“Suppose the streets were all on fire, the flames like tempers leaping higher. Suppose you’d lived there all your life, do you think that you would mind?”
The above quote is a song lyric from 1968, from another summer of inner city rioting. The song was by Spanky and Our Gang, who had previously had hit records about the usual moon-croon-June type of love songs.
But this song hit a different note.
“Give a Damn” didn’t get universal air play because of the bad word in the title. It was an era when a Beatles song — “The Ballad of John and Yoko” — had to be issued in two different versions because the line “Christ, you know it ain’t easy” had to have a word removed from the radio version.
And the word wasn’t “ain’t.”
“Give a Damn” was a different kind of song, the first of Spanky’s singles that never reached the top 40. It was a song about wealthy New York commuters riding the train through the ghettos without ever noticing what was going on outside.
“If you’d take the train with me uptown, thru the misery of ghetto streets in morning light, It’s always night. Take a window seat, put down your Times. You can read between the lines …”
The song goes on to say people should learn to give a damn about their fellow man.
As if …
The fact is, not only do many of us not give a damn at all about anyone other than ourselves and our circle of acquaintances, we don’t want them to give a damn about themselves.
We used to look at things in a very different manner. I hate to say the change started with Ronald Reagan, but in a way, it did. Reagan was famous for saying good people didn’t work for the government, that good people worked in private business where they could make more money.
My dad was not poor, although he and my mother poor-mouthed for most of my childhood. He worked his way up to a GS-15 with the Air Force as deputy director of procurement management review. GS-15 at the lowest level is a six-figure income now, although it has been 30 years since my dad retired.
At any rate, he had numerous offers from defense contractors to come work for them at salaries at least twice what he was making with the government Essentially they wanted him because he could show them how to get around regulations and increase profits. He turned them down every time because he said there should be good people on both sides of the divide.
There are certainly plenty of people who could make more money if they wanted, but instead chose to have a positive impact. My mother was horrified when I told her the most money I ever made as a journalist was $48,000 a year, but I think she respected the fact that I didn’t sell out for a higher paid job in public relations.
Before I pat myself on the back too much, I could make the decision I did because my wife made nearly three times as much as I did.
I admire people who would rather do good than do well. You do good, you get people working hard to make the lives of people around them better.
You do well, you get Donald Trump.
When I see people in need begging on the street, I try to help them out. I know people who say I’m not doing them any favors in the long run, that they would be better off if they had to find work.
Maybe,
But there are so many people who are neither lucky nor strong, and I certainly don’t want people to fall by the wayside if I can make a difference.
A few years back, I gave $20 to a man begging by the side of the road.
A few days later, I have the same man $20.
On a third occasion, he was still there. I only had $10 this time, and he thanked me profusely and said he was embarrassed to still be there. He just couldn’t find work, he said. I told him to hang in there and keep trying.
“God bless you,” he said.
I never saw him again, and I hoped that was because he had found work.
I wasn’t about to criticize him and I didn’t want him hating himself.
Life is tough enough these days without piling regrets and self-loathing on too.
I have always believed one thing about all this.
“There but for the grace of God go I.”