During Christmas week I watched, as I had many Christmases before, “Scrooge,” or “A Christmas Carol,” the 1951 one with Alistair Sim, based on Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” I awoke the next morning remembering an old incident, back in 1951, with the thought, probably not for the first time, that the old man I encountered in that incident was the epitome of Scrooge.
Back in September of that year, my husband and I, with his teen-age-brother and our two-year-old child, were returning to our home in Prince George’s County, Maryland, from a trip to Iowa. It was already nightfall when we arrived in Frederick, MD, and realized we had not enough gas to get home, and not another penny among us. Just a dollar’s worth would get us home, gas being then about 20 cents a gallon. Surely some kindly gas station attendant would loan us a dollar for gas. But the elderly gent at the corner gas station declined to help us. What? A nice, clean-cut family like ourselves couldn’t be trusted? And the dollar was so much money that the old man couldn’t take a chance on losing it? What was he thinking? That we would not return the dollar and it would be his undoing? He would go bankrupt? No doubt he would have gone to his grave grieving for that lost dollar.
Eventually we met a young police officer who himself took a dollar out of his pocket and gave it to us. We took our dollar back to the little corner station and gave it to the old man, and got our gas. Next day we put two dollar bills in an envelope and addressed it to Officer Denver J Shook with a little heartfelt note of thanks for his help. Back came a letter from his captain, expressing his appreciation for our prompt return of the money while at the same time assuring us that we would not have had to do so, they were glad to help.
But the Scrooges, or their spiritual descendants, still walk among us. We witnessed them in the Halls of Congress during the last few weeks. Saying no to extension of unemployment benefits, no to extension of tax cuts just for the middle class, no to the rights of gays and lesbians to be a part of the military, no to the rights of children of immigrants to gain citizenship by attending college or joining the military, no to medical care for 9/11 workers, no to food safety, no to expanding child nutrition, no to allowing anyone to pick up the crumbs from the table. As Scrooge said, “What? Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” And today he might add, “Are there no homeless shelters? Are there no soup kitchens? Are there no grates on the sidewalk?” But then when these statesmen were able to get what they really wanted, tax cuts extended for the very rich, they allowed other legislation to proceed, although most still voted their nay’s. When the ghost of Jacob Marley was warning Scrooge of what was to come if he did not mend his ways, Scrooge protested: “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” and Marley shrieked: “Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business….Why did I walk through the crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down….”
May you have a Happy and Progressive New Year,
Gramma Windy
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