I was 16 years old when my paternal Grandmother passed away. She was the first member of my family in my living consciousness to die. She had been born in the 1890s, came to adulthood during the First World War, raised a family during the Depression as a widow, and saw her boys go off to the Second World War. She was a true Boston Irish Catholic woman, wife, and mother of her times and lived her life as one just as all the women in her life did. She had lived through two World Wars and a “police action” or two, Korea and Vietnam, watched a bevy of presidents, a boatload of Popes, and a myriad of politicians come and go. She saw the invention of the automobile, airplane, rockets to space, the radio, movies, and television. She saw the eradication of what were once life threatening diseases, the creation of medical miracles and, when her husband, my grandfather and a member of the Boston Fire Department was killed by a motorist as he was on the back of the firetruck returning from a fire, she fought the department that claimed that as his company was returning from an extinguished fire, not heading toward or actively fighting one, he would not be considered killed while on duty and there would be no major compensation, she fought that so that now on duty is from the moment the alarm blares until the firefighters are back at the station. There was no more open space where, even while still working, a firefighter could be judged off duty when the truck could still report to another fire even as they returned from their most recent.
I thought when she died at seventy-four she had lived a rich, full, and long life, or at least the best her era offered to Boston Irish, Catholic women. I wondered if her death came as such a surprise she never had the time to look back on her life..
If nothing else, my grandmother left behind progeny who, along with their children are doing rather well, and her bettering the lives of firefighters who came after her husband, my grandfather, whom she would never meet or even know about, nor they her would be her legacy.
On my most recent birthday, I turned seventy-four.
Reaching my seventy-fourth year, I decided I needed to go back to places I had been, not like the previous year to have my papers and art archived at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, revisit old friends I had not seen in a while, and go to those places I had taught going back into my first classroom assignment, but to visit with no purpose other than to see and enjoy and, where pertinent, evaluate the effectiveness of the work others and I had done in the past and where that had led.
I also, in light of the rewritten history that had the Stonewall first begin with a nonexistent brick being tossed in the street by some one admittedly not present, a shot glass thrown by this same person inside the bar at the same time, witnessed doing so from the street according to the generation unfamiliar with the blind wall common in old Gay bars to keep people on the street from seeing who was inside, and now a Drag Queen, also invisible from the street, who threw her heels inside the bar, wanted to restore some real history that has either been erased or modified to not record history but create it.
Being able to count among the attempt in Oklahoma City to erase me as a person, the erasure of at least three major events and organizations that were vital during the worst of times in the 1980s, and now the preferred rosy picture of what was anything but actual history which has removed real people in favor of glitter, I wanted to find out of what I was seeing was a local phenomenon, or was it more universal. Was it just my perception that history is being rewritten to address people’s need for fairy tales as they are more easily accepted no matter how unlike reality, or were others noticing this too. Was history, as I found it had in my own case, been reworded to make it more comfortable and in the process producing a work of fiction that denied the unpleasant reality of the times. There was nothing in any of the events during the advocacy for students that would even hint that the Oklahoma City Public Schools “embraced” diversity, especially as evidenced by a wrongful dismissal, a reinstatement by the courts, and the addition of inclusive language when the attempts to avois=d that failed. Yet, the story now is that they did “embrace” it because that is a nicer and a more warm and fuzzy story to wrap oneself in, and to support that story facts had to die and people’s roles, mine included, greatly diminished to keep the Binky at the ready.
The pimple popped when a young person, perhaps mid-twenties, heard a few of us elders at the bar recalling bygone days and what roles we played first in dealing with the oppression of our youth and then working to ensure ours would be the last generation of Gay people to have to deal with it. There had been successes both great and small, but the obvious lament was that now that we had won the rights, we were too old for many to apply to us, especially the freedom to be out, open, and true to who we are especially in the throes of our young love.
I had lived around the country and was aware of the unequal recognition of those rights depending on the state and that the Equality Act was passed in Massachusetts in 1989, so this young person had no idea what times had been like and what it was we fought against, with some places remaining in the past to varying degrees. The young person was adamant that, had the present old people fought harder in the past, we would have had the rights sooner. Instead, we left the hard work for others to do.
You’re welcome.
As that conversation became more of a lecture on history coming from the young delivered to those who lived those past years and, as it seems to be a required point to make even if not really jermain, the inactivity of Boomers was roundly criticized as being the biggest obstacle to progress as we sat back and did nothing, waiting to snatch credit from those who acted. Being June, the offered proof that there were no Boomers at the Stonewall Inn, other than the police, was that most of the people in the pictures taken that night were young and many in their late teens and early twenties.
In 1969, I was 19. they seemed to think we were never young or that people in pictures never age beyond what is seen in the picture. Those people were then what they insist now are the obstructing Boomers.
I purchased one of those Amtrak USRail passes again and decided to first head to Oklahoma City to attend Pride there. If I am on my grandmother’s schedule, this could be my last one there. From there I intended to head to the West Coast making side trips out there and on my way back East.
I intended to talk with anyone willing to talk so that I could assess the state of affairs away from the locals who may only be judging the world from a local standpoint and not universally. I wanted to see if the erasure of history, its replacement with nice but false stories with the people who should be in the stories, also replaced with more acceptable and closely identified with chosen heroes, not organic ones.
In straight line mileage my trip covered 6678 miles which does not take into account that trains do not travel on straight tracks but wavy, curving ones, so there is more mileage in reality. I spent time in seven cities that had large Gay populations, Gay being my preferred umbrella term. Along the way I spoke with many people of differing ages etc. and, regardless of their sexual orientation, as it was June and the trains passed many flags along the way in many towns, large and small, needless to say, Pride was a topic of conversations and I heard the most progressive to most conservative comments and opinions, and rather than engage in a useless discussion, I mostly collected the attitudes and comments of the people I met. In the observation deck of one train I sat next to a group of young twenty-something skaters who had a discussion about Trans people based on a total lack of information, and chose not to engage as it would produce no results and would be a disservice to the other passengers because of possible exuberance disturbing those who were there to take in the scenery peacefully , one old man vs four dudes. Most times in the places I stayed I had conversations with older Gays, Lesbians, and Trans people to see if my perceptions were mine alone or were the thoughts of Gay, Lesbian, and Trans elders.
I intend to write a series of blogs based on those conversations I had with real people not blogs, texts, or tiktoks and, where applicable in a summation of events relevant, mentioned.
Some may disagree with what people said, but if people are thinking that, it must be taken into consideration.
I will be honest as well. Someone may attempt to say I am wrong in my conclusions because they read something, saw a tiktok, or had a friend who said, but with 6678 miles under my belt, having spent days in 7 major cities with Gay populations, and talking to anyone in a bar who wanted to talk, and there were a surprising number who opened up when I mentioned the Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology and its purpose in setting the record straight. Huge numbers of people and events have been erased for a more pastel version of history and those being erased are still around.
No fight in the OKC school district to get inclusive language because it was “embraced” by the district in its largess is a nice story with few triggers, but it denies real history to the furure.
So there will be a degree of snobbery when it comes to potential lectures to tell me I am wrong and do not understand, as what I have concluded is based on actual conversations with real people, some of them hurt by the present trend to exclude, erase, and take away their accomplishments and assign them to new heroes because of the effort it takes to look at actual history and not a small group of friends whether real contact friends or social media ones.
If you want to debate my conclusions you will need to first travel 6678 miles, stay in 7 cities, go to every bar in them that you can find, and talk to random locals. What you cannot do is tell me what your friend said, or what some “influencer” says ( That whole Bud Lite fiasco could have been avoided if they did not see Pride as spending money.) I don’t care what they feel or echo. I spoke to PEOPLE of all ages in different cities face to face.
You might be tempted to present articles and studies, but these are based on interviews with a variety of people in a variety of places, and, being similarly based, are the same as my research and no better, just different.
Might sound like a privileged attitude but I earned the privilege.
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