I woke up this morning with a song burning in my head. It was Yakety-Yak, by The Coasters – circa 1958.

I couldn’t get the lyrics to this tune out of my brain.

“Take out the papers and the trash,
or you don’t get no spending cash.
Get all this garbage out of sight,
or you don’t go out Friday night.”

And so on.

Next, I turned on my shower radio (a must for a Type A personality) to hear a talk-show host interviewing a man whose son had been terrorized by a gang of teenagers. They assaulted his nine-year old kid, swiping his bike as a trophy for their miscreant behavior.

The father was furious and pledged to move out of the city of Pittsburgh, “even if I have to just walk away from my house.” He went on to recount “many” such assaults and crime in an area of the city that is being “run by teenage thieves and gangsters whom the cops themselves fear.” He cited others whose homes and families had been victims of these “parentless punks” and wondered aloud “Just how can this be?”

Fifty years ago, teenagers were told by their parents (yes, that’s plural), “don’t talk back.”  For that was the big crime in 1958, talking back to your parents. So, where did civilization go wrong? Where and when did we make a hard turn away from two parent homes and especially from responsible parents who put in the time and energy necessary to truly teach their children responsibility, honor, and integrity?  Not to mention, parents who themselves are adults.

You’ve all heard the recent reports - in major cities throughout this country, nearly half of all inner-city children are failing to graduate from high school. Here in Pittsburgh this percentage is now in the thirties. Recently, the head of the Small Manufacturers Council was quoted as saying that good manufacturing jobs were going unfilled, as almost half of the applicants could not pass the drug test.

“Just finish cleaning up your room,
let’s see that dust fly with that broom.”

I remember going up into the Hill District forty years ago, during the riots that followed the Martin Luther King assassination. Yes, I was nuts to do that, but my curiosity overwhelmed my logic (Hey - I was 19). The Hill was never the same after that. I’m sure the younger generation reading this simply can’t believe that this area was once a wonderful part of the city; pregnant with restaurants, movie theaters, and yes … even supermarkets.

Again, where did the parents go? And when did not finishing high school become so socially acceptable?

One thing that I know for certain is that two key (and in my mind, related) events conspired to bring this country to its present condition:

1. Our federal (mostly) government found that it could buy votes by handing out checks to: those who didn’t work and those who would have children, and
2. Too many parents were still children when they had children.
   

Throw in our incredible prowess in selling (advertising, especially), the decline in numbers of those who believe in and practice deferred gratification, and the great distance between the present time and a time when people truly didn’t know if this wonderful concept called freedom might be taken away altogether. (See my TEQ article entitled, Distance from Deprivation for more on this topic.)

I’ll address this issue more in future blogs, but for now, think about just how long it took for us to slide into this sad, sorry state of affairs and then think about what it will take to get back to the things that made this a great nation.  I’ll bet your assessments and cures aren’t that much different from mine.

And I’ll also bet that you’ll agree that our time to act has just about expired.