Something
is very wrong when young men and women have to leave their family and
country forever. There was no going back and a decision like this,
was one of those times. The opportunity to come live in America with
freedoms and choices overshadowed all that was left behind. Decisions
made by teenagers.
Charles
wife, Rose, also has a similar story.
Sold
into indentured servitude, Rose too arrived to America through the
front door. She was to become a man's wife for the privilege of
coming to America. Debt paid via the marriage. Lucky for Rose, she
could work off the debt should she choose not to marry, which she
did. Several years of labor to pay that debit for the opportunity to
become an American.
Also
from Russia, Rose knew not a word of English when she arrived and
boarded a train for Chicago. As the train moved out of the gates, the
attendants handed everyone on the train a banana. Rose had never seen
a banana before and did not know what to do with it. She sat holding
the banana and watched. Others peeled, then ate and then did Rose.
The
desire and cost to come to the freedoms of America, like no other
place in the world, was high. The desire to be free, was worth the
price. Fleeing the constructs of invasive government and life sworn
servitude to the leaders was nothing to ever return to.
I
have been free my whole life and cannot fully understand all that my
grandparents went through to get here. Any life inside the ensured
poverty they were born into, held no promise. America offered the
light of freedom. These two people came to this country to work,
design, build, raise families and do their best to shore up these
lands so that they did not become the lands and times they fled.
But
today, a little over a hundred years later, friends here are
seriously considering moving from the live free or die state. Not
idle talk over a beer or cup of coffee. Friends, like us, moved here
because there was no income or sales tax. A smaller government but
surrounded by increasingly invasive and oppressive states. Live free
or die is an American love and life style. The walls of our Capitol
building are covered of men in revolution against a tyrannical
government. Their faces, flags, and campaigns know every corner and
crook of that wonderful building.
Some friends planing to leave here, are younger and have skill sets that will
allow them to find jobs, grow crops, hunt and raise live stock. They
have the ability to turn a dollar, pay the bills and set up life with
like minded people. They will take with them no plans to change their
their new local / state government. No desire to shape others into an
agenda. Like my grandparents, they feel the pressures from an ever
growing invasive government. Selling and leaving all they have built
to again find like minded communities where freedom is a corner
stone. But they take with them the spirit of live free or die. A
living motto.
Suffice
it to say I am torn. I am tired from the worry. I often wish I could
shrug my shoulders, turn my back and simply live each day outside the
barrage of garbage being dumped on our shoulders. Turn my back that
today our children, like Rose, are being born into servitude and
poverty. But I cannot.
I
spend too much time talking to myself and shaking my head in lost
understanding. I know that. Yet there is a deep spark in this native
Norwegian, Russian, American heart. A spark, that rests and was for
ever lit the day I was born here. It is the same spark that rests in
all of our hearts. Our spark of freedom is genetic now and can never
ever be put out. I do not have to explain that to an American. It is
the spark that others come here to find, and sadly, others come here
to extinguish. Attempts by any or all to forever extinguish this
spark, will ignite a fire beyond imagination.
