Gifford.

Like it or not we and our country have changed since President Ike was America’s kindly White House father figure. I hew to the maxim that President Kennedy preached 50 years ago. A historian and writer by inclination, JFK’s favorite saying was “what’s past is prologue.” His staff members heard it from him so often they joked about it, even as events made it true – day after day, year after year.

The year 1961 was a time of nuclear worries. Otherwise sensible people said “Better red than dead” as we faced the Soviet Union in its bellicosity. “We will bury you,” promised Nikita Khrushchev in a speech to the West. We sponsored an invasion of Cuba among other mistakes, but carried on toward a future so uncertain that backyard bomb shelters were considered a good investment. Civil Defense advice to “duck and cover” in case of atomic attack were edited by my schoolmates to a more realistic action, like, “bending over and kissing your bum goodbye.” We didn’t say bum.

As a senior citizen, I should resist expounding about “the good old days.” Some were, many were not. Memory often delivers the past on a silver cloud. We elders will revel in the good times while conveniently forgetting incurable childhood diseases that garnered bright red notices on a neighbor’s house – QUARANTINE. DO NOT ENTER – courtesy of the Board of Health.

Life expectancy has grown to the point where a baby born today can expect to live 100 years, which is great news for the medical community, if less so for the number-crunchers at Medicare. The missing ingredient in today’s American stew is confidence. Most people surveyed agree to the proposition that their kid and grandkids will have it worse than they did. If you watch Morning Joe on MSNBC you’ll hear the former Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle say it every time he’s given the chance.

I disagree!

Mike is often led down his dubious path by show host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida. Joe espouses his conservative views even as he gives lip service to “fair and balanced.” The Obama administration, as he sees it, “owns” this economy and whatever has gone wrong since “hope and change” arrived on the scene in 2008 is due to the fecklessness of the president, his staff, and a nation of disappointed voters.

But as the Porgy and Bess song humorously reminds us about absolutes – It ain’t necessarily so.

Sen. Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders have been universal in their willingness to put up roadblocks to progressive legislation that might lead to Obama’s re-election. Iowa’s flavor of the week, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, repeats, ad nauseam, that Barack Obama will be a “One. Term. President.” This is a congresswoman who voted last month to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States of America.

Judge for yourself. In Iowa the whole Republican Field of Nightmares raised their hands to refuse a 10 to 1 ratio of expense cuts to tax increases. Country First my eye!

Our country may be at a crossroads because too many of our elected officials are dumb enough to drive us off a cliff, given their scorched-earth method of governing. Yet if we look to history and our Constitution, we’ll find there a road map out of the current cul-de-sac to “a better tomorrow, tomorrow,” as Stephen Colbert’s Super Pac promises.

I, for one, am with the real comedians. Let’s stop electing all the other idiots.

Burgy Thursday’s market promises the highest quality fresh local produce, meats, eggs, cheeses, flowers, baked goods, maple products, live music and more: 2:30-7 p.m.

        I like living in Williamsburg, a town of twenty-five hundred souls, counting the adjoining village of Haydenville. We spent our first forty years of married life in the city of Northampton, which, thanks to its daily newspaper, continues to inform our lives. As a born and bred “Hamp” native, I never had strong feelings about Burgy or its inhabitants.

Growing up devoted to Northampton, Burgy was seldom on our radar. That their trolley car was, “The Burgy Bullet” induced a smile for its dry Yankee humor; we liked that the name endured on buses; but seldom visited the town at the end of the line.

A growing movement is afoot to return to that simpler model of living enjoyed by our ancestors. Today’s Williamsburg is innovating its way to a modern model village.    To build requires a foundation. Williamsburg has a strong one. Town taxpayers support a local elementary school and regional high school. Meekins is both our school Library and the town’s cultural heartbeat, with a community room, frequent readings, and Internet access. Thousands patronize Meekins every month.

The town’s professional police force works under Chief Denise Wickland; its trained volunteer fire department responds to Chief Donald Lawton.

Haydenville & Williamsburg’s retail base starts at Bread Euphoria’s Bakery and dining room on the hill across from Beaver Brook Golf Course. In Haydenville The Blue House and Ross Bros. Antiques are neighbors to two thriving churches: Our Lady of the Hills and Haydenville Congregational. Williamsburg’s Town Hall is in Haydenville. Its town offices and Council on Aging meals and activities insure a lively atmosphere.

Keep going past the charter school in the Brass Works. Slow as you round a Mill River bend near McFadden’s Irish Pub, go past the veterinary clinic to the Village Green Garden and ice cream shop. Next-door is the Williamsburg Snack Bar.

Over the bridge into Williamsburg proper: on the right is our hardware store and pharmacy, also Panda Garden and a hairdresser. Cumberland Farms gas station, mini-mart and Dunkin Donuts allow drivers to top up stomachs and empty wallets in one stop.        In the next block are Main Street Package and A-1 Hilltown Pizza restaurant and take-out emporiums. Ahead is the town’s handsome centerpiece.

Ka-boom! You’re in Burgy: Big Mamou’s Cajun restaurant is on your right, the Williamsburg General Store to your left. Blink, and you’re at the Williamsburg Market, Meekins Library and Florence Bank corner. You’ve arrived! If you’ve timed it right the Williamsburg Congregational Church carillon may herald your coming in song.

You can’t miss The Brewmaster’s Tavern, long famous as the Williams House. Go further up the hill to discover Pat’s Package store with its eclectic country wares.

Longtime Valley residents know the pioneer’s tale about The Angel of Hadley. Today’s Williamsburg has its own gardening angel, Nick Dines. Nick’s an emeritus UMass professor of landscape architecture who, like New England poet Robert Frost, knows his plants and walls. Nick’s built poems welcome visitors as hardscape in the form of Goshen stonewalls and walkways. His walls create sun-warmed garden invitations to Meekins’ Library. Behind the General Store is the Quiet Reflections Garden of memorial bricks, flowers, and benches dedicated to family and friends gone before. Pause nearby at Burgy’s war memorial honoring those who’ve served our country.

In every season, drive slowly through the village to be surrounded by Dine’s imaginative visions. From end to end his curbside plantings beautify the town center.

Summer, winter, autumn and spring are celebrated from the ground up. Eye level daylilies decorate summertime roadways, helping winter blues to melt away. The pocket gardens in front of the bank and market provide colorful portals wherein bees work their magic as passerby trek by on less important errands. Please stop and smell the flowers.

To me, Burgy Thursdays will offer one more reason to enjoy our beautiful village of Williamsburg, Hampshire County’s prettiest village for a walkabout and a meal.

New Release: On History’s Front Steps: One Irish Clan’s Exploits in Northampton, Massachusetts “The Paradise of America” by James Francis Cahillane (Florence Poets Society 2010, 126 pgs. $18).

Jim Cahillane’s latest book is now on sale at local bookshops and at Collective Copies in Florence and Amherst. Cahillane’s innovation is that its fifty-six poems and five essays are derived from over sixty family and historical photographs from 1930 to 2010. The book was partially funded by a grant from the Northampton Arts Council.

In a cover note Professor A. D. Cousins of Macquarie University says “In this book Jim Cahillane captures America through snapshots from one family’s history. He tells affectionately, wryly, perceptively, and movingly about dreams and the hard work (sometime luck) that made them come true. He tells of daring to cross boundaries, of family loyalties, of inheritances, and of keeping faith. His collection is a rich one. Image, poem, and essay take us from past present and back again. Many stories are crystallized within this volume, to the reader’s great pleasure.

http://jamesfrancis.cahillane.com

Community is not a swear word, and giving a hand doesn’t cost any one of us an arm or a leg.

When we disagree, it’s about candidates and their stands on policy. As a rule we resist the temptation to demonize those on the other side. Democracy demands elections by informed voters. In this new electronic age, more information is at our fingertips than a dedicated historian could assemble in years of study.

Consequently, when we encounter it, ignorance stands out in sharp relief with no excuses.

Therefore, when hate surfaces on the American landscape, I find it difficult to give stupid statements and action the benefit of any doubt. Today, as I compose these thoughts, all the prognosticators are forecasting a Republican Party about to return to power in the House of Representatives and maybe the Senate. I find either scenario abhorrent.

For both to occur would, in many ways, set aside 2006 and 2008 election victories by the progressives in our great country.

Eight do-nothing years when President Bush blew up the budget surplus in tax giveaways, and then blew up Iraq, which never attacked us, and then created a false government in Afghanistan, a country recently described as a 15th century society with no inclination toward democracy. The U.S., the British Empire and the Soviet Union have all tried and failed to conquer the Afghans. We could and should leave. It’s not a matter of if, but when.

Just like during the Vietnam War era, when patriots protested long and hard before an awakened public caught up with the facts. In the end it didn’t matter that the protesters were often beaten and jailed for speaking truth to power. My country right or wrong is a grand if not grandiose thought, but it seems to deny facts in play.

Despite the progress made since Jan. 20, 2009, we have protesters who claim their taxes are too high, they’re not. That long-awaited government health care is a form of socialism, it’s not. And that President Barack Obama is a foreigner and a Muslim – equally not true!

Notwithstanding, any of the above stupidities, the dumbest thing I’ve heard from what used to be called “man on the street interviews” is that a shockingly large number of men and women, mostly young, but not all, are not planning to vote Tuesday.

As Jon Stewart jokes, painfully, when voters do something that thoughtless, “the terrorists win.” A little more thought and a lot more action is required to fulfill our compact with the country we live in.

It appears on hundreds of lawn signs up and down the Pioneer Valley. An equal number of red, white and blue signs promote my nephew Mike Cahillane’s opponent for Northwestern District Attorney, Hampshire County’s Register of Probate, Dave Sullivan.

To save suspense, I predict that the financial winner of this Democratic primary election will be … the guy who painted all those signs!

For the past 10 years my 40-year-old nephew has been a prosecutor and assistant district attorney. Sullivan and Cahillane are vying in the first contest for district attorney here in three decades. No Republican has announced, so Tuesday’s Democratic primary will pick the winner. Independents or the un-enrolled, as they’re now known, can vote and switch back to their original designation at the polling place.

Because my parents had 24 grandchildren, Michael and I are not close. Nor, truth be told, am I well acquainted with Mr. Sullivan. Now retired to Williamsburg, I’ve found that aging fosters separations.

My political education started in 1953 when I made my first trip to Ireland. I was on leave from the U.S. Air Force in England. Traveling by train and ferry I found my way to my Aunt Siobhan’s. I was 20 and green as can be; I’d failed to consider the impact of a Dublin postcard I sent to a Northampton girlfriend. The card pictured a hobo asleep on a park bench.

In a clumsy attempt at humor I mentioned that he looked like one of her relatives. The girl’s father was a prominent Irish cop with a large family. My father gave me a blast claiming that my joke had undercut his new campaign for mayor.

The Irish can be sensitive when it comes to politics. More proof took place 40 years ago one of my Irish uncles took umbrage at a Democratic event. The scuffle was more like a bench-clearing baseball fight than a real fight. I’m still glad that I was across the V.F.W. hall when that big Irish farmer decided to take a swing at a guy who was supporting the wrong candidate.

Mine, as it turned out.

At 77 I’m the eldest son of a former mayor of Northampton, one of only two Irish-born mayors in the whole U.S. during the 1950s. Dad emigrated in 1930. Within five years he became a citizen and an FDR supporter. Despite those hard times, Dad’s gas station was a success thanks to his ready smile and larger than life personality.

It was a combination that served him well in politics. Dad ran for mayor with the support of many working class Irishmen and women. His announcement headline read, “Cahillane # Champions Workers.” We had no lawyers in our family in 1953. Dad stood alone. His primary fight pitted him against three other Irishmen, including two of the city’s top lawyers. Dad’s win in a recount was a miracle that propelled him to a friendship with JFK, and a seat at the 1956 Democratic convention.

Rightfully, both the Sullivan and Cahillane campaigns have striven for a sense of dignity commensurate with the power and importance of the district attorney’s office.

My dad’s experience was different as he ran to unseat incumbent Republican mayor, Pierre Drewsen. Their scorched-earth campaign screeds included the mayor calling dad “a howling cow that gives no milk.” Dad’s retort was to call the mayor a “would-be dictator.”

A subtext of that campaign was the previous one in which Pierre Drewsen had beaten City Councilor Francis “Tunker” Hogan, whose motto was “Hogan’s the Slogan.” Immediately following Hogan’s losing campaign a local wag rhymed this ditty: “Hogan’s the slogan, but Pierre’s the mayor.”

Will Rogers used to say, “I don’t belong to any organized political party; I’m a Democrat.” Local Irish politics is always a few-rules game of musical chairs to the sound of a squeezebox, a tin whistle, and the beat of a bodhran. I favor Ireland’s identity as the birthplace of saints and scholars, with a nod toward political acumen.

The race between David Sullivan and Michael Cahillane carries the history of every contest before it. Earlier this year, my McColgan campaign buddy Bill O’Riordan visited me at Linda Manor when I was in post-hospital rehab. Bill began by noting that though he was supporting Sullivan, he had no animosity and hoped that there would be unity when the campaign ended. I agreed. I’ve long appreciated O’Riordan’s intensity, remembering when, to emphasize his Irish roots; he added the “O” to Riordan.

Which inspired in me a bit of verse:

Somehow, I don’t think that O’Cahillane sounds as right.
As John L. Sullivan’s “cousin” Dave’s glittering-prize fight
Between himself, without a second, against any brash foe,
Like upstart Michael a brainy young battler having a go.