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My great aunt told me a story once about her trip to the West. Grub stakes were literally stakes planted in the ground. You were promised land if you traveled out West, and you were told where your stake had been planted and all you had to do was get there.
She came in a wagon caravan. They would tie a ribbon around one of the wagon wheels, and they knew the circumference of the wheel, and they knew how many turns of the wheel would get you as far as you needed to go to get there. They would put the children in charge of counting the wheel turns. She was eight years old. They arrived in the middle of the night according to the turns of the wheel, so they made camp and figuered they would look for their stake in the morning. When they woke up, they found that they were within one hundred yards of their stake, in the fields near Pomona.
My grandfather likewise traveled to the West. He had been living in a mud shack in Kansas. They came across the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon, heading for Washington State. Obviously they reached their goal, or I would not be here :)
John F. Kennedy challenged us to put a man on the moon. Obviously, we reached our goal, if you believe.
I will never forget, one of the biggest inspirations of my young life, was when my grandfather told me the story, how he had traveled across the country in a wagon, and had lived to see a man land on the moon on TELEVISION, neither of which could have been imagined when he was young and set out on his journey.
In junior high school in Pasadena as a frehsman, I was in the band. The black kids tended to gravitate to the drums. I played tuba. One day, this young black punk kid tried to take the drumsticks from my white drum playing friend. I stepped in and took the drumsticks away, and this kid told me his brother was "going to get me". I laughed it off and we finished the class. When I walked outside of the music hall, there was a gauntlet of black seniors, and they proceeded to kick the everlasting shit out of me. When the school counselors saw me bleeding and crying on my way to my next class, they asked who had done that to me, and I refused to say. They still found out who had done it, and suspended the young man that had instigated the incident. He called me at home, and asked me to tell his grandma that he had nothing to do with it, and I obliged. From that day on, all the black kids in the school stood up for me and protected me from the white gangs that would pick on me (confession, I was a nerd).
In high school, I went on a two week hiking trip in the high sierras for underpriveleged kids. There were fifty of us. 48 black kids, me and a latino. Halfway through the hike, this black girl who was a very weak hiker, started to fall behind. I tried to encourage her, and help out, but she fell further back. I don't know how the counselers blew it, but they lost sight of her, and she ditched her backpack and ran away. I volunteered with one of the Latino counselors to hike to the nearest guard station on our map so they could radio for help. We hiked 8 miles to the station, only to find it had been abandoned, so we walked another 7 miles to the next station on the map, only to find a note that the ranger had gone out and taken his radio with him. We hiked back the fifteen miles to join back up with our group, in the dead of night, exhausted and cold. It wasn't until the next morning that we found out some horse riders had found her and gotten her back to civilization safely.
Just like my grandfather, I watched on TELEVISION, when Americans set foot on the moon. One giant leap for manking indeed.
Tonight, I watched on TELEVISION, when America nominated a black man to be the next president of the United States of America. His speech, like so many of his others, was so incredibly inspiring. Did you all see him try to shake the hands of all 19,000 people in attendance? I haven't cried so hard since I watched the train bearing John F. Kennedy's body back to the capitol.
If you believe, we put a man on the moon. If you believe, please try to help me, for the sake of all of us, make this man our president.
For every tip to this diary, I will match you with $10.00 (and the obligatory one penny) to Obama's general election campaign. When we cap out at $2,300, I will have my wife continue to match. When she caps out, I will try (no guarantees) to enlist additional friends to continue to match. Please feel free to contribute your own donations on this thread.
YES WE CAN. IF YOU BELIEVE. WE PUT A MAN ON THE MOON.