Forty years have vanished from the rearview mirror since my year as an Alicia Patterson fellow roaming the highways and back roads searching in a 24-foot Coachman motor home for the mood of America.
Boy, howdy, have things ever changed since that long and winding journey. It's difficult to assess everything the three of us learned as our family drove through the continental states. There was just so much happening, and the experiences came too fast to possibly retain them all four decades later.
Our nation certainly has become a far different place since 1976. Back then, I was cautioned by the Washington Post executive editor (a judge for that year's fellowships) to be especially careful roaming America for fear of being mugged.
The reality, however, turned out far differently. We never encountered a bad person in 19,000 miles. Instead, I found thousands of folks who treated me just the way I treated them.
I see a far different, more sharply divided America today. Races and cultures are intentionally pitted against each other via calculated political agendas resulting in manufactured violence.
During our bicentennial year, most Americans still felt a least a measure of trust in the national media and those we elected to lead us honorably and fairly. I remember hearing the terms "integrity" and "character" used as traits to which everyone should aspire. Today, the public trust has been squandered, evaporating beneath a politicized onslaught of deceit. Because of that, no one can say with certainty just who, or what, is credible.
I'm not claiming the country I encountered between 1976 and 1977 was like living in the good ol' days. But when I reflect on the news that made headlines during those 12 months along the highways, it's readily apparent that our nation's culture, economics and political tactics have changed dramatically.
For instance, after steering out of the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record parking lot bound for America, I pumped a tankful of gasoline into the motor home for about 60 cents a gallon.
The 1976 Dow Jones floated around 1,000. Gerald Ford was president and the U.S. vetoed a UN resolution seeking an independent Palestine State.
Israeli commandos freed 103 hostages held at Uganda's Entebbe Airport by pro-Palestinian hijackers of an Air France passenger plane. Our country's 1976 median household income was a whopping $12,686.
Also: Some 2,000 high school students in Pensacola, Fla., were involved in a racially charged riot where 30 wound up injured. Apple Computer was being co-founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. A car bomb had exploded in downtown Phoenix, killing Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles (little could I know 10 years later I'd arrive at the paper).
Also in 1976, U.S. military escorted hundreds of Western tourists to safety in Syria from Lebanon following the murder of our U.S. ambassador to Lebanon. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was not inherently cruel or unusual and was a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment. California repealed its sodomy law. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus was formed and casinos were approved in Atlantic City, N.J.
As the early weeks of 1977 arrived, we were settled into the adventure. Jimmy Carter was president. I'd spent the first six months working in tobacco fields with laborers, interviewing the little lady who cleaned the Liberty Bell daily, sleeping in the driveway of a fifth-generation Maine potato farming family and discovering disheartening truths about the late Tennessee Sheriff Buford Pusser of the overly Hollywoodized 1973 film Walking Tall.
In 1977 the first home/personal computer called the Commodore PET was offered for sale, the Space Shuttle Enterprise made its maiden flight on the back of a jumbo jet. We relied on pay phones and landlines. A dozen Hanafi Muslims took over three buildings in Washington, taking 150 hostages and killing one.
The Supreme Court in 1977 vacated an injunction on the Hyde Amendment, so states were not required to spend Medicaid funds on elective abortions. Popular singer Anita Bryant pushed her "Save Our Children" crusade in Miami, Fla., where voters overwhelmingly chose to repeal Dade County's gay-rights ordinance. Elvis took the the stage to perform his last concert before he died.
That year the U.S. and Russia joined 13 other nations on a proposal to restrict the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the federal debt was $699 billion.
We've changed along with our nation in many ways since I took my journey in search of America, yet in other ways, not so much. It's impossible to tell in today's uncertain, contentious and anxious climate what the next 45 years hold for the United States we'll leave to our children and theirs.
But then I'm not telling valued readers anything they don't already know.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 08/21/2016