ALAN writes:

Because I have zero interest in the Folderol of modern anti-culture, may I write about something completely different?

In the same park where I sat surrounded by a sea of green last summer, I now walk throughout a canvas of colors that are brilliant even on cloudy days. (See beautiful photos of the park here.) When I walk in the park on such days and in the chill of autumn air, I find myself remembering the words “All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray….”, and the autumn and winter of 1965 become alive in my memory.

The words are from the song “California Dreamin’” by The Mamas and The Papas folk-rock group.  I was not one of their fans, and I never cared for g-dropping.  But I remember hearing the song on radio when it was brand new in late 1965 and the melody was agreeable.  I did not ascribe any meaning to it beyond that. Lawrence Auster would have remembered it, too.  It recalls pleasant memories not only from that particular autumn but from others in the years after.  Wasn’t it only yesterday when the melody of that song played in my head as I walked along old streets that were new to me in the neighborhood into which we moved in August of that year?

A note of irony here is that the words “California dreaming” meant something very, very different in 1965 from what they would mean today.  To Americans in 1965, California meant sunshine and swimming pools and perpetual summer, celebrated a year earlier in the song “California Sun” by The Rivieras.

“California Dreamin’” includes the line “I’d feel safe and warm, if I was in L.A.”  Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.  If he was in L.A. today, he would be feel warm because “the government” would force him to wear a mask and be surrounded by millions of aliens, trespassers, and welfare-opportunists.

Seventeen years ago, a commenter at VFR wrote:  “California is finished as a state…  We might as well let it rot and watch from the outside.  The faster California rots, the better it serves us as an example of what the United States will itself become one day….”  [ Comment by Peter Phillips in the thread “What is European America?”, View from the Right, July 25, 2003 ]

In September 1965 I entered my second year of high school. I walked each day to and from a Catholic high school.  Never was there a safer or more pleasant early morning walk, through a neighborhood that was largely German and Polish, along residential streets with architecturally distinctive houses, past the Carna Photo Studios, past a corner tavern and a beauty shop, along a street of attractive little houses, past a corner market, another tavern, laundromat and a barber shop.  You wouldn’t want to make that same walk today unless you wear a suit of armor.

While walking recently in another residential neighborhood just before evening twilight, I saw a short distance ahead of me a young woman walking along slowly with a little boy by her side, perhaps two or three years old and with blond hair.  And in them I saw my own mother walking with me when I was that age in 1952 or ’53.  Her sense of life and mine were identical, so I know exactly how she must have felt in those years when I was so young.

Which prompts the question:  If she were here today, how would she react when learning that her little boy is now 71 years old and thus in the twilight of his life?  Had she ever imagined such a thing?  Do mothers imagine such things?  And how quickly all those autumns went by since 1965 and then evaporated into nothingness.  How could 55 autumns go by without my noticing it?  And at the end of each of those autumns, did I say to my mother, “Thank you for giving me life and thus permitting me to see the beauty of autumn that we have just witnessed”?  No, I did not—proving how morally witless I was.

Wasn’t it only yesterday that we sat together in her apartment and talked about her memories?  And wasn’t it only yesterday when aunts and uncles came to visit and we played card games and sang wonderful old songs like “On Moonlight Bay” and “Shine On, Harvest Moon” and played croquet in the park on Sunday afternoons?  And wasn’t it only yesterday that I looked up and discovered the eternal stars that were there when I was that little boy and were there throughout all the years when my parents were growing old and are still there tonight?

On some nights in late 1965, I fell asleep to the song “Harlem Nocturne” playing in the dark on my small transistor radio.  I would enjoy hearing that forlorn melody while lying there looking out my window at a lighted window in the house next door.  An event took place on November 9th of that year that was still fresh in my memory when I lay there on such nights.  How many of your readers are old enough to remember the Great Blackout, when the lights went out in New York City and portions of New England?  I could picture the darkened New York City skyline that appeared on the cover of Life magazine (Nov. 19; 35 cents a copy).  It was a visual counterpart to the haunting melody of “Harlem Nocturne”.

We had been in New York City to visit friends in June of that year.  They lived in Queens.  In a letter dated Jan. 3, 1966, my friend wrote “The power failure was pretty neat, too.  We didn’t have to do our homework, though some jerks did it by candlelight.  The lights went out at 5:30 p.m. and came back on at 3 a.m.  We had 2 candles….and a few birthday candles.”  His sister worked in Manhattan and she didn’t get home until midnight, having had to walk part of the way.

And that memory leads in turn to one of the loveliest songs I have ever heard:  Vernon Duke’s “Autumn in New York”.  I remember hearing Johnny Carson talk one evening on “The Tonight Show” about how much he appreciated that song, as did I.  And that reminds me of Lawrence Auster’s writing about how much he enjoyed that show, as did I in the years when it was telecast from New York.  And—to bring this reminiscence full circle—I recall that Lawrence Auster also wrote about the beauty of an autumn day in “Fall in New York” (View from the Right, Oct. 1, 2012).  We regret that it was the last autumn in his life.

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