Measuring half a century - A Gift Outright

 We had a bright and shiny new school building in January of 1961.  It replaced something of a relic - an Addams family designed caricature if you will.  Washington Intermediate (the new) was all glass walled and light, smooth floors and new desks. Coat rooms became lockers - your own locker. Sputnik was old news - the Mercury Seven were gods.  The Sabin vaccine was replaced by the Salk vaccine and on that January Saturday my mom drove me to the school and we went to the art room off the main entrance where I could get my shot.  A small black and white TV showed the Kennedy inauguration and I remember Frost reading his poem in the cold and the wind and when the pages were blowing, Kennedy helped him hold them down.

I didn't know much about Ike other than he was a general turned president and seemed to be a fair and decent sort. Kennedy seemed so much more our generation although he was my parent's age but that seemed young compared to the grandfather type we had for 8 years. 

Like the building it was a newer version of the old one.  I didn't remember Frost's words and had to look it up.  Nice reading.

~ The Gift Outright ~

The land was ours before we were the land's.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia.

But we were England's, still colonials,

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Something we were withholding made us weak.

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright

(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)

To the land vaguely realizing westward,

But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,

Such as she was, such as she would become.