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Hernando Today

America: In Search Of A Home-Plate Issue

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 9, 2008

Reading what's on everyone's mind in various media takes me back to my childhood, where I enjoyed some wonderful experiences with my grandfather. He was an astute businessman and was affectionately known to his nine children as "the boss." He arrived in the Midwest from Ellis Island in the late 1800s and began to build his family's future, homesteading on a 160-acre Nebraska farm. His hard work, entrepreneurial spirit, shrewd business practices and persistence resulted in ownership of several farms and numerous bank accounts.

The boss had his own "head start" program. As each of his sons and daughters married, they were given a farm to start making their own way, with oversight from the boss. Grandpa took a special liking to me, his first grandson, and put me under his wing in the early 1950s, while I was recovering from a life-threatening battle with polio, and learning to live a normal life again.

Like clockwork, three days a week, Grandpa showed up at my parent's breakfast table for a cup of coffee, one of mom's homemade cinnamon rolls and some detailed discussion regarding work priorities. Then I'd jump in his old 1937 Dodge, and together we would begin making the rounds. At some point early on, he would stop the car, pull out his pipe and can of Prince Albert tobacco and begin his pipe filling, tobacco tamping and lighting up ritual. After his first puff, which resulted in me getting a good whiff of that wonderful cherry aroma, we were off on our trip. That was my clue to stop talking and start listening, as I was about to get some priceless kernels of Welsh wisdom; in other words, the world through Grandpa's eyes.

Here are a couple of those kernels of Welsh wisdom. Grandpa said if you've been to the Barnum & Bailey circus once, don't waste your time going back, because it will be the same old clowns doing the same old things, entertaining spectators reacting in the same old way. That was how he saw politicians and politics. Another that made an indelible impression on my gray matter, was one I call his basic ball field analogy. Grandpa said to be successful in life you have to learn how to prioritize issues; there's a big difference between first-, second- or third-base issues and a home-plate issue. No one can prioritize for you; you must do your own homework, use good common sense and listen to your gut. Finally, once you define the home-plate issue, don't waste time on the first-base issues. He admonished that whoever gets this wrong, will probably lose the game.

Now to today. Never in my lifetime have there been so many issues. Health care, Medicare, education, poverty, Social Security, federal deficits and debt, illegal immigration, war, energy, environment and other significant moral and ethical issues. Depending on where you are and where you've been in life, each of us could offer a meaningful argument supporting our own personal issue/s. But unless, and until there's a consensus national home-plate issue, fixing Jack's home-plate issue does very little to address Mary's home-plate issue. I remember, and forgive me for using this, how horrified I was, when as a young farm boy I saw a mother sow eat one of her new born piglets. It shocked me, and no matter who I asked, or how they answered, I never could understand why. It was just beyond my ability to comprehend, and caused me to have horrendous nightmares. However, one thing I knew for sure; the carnivorous mamma sow was a home-plate issue for that little pig.

Now I'm not suggesting as a country we've regressed to the point of cannibalism, nor am I suggesting we can't define our home-plate issue and begin providing answers and solutions. I am, however, suggesting there is a commonality to each of the issues we face today. I submit that commonality is our government, and the people's failure to faithfully execute our role as stewards. Our vigil of silence has become the silence of betrayal, giving birth to opposing groups of Barnum & Bailey political clowns, encouraging us all to engage in their finger-pointing, name-calling circus. No, politicians aren't encouraging us to eat our young, but they sure as heck have us nibbling away at the fabric of our society, the mother's milk of our democracy.

Thomas Jefferson said, "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." Wow, how prophetic regarding where we are today? Maybe as a quick test, we should all contrast the role government plays in our lives, with the role we play in government's. Oh we need government, but government without accountability through oversight is like a train without an engineer. Government is our train, and "we the people" are the engineers.

We've reached a critical time in our nation's history, and like my Grandpa said, if we don't stop focusing on first-base issues and begin to focus on the home-plate issue, we'll all lose this game.

James Gries

Weeki Wachee

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