My father
served in the second World War and came home with this outlandish, altruistic
idea that elementary education was what the country needed, an idea I think you
echoed in your campaign. His first job, if I remember correctly, earned
him a whopping $3,500 dollars a year. My mother, an ex-marine, also
served in the war and returned from it to sell shoes in a department store and
raise two kids.
The middle
class and education and food for me and my brother was what they desperately
wanted. We thought we were, "free people pursuing our dreams"
as you said in your clarifying statement, but I see now we were shirking our
responsibilities. I became a teacher and my brother a dock worker, don't
worry about us.
My father
finished college on the GI Bill, a government hand-out of the most pernicious
nature, if you ask me. He became a life-long teacher and then an elementary
school principal, clearly a drain on the resources of the people in his country
who work and pay taxes. This is the culture of dependency in which I was
raised.
I don't
remember my parents saying that we were victims and the government has a
responsibility to care for us, but clearly I must have got that idea from
somewhere.
I continue
to be a dependent while I teach, write, and pay taxes in Syracuse, New York
Yours,
Bruce Smith
Bruce Smith was born and raised in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is the author of six books of poems, most
recently, Devotions, a finalist for
the National Book Awards, the National Book Critics Circle Awards, the LA Times
Book Award, and the winner of the William Carlos Williams Prize.
