One of the cruelest things I have ever read was the last paragraph of the introduction to my mother’s senior yearbook. The class of 1959 at Our Lady of Angels didn’t give a damn and took no prisoners:
(It states: “Amid our daily confusion here on earth, as we comb the satellites out of our hair, as the communists engrave our names on tombstones, and as various monsters from the worlds of the silver screen haunt us, we need constant reminders like our hands to ensure contact with the Almighty God who created us and who loves us.” If you’re interested, you can find the entire essay here.)
Authorship
Mind you, this was an all-girls school. I’ve known for a long time that this is just how we operate, but the graduating class of 1959 didn’t have to go through quite so much hardship. This book also pays tribute to about four people who died during the year, and none of them were nearly as disheartening as this.
As I was thinking about combing satellites out of my hair, it occurred to me that the author of this paragraph was probably Was my mother Peg. She is listed as one of the editors and looks prominently featured in the staff photo on the Publications page.
If such a grim view of humanity surprises you, consider who raised young Peggy. Anyone who spent their formative years in Cleting’s father’s household was bound to see the glass half empty.
timing
But then you have to understand the historical context in which this was written. The USSR, which had a bomb just as big as ours, and the man responsible for shooting it down didn’t seem to like us very much. The girls probably started putting this together in 1958, which means they were about a year away from sputnik (the big bombs could rain down on us now from space) and still two to three years away from any American in space.
And they hadn’t even finished high school yet. No wonder there were communists with tombstones and monsters in the movies.
So it makes sense that the Reds were known as the Redlegs during this era. Yes, it was a name from the club’s early days. But it also cleverly avoided headlines like “Reds triumph over Yankees; Cincinnati delights.”
No one seemed to think it necessary to tell Generation X about this. I didn’t find out until I walked into my old pediatrician’s office wearing a Reds shirt with white and red bows in my hair. “Glad you’re rooting for the Redlegs,” he said, and we all learned something that day.
Well, I did. As soon as it was polite enough, I asked my mother what on earth the man in charge of sticking needles in me was thinking. And that’s how I learned how we dealt with the Cold War.
The Redlegs slowly became the Reds again as the “WE WILL BURY YOU” songs dwindled. The Cold War was not over yet, of course. But “Redlegs” was put aside for another day when a small blog needed a big historical name.
