I was a staff sergeant in George Rarey’s 379th Fighter Squadron in World War II (‘You Mustn’t Let It Bother You Too Much,” June/July 2004). I was enlisted chief of operations and in the course of a day rubbed shoulders with him and Hugh Houghton, the operations officer. Rarey was what every man would like to be. He was urbane, witty, friendly, devoid of airs, down-to-earth, and an experienced pilot and flight leader. He somehow found the time to personalize each pilot’s aircraft by painting its engine cowling with its name or symbol. Everyone loved this guy. You couldn’t help it. One look at the drawings in his notebook and you saw the talent he had for cartooning. We used to gather around to watch him as the drawings flowed from his mind to his fingers. All of us seeing this magic knew that he had a brilliant future ahead, that he would one day be one of America’s top cartoonists. The afternoon he went down was the blackest day in the history of the 379th. We stood around and waited and waited, kicking clods of dirt and looking repeatedly toward the horizon.
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Whatever the oldest profession may be, the oldest occupations are hunting and gathering. Indeed, for millions of years, they were the only occupations, until farming began about 10,000 years ago and slowly spread around the world. 250 years ago, perhaps 80 percent of the population of the Western world was engaged in agriculture. But then, as the Industrial Revolution began in the cloth industry in the English Midlands, the percentage of the population that was devoted to farming began to drop.
In the industrialized world, it has been dropping ever since. In the United States, 71.8 percent of the working population were farmers in 1820. By 1900, it was 37.5 percent; by 1960, 6.1 percent. In 1994, it was a mere 2.5 percent. Yet agricultural production has soared. The United States, despite having so few farmers, not only can feed itself, but is the world’s leading exporter of agricultural products.
September 11, 2001 was my daughter’s first day of kindergarten—a new school a long subway ride up the spine of Manhattan. Rebecca’s inaugural school day consisted of half an hour meeting other children, followed by a four-hour walk home. When the school opened again, her teacher told me, “She’s going to build something. Just watch—they’re all going to be building things.”
I nodded, not quite knowing what she meant. But sure enough, before long, Rebecca pulled out from the most desolate reaches of her closet a canvas bag full of big wooden blocks in which she had never before shown the feeblest glint of interest, and went to work in the living room. Soon, there was a persuasive little city there, dominated by two tall wooden shafts standing close beside each another. “Don’t touch it,” Rebecca commanded her mother and me, and we didn’t.
This summer marks a sea change in the traditions of American party politics. For the first time, the Democratic National Convention will be held in Boston, and the Republican National Convention will be held in that great Babylon, that hole of sin and abomination, New York City.
Actually, the Republicans have never held a convention in Boston, either, which is rather surprising when one considers that, right up to the Great Depression, Massachusetts was a rock-ribbed Republican stronghold. The reasons were probably as much logistical as political. The city that has hosted, far and away, the most major-party conventions is Chicago, with Philadelphia a distant second. This is not surprising, since both cities were important rail hubs and pretty much the only two large metropolises to burden their citizens with competitive political machines in both parties.