I was today years old when I figured out that my grandparents had told me a story that is apparently not true.
In my slow summery childhood, I traveled with them on many Fridays out of suburban Chicago, past industrial Gary, Indiana, and up to Michigan. Before the freeway was built, we followed what we now call Old 12 and 20, mirroring the long curve of the Lake, a road of small businesses, in which the land became increasingly less dirt and more sand. Landmarks were exotic to me, if not to them: a motel (with a swimming pool…whoa!) exotically called The Golden Sands, where I always secretly wanted to stay. And on, to the Red Arrow Highway. When I saw those road signs, we were getting close.
Why would it be called that?
The Red Arrow Highway, my relatives told curious me, was an evacuation route that had been designated during the Second World War. If the enemy invaded the Midwest, all good Americans were to pack up their cars and children, with food and blankets, and get on the Red Arrow Highway, driving to safety. Where would they be headed? In what direction would they drive? They would be told at the time.
It’s really a matter of faith. My grandparents believed implicitly in their government. That kind of trust is more difficult now, and public service less reflexive. My grandfather, too old to serve in the military, had been a wartime town warden, walking the nighttime streets of their suburb with a flashlight watching for invaders. And my grandmother had been a Red Cross volunteer, distributing sandwiches and coffee and motherly smiles to boys gathered in Chicago before shipping out. I’d heard those stories, certainly not told as heroic or even particularly sacrificial, but unadorned and mundane.
So it is a shock to me to find no trace in the public record of this foundational family tale about evacuation routes and public response to peril. Instead, I read, the Red Arrow was so named in 1952 to honor the 32nd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army, which used a red arrow as its insignia. Formed originally from Army National Guard Units in Michigan and Wisconsin, the 32nd ‘punched through’ the Hindenburg Line in WWI; it was said to have pierced every battle line it ever faced. On its shoulder patch, therefore, is a line shot through with a red arrow. That’s the same red arrow of the highway signs we traveled on, and still do.
The opening sentence of this little essay began as ‘I was today years old when I learned my grandparents had told me a lie.’ Punchier opening, but that would also be a lie. I am sure they believed that good story about the evacuation route. South on the Red Arrow, north on the Blue Star. The war years had strongly marked their lives, and they had faith in governmental commitment to the public good, in its capacity to direct, in its orderliness of execution; I am sure they had thought about what they would do if the enemy reached the Midwest, and I am sure that if they received instructions from the government to pack up their lives and get onto the highway, they would have done so.
It is difficult to imagine such a unified public response now, or such deep-seated general belief; it seems more an individual matter these days. Perhaps the faith has to be in individual commitment, remembering that individuals can join together into a majority and we are still, so far, led by majority rule.
My family will attend a small town Fourth of July parade this week and I think it will still be a display of American values that my grandparents would recognize… flags rippling, children with decorated bicycles, older veterans waving, music that can still stir the soul, and speeches that remind us of the story of our founding as a country. Some may even quote the Preamble to the Constitution. “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution…”
We the people, as my grandparents understood it, and as I do, means that power resides with the citizens. That’s us. WE attempt to form a perfect union, to establish justice, to promote the general welfare, to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
Our belief may be less ardent than theirs, but our obligations remain. We are called to have opinions, express them or shout them, to participate on behalf of the public good, casually or vehemently. We are called to DO something. Now is a good time for that.
Happy Fourth of July, fellow-citizens. Let freedom ring
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Photo by the author.