A Very American Note from CJack

The following was a CJack response to an article, “Black Racism Matters”.

“The Civil War to liberate the slaves was all in vain? All that Union blood and treasure was for naught?…Abe Lincoln’s sacrifice forgotten?…Then let us partition the land, give each savage forty acres and a mule, and see what they’ll make of it. But I doubt they’ll ever realize their freedom was never cheap.

It reminds me of one of my Jewish relatives who owned a french bakery, a quiet man who at the end of each day would donate the unsold bread and pastries to a catholic home for the poor. Yet the same folks who benefited from his generosity were never kind to him. So one day I asked my father why was our relative so generous to folks who hated him. My old man took me to a nearby park where we sat as the sun was going down. He said: son, you must never forget that kindness uplifts the giver and ingratitude ruins the beggar. God will always be closer to those who give to the poor, than to those who take from the rich.

That’s a lesson I have never forgotten.
Best regards,
CJack.”

Thank you so much, CJack…..My mother graduated 8th grade in 1918 from a no-nonsense German Lutheran Church on the west side of St. Paul….in reality the south side from downtown St.. Paul south of the Mississippi.    She walked from home across the Wabasha bridge to downtown St. Paul to work as cashier at  Friedman Brothers Super Market, the largest such market in the Twin Cities at that time.    She became head cashier at the twelve lane check out counters at Friedman’s at age 16.

By the time I knew her she had memorized perhaps 100 cliches for the wise and pummeled me with them until I got married.  “Handsome is as handsome does”…..”You can’t tell a book by its cover”….referring to people, by the way.

“You can’t escape your God”, was the most powerful of them all….for she spent the first ten years of my life making sure I thought she was in cahoots with his being in order to keep me telling the Truth.   It worked….one reason I am a conservative.

We kids all shared clothes in those days before the War ended….hand-me-downs to family, Church, or neighbors, whomever they could fit or nearly fit.