Chronos' Anomaly

This post was inspired while I was driving along Sunday morning 21Oct12. I started school during the 1960s. We were living in Hawaii. My school room was open air on three sides sitting atop a bluff over looking the North Shore on Ohau. I would sit in class looking down the beach watching the waves wash up underneath the palm trees. Despite the serene and picturesque views, I recall the Vietnam War, a War in Angola, and the Six Day War against Israel. I saw many images of drugged out people and my grandparents had to put sympathizer flags on their door to prevent civil rights rioters in Camden, New Jersey from destroying their home. At a young age, it seemed to me that war and violence was a way of life. The socialist were marching and rioting as well. Jane Fonda was pleading that if we only understood communism we would be on our knees praying for it before sitting in a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft battery sighting US war birds flying overhead in 1972. Is today as it was then?

Chronos' Anomaly

I walked out the door early this Sunday morning into a comfortably crisp temperature and brilliant blue sky. Dew on my pickup truck was glowing crimson as morning sun beams pierced the green canvas. The birds sang out. I jumped in, put the windows down, and headed out for a coffee at the local coffee shop. With that nostalgic crack and a hiss, the AM radio station was playing songs from the 1960's. The truck seemed to pierce through heatwaves that began to warbled off the pavement as the day set in. In a resounding snap, I was flashed back to the era of the music and driving an ole Ford pickup coming up on a 1960's coffee house.

Pulling straight into a Mayberry styled street parking spot, I climbed out and slammed the door shut with a heavy weighted thud and hollow sound of a solid steel door. The bell on the door jingled announcing my arrival. The shop's musty smell and aroma of fresh brewed coffee mixed in waves churned up by the ceiling fans. From a high shelf above the counter, a radio reverberated the canny sound of music and news throughout the shop. Swirls of dust spun in the beams of sun light flooding through blinds and store front glass. I sat upon an aluminum stool at a cheesy green Formica counter lined with an aluminum strip, ordered a coffee while pulling the stacked sections of a disheveled newspaper towards me, the date was July 1969.

As I sipped on the coffee, the 1965 song Eve of Destruction drummed in, "The Eastern world, it is exploding; Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’..." The people next to me spun around and walked out. The song continued, "Yeah, my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’; I’m sitting here just contemplatin’; I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation; Handful of senators don’t pass legislation... When human respect is disintegratin’; This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’... Think of all the hate there is in Red China."

Fresh from church, a man and woman stepped up to the coffee bar. As I glanced over, the woman held her purse up in front of her bright yellow outfit, smiled, slowly nodding her head downward then back up. The radio hissed and cracked again as the 1967 song For What it is Worth hauntily echoed, "Paranoia strikes deep; Into your life it will creep; It starts when you're always afraid; You step out of line, the man come and take you away. It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound?; Everybody look what's going down."

Taking the last sips from my ceramic cup, I spun off the stool and headed out the door. The truck chugged as it turned over then sputtered to a smokey start. As I drove along the path that brought me here, the Sun was bearing down on the road ahead. Heat puddled and the horizon warbled in the rising heat. I reached down twisting the radio knob in a loud click and buzz the radio faded in. The tinny sound of Elvis let out the 1962 song Return to Sender.

The dusty road swirled behind me when in a flash the road became newly paved ahead of me. I arrived home and clicked the TV on. The news anchor was highlighting fighting in the Middle East, failure to pass budget legislation in Congress, and China holding the US debt over us. Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan was speaking out. The newspaper on my table talked of socialism and takeover of the economy by the government. For what it's worth, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances.” Perhaps the acts are in rerun or it just that history repeats itself. I reflected back to a song sung by Sonny and Cher...

History has turned the page, 
The miniskirt WAS the current thing, 
Teenybopper WAS our newborn king, 
And the beat goes on, the beat goes on.