Louis Roney: Sizing up our lives

• Human Progress Report 2015: If a person doesn’t agree with you, cut his head off!

• I believe that the United States is a morally good nation that wishes to have no enemies at all. This is much like a very good-natured friendly dog who wishes to have no fleas, but attracts them whenever he walks out the door.

• The beginning of summer in the U.S. brings gorgeous hot days to Floridians!

• I have never forgotten the famous Yogi Berra quote: Yogi was asked, “What time is it?” Yogi’s answer, “You mean now?”

• I remember Al Smith when I was 6 or 7. Alfred Emanuel “Al” Smith was an American politician who was elected governor of New York four times and was the Democratic U.S. presidential candidate in 1928. Al was the leader of the efficiency-oriented Progressive Movement and was famous for a wide range of reforms as N.Y, governor in the ’20s. Al was also associated with the notorious Tammany Hall machine that controlled New York City's politics; he fought against prohibition and was the first Catholic nominated for president. Al’s candidacy mobilized Catholic votes — especially women who had never before voted. His candidacy also strengthened the anti-Catholic vote, which was strongest in the South.

As a sworn anti-prohibition candidate, Al Smith attracted not only drinkers, but voters angered by Al Capone and other gangsters brought in by the corruption and lawlessness of prohibition. However, Al Smith was feared among Protestants, including Lutherans and Southern Baptists, who believed that, if Smith should win, the Catholic Church and the pope would dictate American policies. This was a time of prosperity under a Republican presidency, and Smith lost in a landslide to Republican Herbert Hoover. Four years later, signs of the Depression were surfacing when Smith sought the 1932 Democratic nomination and was defeated by his former ally and successor as New York governor, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Immediately after his governorship, Smith entered business in New York City and became a strong opponent of President Roosevelt's “New Deal.” I remember the Great Depression coming in like a black cloud rolling over the heads of America and its business community. Unemployment jumped so fast that the newspapers could hardly keep up with it. Bread lines formed downtown in America’s large cities and men who formerly had good jobs begged on the streets for warm coats and jackets to withstand the wintery cold.

In 1931 my father was fortunate enough to secure a position teaching romance languages at Rollins College and we packed up our belongings, put all of us including the dog in our old car and drove to Winter Park, where the rich had mostly stayed rich. Many grove owners left their oranges on the trees because paying for pickers and boxers cost more than the oranges brought to market. I remember several times when my family was invited out to visit friends who had large groves. “Don’t forget to bring some baskets,” we were told, “You can pick all the citrus you can carry home,” they said.

Rollins students came from mostly well-to-do Northern families and had their normal share of convertibles with spiffy-looking girls at the wheel. Rollins had a very good football team coached by Jack McDowell and games were on Friday nights downtown at Tinker Field in Orlando. By that time I had learned to fish and to catch bream, which I cleaned and fileted and brought home for breakfast to eat with scrambled eggs on the side. We soon moved from downtown Winter Park out to Forest Hills near Lake Sue, where Attorney Hope Strong Sr. lived with his wife Dorothy and three sons, Hope Jr, Dan, and Beebe. During summer vacation time my family drove to Atlanta and spent a wonderful time at my grandmother’s big house on Peachtree Circle in Ansley Park.

• Now that my generation has finished perfecting all things American, let’s fight against the crazies who want to disarm this country by doing away with the Second Amendment. Only because the “Minute Men” in Massachusetts were armed were they able to fight the British soldiers successfully and give us a country.

Protect the Constitution — never forget that!