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Column: Thoughts from Dr. Joe: Contemplating the erasure of history while on the road home to La Cañada

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I’m sittin’ on the sidewalk in Hannibal, Mo., and enjoying a latté that’s almost as good as Scarlet’s blend from the Starbucks in La Cañada. Home is a long way from here and I have many miles to go, but there’s no rush as the lure of the Great Plains looms.

I am inspired by the boyhood home of Mark Twain, America’s laureate who grew up here on the banks of the Mississippi River. Employing my sixth sense, I feel the antics of his fictional characters Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and, to give credence to my clairvoyance, a Mississippi paddle boat blasts its melodic horn.

Regardless of this extraordinary moment, I’m unable to find a suitable idea that would shape this week’s “Thoughts from Dr. Joe.” I’m too immersed in this adventure, and I would be remiss if I didn’t speak of the lure of the blue highways across America.

On a small grass-covered knoll, catty-corner to my view, there’s an old statue of Twain’s beloved Tom and Huck. They’re frozen in time. Each of the boys carries a sack tied to the end of a stick, and they look toward the Mississippi as she flows toward the Gulf of Mexico. I wonder what they see: adventure, escape, a new world, or all three?

I contemplate the wave of politically correct hysteria. When will they demand the destruction of any vestige of Tom and Huck? The characters were descendants of slave holders. And, as you might recall from your first read of the book during freshman year in high school, Huckleberry Finn was an avowed racist. But the beauty of the story is his alchemy as he floats the river with runaway slave Jim and protects him from captivity. The potential of humanity is to evolve from imperfection toward perfection or perhaps the other way. Other than death, it is the only reality of development. In the name of progressivism, totalitarianism always purges its history. The Cambodians, Vietnamese, Russians, Chinese and Nazis are perfect examples.

A few days prior, Kaitzer and I delivered Sabine to her junior year at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. This year she has her own apartment, two blocks from the campus. Independence is inevitable, and watching as she assimilates into her adult world is not disconcerting. I am comforted as she and her roommate Alejandra Ruiz confidently create their world. We said our goodbyes, and I headed west, first dropping Kaitzer in St. Louis for the flight home.

From Hannibal, I’ll find a blue highway and head northwest to Nebraska, where Broken Bow promises two minutes and 33 seconds to view the eclipse. I’ll camp in the sand hills. If you’ve been there, you’ll know why.

I consider the subtleness of Nebraska, how the treacherous inhabitants lived in the loveliest tints of nature. I think of the devilish brilliance of its remorseless tribes and how they preyed upon each other carrying on their eternal wars, seemingly since the world began. The Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho and Pawnee kept slaves and were brutal to each other. I consider this, and yet I see the gentle and green docile Earth and find an awkward semblance of something in us. For as appalling as the ills of man are there lies the Great Plains, full of peace but encompassed by all the horrors of life. How can one fathom the possibility of erasing our sins by erasing history?

JOE PUGLIA is a practicing counselor, a retired professor of education and a former officer in the Marines. Reach him at doctorjoe@ymail.com. Visit his website at doctorjoe.us.

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