European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 12, 1978, Darmstadt, Hesse                                By Hugh Mulligan Ciuc Litcy Preu coming Home to America to Settle after More than a decade the suddenly domesticated foreign correspondent feels a bit like John Steinbeck Hobo been every where got America at times and in places seems to have moved too fast some would say downhill Ever to catch up with her cd fast food chains on the Massage Parlours on credit pump your own primetime soap operas requiring viewer discretion and everyone abroad in the land with a Tennis after the surface theres a strange sense of having seen it All a feeling of familiarity some times sometimes America was prosperous enough but not at Hie great which was coming in when i left the country a decade seems to have re there was worry about about Loo much government Here and not enough government about the ways of the people talked about other troubles they been through the devastating the scorching heat the Forest dams Black outs and Power i survived the blizzard of my 14yearold Nephew in had emblazoned on his in decaying inner Long unemployment lines blurred with the and vagrants slept on the in storefront on newspapers and Falls of like Calcutta or there were stir rings on Capitol Iii to mobilize the acc or something like so the Young without Hope could work at some and talk among politicians about government Murti Jamie help so folks could afford today House Llad i passed through a time machine going through customs the baseball champions of the world Lone Wilh he wind searching for a Scarlett once More not a reprise but a King Kong clutching another distressed Damsel in his hairy Paw and climbing a still higher senseless violence dominating the headlines and the evening to was son of Sam a Symbol of a National psychosis or just an Echo of the violent age when every Green Chevy Sedan crossing the George Washington Bridge carried a cardboard sign dont shoot not John returning Home at the end of a year that had a oversupply of natural i found a Golden Bountiful Harvest stretching across the from an streaking through the deepening Copper sky of a Lovely autumn the kind you get nowhere else on the Tawny Fields of the Republic rolled on and on in a world envied display of natural resources and mechanical True grit had triumphed Over the Joad family got to Calif omy from the Oklahoma dust bowl after Vietnam seemed further away than the great de people read about and heard about the Satin demonstrations at Kent stale Over building a gymnasium where student protesters were but they talked about and fretted about insulating the roof against the approaching putting in a woo burning stove to Cut Down the fuel maybe some Day packing up and moving to a new promised land called the Sun where million americans already Are beating the Energy it used to be the Looney in that Charles Addams House up on the Ridge who rambled on about heating his Kitchen with solar Energy of some kind Dow its the no nonsense fellow across the Street who was the first in the neighbor Hood to rediscover the Franklin America lad chanced All right while i was la Tou Aad a fellow have to stroll too far la us Earth to America had changed All a fellow didst have to stroll too far in his Earth shoes to notice new new expressions had entered the Ever vital american no cant handle right used As an affirmative he or site is into transcendental meditation or judo or ceramics or and the children or the neighbors Are being very divorcees have become single Par Enta while i was and the Back porch had become a once the Man next door got it into his head to underwent a minor revolution during the decade of my now your conspicuous neighbor Hood athletes Wear jogging carry two Tennis rack ets and Bora borgs shy smile instead of Jack Nicklaus loud Slacks and rumpled on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills these Days you see More joggers than Roll royces or one Day in i saw an executive Jet land at the tiny lower its passenger stain and disgorge an executive com plete with sneakers and zippered exercise who proceeded to take a couple of laps up and Down the which used to be played by the More rarefied new England prep schools or by refugees on a vacant Field under the Treborough is on television every weekend and lives in the Best ten years ago you would have thought there was As much Chance of seeing people at a soccer game in the Jersey Meadows As there was of installing a Southern Peanut former in the White conservation and the fight against pollution engaged the energies of americans almost every something you rarely see in folks Are wrapping garbage la plastic tying newspapers into rinsing and sorting the Amber and Clear bottles to haul off to the recycling washing their Beer cans instead of tossing them Over somebody we got the finest sewage treatment Plant in the coun a Man from Lake told me on an air plane one bursting with the Braggadocio formerly reserved for the High school football Ille Lle race problem appears to have calmed a or maybe gone from ire to apathy Over the the fires of fury were at any but strolling past the clusters of unemployed Young Blacks in a number of cities you could Tell it  take much fanning to whip up the the last time i walked Down the streets of Baton militant Blacks were observing bump on which they went out of their Way to collide with mister Charlie As a reminder of what he had coming to him for decades of past a decade there is the elaborate Courtesy of race we go out of our Way to held the door for each be the first u have a Good Day and comment conspicuously on the latest Oil spillage la the Gulf or he Dacuag la the Middle As if shared headline traumas link us la a kind of in the French Quarter of new Black and White children were tending a Garden together in the school Yard of the Mcdonough is Public and the nuns were hushing up a heavily integrated bus Toad of parochial school kids filing into the Louis Cathedral for a look had a Black Catholic the most Joseph he was the the Boss of the not the u seems like Only yesterday that Catholic women were spitting at archbishop Rummel for integrating the new Orleans parochial and my favorite Baton Rouge Steak House had turned itself into a private club rather than serve minority but the Steak House has gone Public its tables now As racially blended As that new Orleans school and no one paid much u Are More All Black and Allwhite neighbourhoods than there used to be 1 walked up Seneca Street in Baton where i had used for three a few Black families had lived there m an elderly Black woman was raking the Lawn in front of the old and across the Street a Black teenager was washing a car in a driveway that once flew the Confederate Flag on the Nonempty White families Are deserting the fringes of the Garden where i lived in new More than Low Miles further the Corona Section of in new York were leis wild a Ped on saturdays a decade has mostly Spanish speaking the most depressing spectacle America rediscovered had to offer was the decay of her once thriving Dulei and the erosion of old downtown Baton Cut off from the rest of the City by is an dreary As an East european factory town with boarded up shop windows and parking Lota where businesses once a ghost town after is trying to lure people Back downtown with its gaslight Complex of shops and restaurants so i Detroit with its Renaissance Boston Ted the Way with its new City Center and the glittering Hancock is Bent on saving its inner redo ing historic Larimer luring the downtown shop pcs with free bus the rest of the country knew Little about new Yorks arson epidemic in the slums until to cameras during world series panned away from Yankee stadium to in on the burning other insecurities Are Here ii 1s and Noone has tried to Mug me said the priest at u Oclock mass la Francis Church near Peon station one trying to part a Bright Side to it was one of those sparkling fall with god in Iii heaven and the Goodyear Mima floating above Ahtl Hudson River in a unpolluted but already the heroin zombies were shuffling along eighth a i the Pink and Gold Cadillac known were cruising the theater District with s63 of a burglary alarm was ringing i the smashed indoor of a Liotier in new Yorks Forest where i had spent the 1 10 years i War my friends and former i own bomb Page 14 the stars and stripes