Louis Roney: Glances at a fading past

In my errant hitchhiking days in the ’30s, I saw many Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps in the Far West. Unemployment was rampant, but our national debt was not yet as alarming as it is today. CCC workers cleaned our forests, lowering risks of forest fires. They built roads and parks where travelers could picnic on redwood tables and benches. Now our president gets the idea that he can copy Roosevelt by attacking today’s unemployment with 1930s methods. Today we have staggering national debt. Putting the unemployed on the national payroll to lower the number only makes things appear as though we have stumbled upon a solution. A government job is not the job we need for those out-of-work. It is at best only a trick to produce a cosmetic effect. Obama is a sly cosmetician — but not an honest master of economics.

Taxation without representation

Though not Catholic, I can understand thoroughly the Catholic position that Catholic funds should not pay for abortions, and that Catholic hospitals not be required to furnish abortions on demand. The principal of taxation without representation is not antithetical to such a fundamental concept.

Understand your risk

The long-term effects of football’s head injuries become evermore evident. Football is a game I played, and is a game I love, but I remember receiving a blow to my head in a night game once that knocked me out for several minutes. That kind of blow is, of course, a concussion and too many of these can endanger a person’s brain and whole lifetime. Helmets have been greatly improved and rules have been made to protect the players’ heads as much as possible. But the very nature of football is violent contact, and carries with it the threat of serious injury. Either play it, or don’t play it — it’s your own risky choice.

Invading Shell Island

In the ’30s, Hope Strong, I and other members of our Scout Troop would canoe with our leader, Fleet Peeples, down the Wekiwa River and camp out overnight on Shell Island. This was Florida jungle as wild and untamed as it was when Ponce de Leon landed in Florida in the 1500s. The bobcats, the alligators, the different poisonous snakes and the devilish insects abounded, and we human beings were invaders taking a big risk just for the hell of it! That none of us was ever badly injured was a miracle of sorts, a miracle that kept us coming back to tempt fate. Paddling back up the river against the 2 to 3 mph stream to Wekiwa Springs was a laborious task. We were boys then. We were crazy. What else is new?

Babe Ruth of golf

If you are not a basketball fan, and I am not, the Super Bowl is the end of big sports until baseball gets well under way. My b.w. and I have learned to enjoy watching golf, and I marvel at the camera work done to bring a big golf course right into our home. I also remember when I was a little kid visiting my grandmother in Atlanta, and Bobby Jones lived not far from us. As an amateur, Bobby won everything there was in sight, both amateur and professional, and he never turned “pro.” He was the Babe Ruth of golf and has never been eclipsed.

A thought

Are we Americans ever more out of sorts then when our TVs and other toys are out of whack?

About Roney: Harvard’42—Distinguished Prof, Em.—UCF 2004 Fla. Alliance for the Arts award (Assisted by beautiful wife Joy Roney)