BEHOLDEN TO HOLDEN

CATCHER IN THE RYE ---BEHOLDEN TO HOLDEN

I cannot remember how that book fell into my hands. I am quite sure it was not assigned reading in an English class. No, not from where I came from. I was probably the last generation of American kids who attended school in a one room building. There was no bathroom just a hole in a box seat. There wasn’t even any running water. The school was heated by a wood stove that the boys in our class had to chop and stack in the classroom. I went to school there from first to sixth grade, each row was a grade and there were maybe five or six students in a row. We had one teacher who taught all the subjects and when she finished teaching one grade, those kids would help teach the next grade down. Once a week we had Bible study, we were all Christians of course I never knew you could be anything but that. Twice a month a music teacher came and we sang songs. Schools didn’t centralize until I was in sixth grade and then all the surrounding districts combined in the newly built buildings. It was quite exciting. I went from walking to school to taking a bus and I sat in a classroom with thirty or so other kids all in the same grade.

There were no people from other countries in our school, we all looked the same, white. I don’t think it was until I hit 11th. Grade that we had a black student and that is only because we lived near a military base and those people came from everywhere. It was quite a shock to us.

My Dad was a farmer and then became a trader in used construction equipment that he fixed up and sold to local contractors. Although he only went to eighth grade, he was a smart cookie and in years to come parlayed his business into a profitable enterprise. All of this is important for you to understand how my life was forming. My mother was from the deep South. She put herself through nurses training by picking cotton, yes picking cotton. Both of my parents believed in education. It was the one thing my mother always said they could not take away from you. She was so right. The reason I brought up my dad’s profession is because of his involvement in a project known as the Niagara Power Project that my dad started making decent money. The downside is the company he sold to went belly up and filed for bankruptcy. Hold on this is going somewhere I promise you. Well, my dad was quite pissed that a company could do this. There was to be a court case in Manhattan where all the contractors were told they could go and argue their case and demand to be paid. My dad decided he was going, mind you this man never stepped foot in Manhattan. He told my mom he was going to take a couple of us kids. He said it was time we learned something about life outside the farm I was happily chosen to go with him as well as my younger brother. I was in eighth grade. We flew to NYC and upon arrival my Dad got a cab and asked the cabbie where he could leave his kids for the day where we would learn something. Yes I know hard to believe but those were the days fear and hate did not rule our lives. The cab driver dropped us off at the United Nations. He told Dad we could just walk around the building and get educated about the world. Dad said fine, he dropped us off and told us to be standing in the same spot and they would pick us up at five o’clock so we could catch the airplane back home. This was the first time I was ever on an airplane, forget being dropped off in a big city with my younger brother.

Well, that was it I was hooked. I saw so much in that one day, people of every color in clothes I couldn’t imagine. I thought the Yamaoka the Jewish men were wearing were New York University beanies. Vendors were selling food whose names I could not even pronounce.

I was coming back, I didn’t know how, but it would happen.

But wait, that book, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger that it was clinched it. My eyes and my mind felt like they were opening for the first time.

Holden Caulfield was the main character, and he seemed to mirror how I was starting to think and feel. The story starts with him being expelled from school and then going to New York City. I wasn’t expelled but in eighth grade I was demoted from A group to B group because they said I wasn’t keeping my grades up. Jeez, I had been out of school for two weeks because I was sick, could they give a kid a break. And so, it starts my questioning adult figures like Holden they all became fake and judgmental. My rebellious streak was born. I must have read that book while I was home sick as I said there wasn’t an English teacher to be found in my school who would recommend that book. The book written in the late fifties was banned in many places. How dare a kid question an adult. The world was just filled with phony characters as Holden took to calling many adults. Just like Holden I became a sarcastic teenager. School was filled with phony kids who just cared about football and dances. I saw how people started being judged by how they looked and not by their ideas. Well in truth they didn’t seem to have any ideas. I was the one who cried when I picked up the newspaper and saw President Eisenhower had died. I asked questions about our leaders, about why we were fighting, why were we killing innocent people just because they didn’t believe like we did. It didn’t make sense to me and worse, yet what was a dumb kid going to do about it.

It wasn’t until I left home and attended college right outside Manhattan that I started to feel yes there was something. You could speak out, you could protest. You could try and make a difference and that is why I’m beholden to Holden