Jim Walsh
One of my fondest childhood memories is the walk I took with my classmates from my elementary school to the Walnut Beach Public Library. Do I remember book titles? No…not really. But in that quiet setting, the feeling of welcome, the natural light and the colorful books oriented toward 3rd graders like us, mostly involved happy animals—horses, rabbits, elephants and others—cavorting in simple, colorful, countrysides. There were pleasures to be had and, also, lessons to be learned. Sometimes even from a character that wasn’t running around on little feet. I’m thinking of The Little Engine That Could. There were lessons there too.
The simple written words that accompanied the illustrations were so clear and that even a child could understand and learn from them. Or so we thought.
One of the most memorable little books was the Three Little Pigs. Another was the story of a little girl on her way to her grandmother’s house. They were tales with happy, carefree characters, dancing to music we could not hear. Until they found themselves in deep trouble and music became somber.
The source of trouble was a far more frightening creature…The Wolf. Some were big, bad and obvious. The one that had his eye on a young girl on her way to visit her grandmother, with food and drink in a cute little basket, was more of a charmer. He made innocent inquiries, but later hid under blankets, donned clothes that did not fit, and spoke in voices not his own. They were both wolves but one was more obvious than the other.
The first of the three pigs was just a happy-go-lucky little guy with not a care in the world…until his world changed dramatically with the arrival of The Wolf. The Wolf had been in the neighborhood all along and only made himself known when an opportunity arose. When the Wolf made his move, the little pig fled to a brother’s house, not that secure but safer than a house built of straw. The wolf followed. He wasn’t done. When the wooden house fell, the two brothers fled to the third brother’s more substantial house, solidly built of brick and stone. The third little pig had anticipated the known dangers in their world and prepared for them.
At the end of the tale, I can imagine the third little pig breaking the fourth wall, glancing up at us from the page of the storybook and suggesting that we use our capacity to think and to anticipate in ways that would be protective…and not for just ourselves.
Little Red Riding Hood’s more charming wolf starts a friendly chat with her as she’s on her way to bring her grandmother some biscuits and wine. This wolf is a lot trickier. If he plays his cards right, he could get to swallow up Red Riding Hood, the biscuits, the wine and her grandmother. What a wolfish opportunity! But it didn’t quite work out that way. His eyes were too big and his greed too great. But one can easily imagine it going the other way. Some wolves are trickier than others.
The moral of the second story was, “Be careful who you listen to because the guy you think is your friend may not give a tinker’s damn about you and be only out for himself.
I never visited my grandmother’s house because in my lifetime she never had one. When I was Red Riding Hood’s age she lived with us. When I visited the library that day in 3rd Grade, she might have baked her wonderful cinnamon muffins that morning. By 7th or 8th grade she no longer cooked, and my job was to carry her morning coffee upstairs to her. Only on holidays did she struggle down from the second floor to be surrounded and celebrated by her children and grandchildren.
My parents’ generation came to see Americans as family and it followed that the American family should out for one another. That generation created Social Security, for instance. On the cusp of the transition between the prewar generation and the postwar generation our generations together ensured that the blessings of liberty were shared far more equally by our fellow citizens no matter their color, their language, or their national origin. And we made sure that the most vulnerable had access to food, housing and medical care. That’s what families do.
But lately, for many of us, the wolf in the bed is not being honest. He’s smiling but with cruelty in his eyes under an ill-fitting headpiece that does little to disguise who he is or what he wants. The substantial house built by the third little pig is being dismantled by the Big Bulging Bill that Trump forced through Congress.
Cut food for children?
Cut cancer research?
Make education affordable only for rich kids only?
There is something repulsive about a president cutting off assistance to children all over the world, who may be starving or on the edge of starvation and/or who suffer from treatable or preventable diseases. Trump just walks away.
Even now, as he continues to dismantle the National Weather Service—that could have given earlier warnings—and FEMA whose experts would have been up, ready and moving even before the storm hit Texas, having just toured his Alligator Alcatraz in Florida he flies to Texas with crocodile tears.
Under his Big Bulging Bill, most Americans gain very little and the least fortunate will suffer the most. There is no silver lining. Their suffering will make it easier for the billionaire (who will immediately get his tax deductions) to get that second yacht while the impact on the rest of us won’t hit till after the midterm elections.
The Big Pigs stuff themselves. The “little pigs” pay the price.
Which brings us back to The Little Engine That Could. We can stop all this by using the tools of our Democratic Republic. Organize, inform, show up and vote. I think we can. I think we can. We just have to keep working on it.
Jim Walsh is a writer who lives in Nahant.
