MANY THANKS TO THE PEOPLE I NEVER KNEW...

A couple of days ago as a group of friends were raising glasses in a toast to someone who is turning sixty, I was suddenly stricken with a sense of how very much I owe to other people... for just about everything. I live in a comfortable home from which I go and come on lovely streets that are maintained for public use by public works agencies which are paid for by taxes collected from citizens who may or may not use the streets. There is no mortgage on the comfortable home where I live and it is filled with wonderful, beautiful things that have been bought and paid for over the years. I can afford to take amazing vacations to exotic places. At least once a year Margaret and I go back to the East Coast where we enjoy all sorts of pleasurable experiences that have been paid for... sometimes still being paid for... by other people. As we travel around the United States I carry a card good for my lifetime that gets me into all national parks and federal monuments free of charge. Oh, yeah, right! Ten years ago I paid ten dollars for the card. But my personal use of the parks and monuments costs much more than the ten dollars I paid for those experiences... and the card will get me into wonderful places free for the rest of my life. Thank you, American taxpayers.

Anyone who has ever attended a state university or community college or public elementary school, middle school or high school almost surely got more value than they or their parents paid for in personal taxes. Oh, yes, I know what many people think... over a lifetime the tax bite on an individual is large enough to cover many times over again the “personal value” of services rendered... and for exorbitant salaries for an army of bureaucrats whiling away their cushy lives in cushy jobs at OUR expense. I don't think so. Somehow I am unable to think of the bureaucrats I have personally known in those terms.

Miss Sophie, the librarian at the PUBLIC library in Live Oak, California, where I grew up, knew my name and my reading habits. She knew my sisters and brothers. That little old, once red-haired bureaucrat who ran the library fiercely would come to the door of the library when she saw me riding by on my bike to holler that she had a book for me, one she knew I’d like. And there were the guys at the fire station and the police officers and the people at the post office... people who knew me by name... and a whole army of people I didn’t know who made that little town a lot like Opie and Andy Taylor’s Mayberry. They are the bureaucrats I have known. Now that I think about it, the few sleazy people I have known in my lifetime haven’t been government workers. Actually, I take that back. I do know somebody who worked for the county for about fifteen years before she hurt her back and had to go on disability pay. She has been taking disability pay for at least twenty years. Apparently she doesn’t make the connection between her paycheck from the county every month even though she doesn’t work there anymore, and she obviously doesn’t think about the fact that the taxes paid by other people fund the program that makes her disability paycheck possible... and she is the most outspoken member of the taxpayers association in her community, attending meetings of the County Board of Supervisors so she can object to any project that raises taxes. Please don’t misunderstand. I don’t object to the disability payments. I’ve just never really understood nor liked creatures that bite the hands that feed them.

And I’ve never been able to respect fully people who take for granted the ease and comfort with which they live while failing to recognize how much of what makes their lives easy and comfortable comes from taxes that are levied to provide for the public good. I had occasion this morning to drive along five freeways (I-163, I-8, I-805, I-95, and I-125) on my way to pick up something that had been left for repair at a jewelry shop in El Cajon. I made the enjoyable thirty-mile journey not in rush hour traffic but in the middle of the day. For my pleasure and convenience in that short journey I owe thanks to a great army of planners and construction workers and maintenance workers, all paid by taxpayers whom I will never meet. The freeways are in good shape. Entrance-ramps and exits were designed by expert planners and draftspersons. Perimeters of all the freeways are parklike... actually beautiful... and I listened to public radio while I was driving. Of course, I can afford a good car and the fuel required to make it go. When I drove past the section of I-94 near it’s intersection with I-805... through one of the poorest communities of Southeast San Diego where I taught in a secondary school for a few years after retirement, I remembered that many of my students were from families with no automobile. Those tax-paying citizens take the bus through city streets whenever they need to get someplace. And as I drove to the jeweler’s shop, I remembered to remember how fortunate I am to be blessed with what we in America call “The Good Life.”

Health care is the topic on everybody’s mind this week. Will President Obama finally get a bill approved by congress even though it is a pitifully weakened version of his first vision for bringing health care to all Americans. Some of us Americans enjoy extraordinary health care. When something on my forehead looks suspiciously like skin cancer, I go immediately to my dermatologist. When Margaret feels as if something is not right in her body, I urge her to go see our primary care doctor. Among those who already have adequate health care are people like me who started out blessed by good genes and then later blessed by good education that made good jobs possible that made good retirement income possible. I am in that large group of Americans who can afford good private insurance to go along with medicare and social security benefits (thank you, taxpayers) and good private retirement income. I was fortunate to have worked most of my professional life as headmaster of three exceptional private schools. I worked hard. The pay was good. But I’ve never forgotten that my own “formal” education was not acquired in private schools but in public institutions. I confess that I wasn’t aware when I was in eighth grade that I was receiving a wonderful gift. I was enrolled in a good public school which had been built and was maintained by tax money. My teacher, Miss Pullen, was paid by taxpayers who didn’t know Miss Pullen or me. And as I progressed up through the grades, there they all were every day for me: Ms. Laney and Mr. Lucas and Mrs. Behr and Mr. Hendrix and Mrs. Andrews and a whole bunch of teachers whose names I will remember if I put my mind to it... and janitors and grounds keepers... and later in college I probably failed to notice that the little I paid in tuition couldn’t possibly have covered the costs of the exceptional education I was getting. I don’t remember ever talking about it with anyone. I doubt that I felt appropriately grateful for all the good things that came to me because I was fortunate enough to be born in America. Now I do feel it. Thank you, American taxpayers.