FRIENDSHIPS AND RESOURCES CAN COME FROM PEOPLE OF ALL AGES… Stop Limiting Yourself and Others by Bill Knell
FRIENDSHIPS AND RESOURCES CAN COME FROM PEOPLE OF ALL AGES… Stop Limiting Yourself and Others
by Bill Knell
When I was a kid I used to visit my Grandma Lulu in a nursing home. She lived with my family for years in our suburban Long Island home until she required more specialized care. Lulu was very old, but sharp as a tack. There were many things I liked about her. One was her love of True Crime stories. She subscribed to all the true crime and true detective magazines of the day.
On August 9,1969 when the Manson Murders took place, the story was all over the TV news. Grandma had her own TV in her room and always liked to watch her “stories” (soap operas, a.k.a. daytime TV dramas) and the news. I was off from school for the summer when, around eight in the morning, I heard her yelling, “Billy, Billy!” and thought she was in a health crisis. No, she saw the news about the Manson Murders and wanted me to go up to the candy store where they sold newspapers, magazines, comic books and other publications. She gave me some money and told me to buy every newspaper that had the Manson story in it. They all did that day.
I biked up to the candy store and when I came back my basket was more than half full of newspapers. Grandma Lulu couldn't wait to get her hands on them. In those days TV news and programming was highly censored. For example, the word “pregnant” was not widely used on TV until 1969. Lulu wanted all the griesome facts that newspapers gladly supplied and TV news worked around about the murders of actress Sharon Tate and several others.
The appalling crime took place early in the morning at a rented estate in Beverly Hills. Tate was married to “Rosemary's Baby” director Roman Polanski (who was away at the time) and was eight months pregnant. That made the shocking tragedy all the more interesting to the press and public. She was murdered (a.k.a. “unalived” for the PC crowd) by members of the Charles Manson Cult. Shortly after that they murdered two more people elsewhere.
Lulu grew up in Astoria, New York City. She told me her story of going out on to the porch to get the morning newspaper one day (there was no radio or TV) and how she and her family were shocked to read about “that skalliwag” outlaw Jesse James who had robbed a train out West. It was 1881. That's how old she was!
Through her knowledge and inspiration, I learned a tremendous amount and my interests expanded to subjects I probably would never have thought about. Lulu introduced me to her friends In the nursing home. I sat and talked with them for a while, suddenly realizing I had discovered a mostly untapped resource of knowledge.
Some of Lulu's friends had amazing stories about history, science and culture. One gal had been an assistant to a worldwide current events and wartime photographer. They went to Berlin, Germany, just before the nation declared war on America. She and the photographer got to meet Hitler. While he took photos, she took notes on what Hitler said through a translater. She thought he was interesting, but more like a power crazed dictator than a head of state. She was obviously right.
My father was a retired Air Force officer who served on General MacArthur's staff during World War II. He didn't like to talk much about his service. One of the things he did tell me was how he recalled being a member of the American Military Delegation that took part in the surrender of the Japanese Empire on the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo harbor in 1945. He had photos of the occasion with him in some of them which always fascinated me.
Dad loved humor and one of his funniest stories occured when General MacArthur had been appointed the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Japan after the surrender. Dad was in charge of the self named “shit squad”. They went to work every time the general had to be driven somewhere from his residence and headquarters in the American Embassy.
In those days many Japanese lacked proper toilets or running water to flush them. They would go out into the street and do number one or two in public. It would have been very disrespectful to General MacArthur having to see it as he drove by, so dad had to be sure he had enough men to go ahead of the general to clear the streets of those doing what comes naturally.
I also enjoyed the visits of his retired or still active pilot and military friends. Beyond hearing them discuss all their amazing exploits, they talked about a favorite subject and study of mine… UFOs, a.k.a. UAPs. I used to write and distribute a neighborhood news sheet about UFO sightings. Most stories came from first responders at the local volunteer firehouse that I often visited, or county police who had a small outpost that was occasionally manned up the street.
Dad always warned me that whatever I heard from the pilots was to be kept secret in the family. However, some of the older guys told some amazing stories about “Foo Fighters”, weird glowing objects that sometimes appeared near allied or enemy planes and over military facilities. I wrote a few up in a report for school. My teacher doubted their authenticity and called my dad. After a visit to the school, my report disappeared, no one talked about it anymore and my dad warned me not to do it again or no TV for a month!
As a writer I like to get information first hand as much as possible. That lead me to befriend or follow people of all ages online. One disturbing thing that I uncovered was the impracticality and unfair nature of so-called “community guidelines” and terms of service which sometimes severly limit young people from posting their stories and opinions. Social media had become the Big Brother (the character from Orwell's “1984” book, not the TV show) of Internet censorship.
Personally, I have learned much from older and younger people because I listened to, rather than excluded, their ideas, opinions and stories. There is much to be learned and enjoyed by opening up to these often sidelined human encyclopedias of the past and present.
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