Her name was Persis which she said meant a Gift of God. She was my great-grandmother, but I always called her grandma. Before I was born she had already raised my grandmother, and my mother. She had lost children in the influenza epidemic of 1918, lived through two world wars, the Great Depression and two husbands. One had drowned and the other had divorced her.

She was in her sixties and I was an infant when she became my guardian. For  the next 18 years she saw to it that I went to school, was fed, housed, clothed, and had medical attention when necessary. This she did with only her Social Security and an Aid To Dependent Children supplement (welfare) from the state of Michigan.

When I was still in grade school, she began telling me the world was filled with educated fools. She was bitter about it.

By the end of my senior year in high school my grades were mediocre, we had very little money and I was not scholarship material. So I did not  apply to college. I saw three possibilities. After graduation I could work in the auto factories in Flint or Lansing, wait to be drafted into military service, or enlist. I enlisted in the Marine Corp. It was 1968 and the prospect of going to Vietnam was more appealing than working on an assembly line. It was my service in the Marines and the  G.I. Bill  that finally made it possible for me to  graduate from Michigan State University.

As an adult I better understood  grandma’s bitterness and her perception that she had been held back and cheated by so many educated fools. And I understood her concern that, as a college graduate, I was in danger of becoming one.

Lately I have been thinking of  grandma’s disdain for educated fools. Our current economic meltdown is mostly the fault of deceitful, power hungry, greedy and inept individuals. Most of them are well educated men and women—lawyers, bankers, MBAs, Professors and CEOs—educated fools with degrees from places like Yale, Harvard, MIT and Westpoint.

Today I discern no clear escape. I’m am too old to enlist or be drafted and the auto factories have closed. 

© Michael Maurer Smith 2009