It occurs to me, at a time when days, weeks, even months are given over to celebrating abnormal sexual orientation, minority status of various varieties and other assorted virtue-signaling subjects, that we who live in Johnstown and its surrounding communities are due recognition simply for residing here.
Something other than a day set aside to honor us seems appropriate, if only because the City can’t possibly afford to have another paid holiday for workers, including the beleaguered police force.
Yet, the Memorial Day observance only heightened my thinking. Wounded soldiers receive Purple Hearts. Heroic soldiers have honors up to, and including, the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Then there are the service/combat ribbons worn with pride on the upper left side of military dress uniforms. This is the so-called “fruit salad” that demonstrates a veteran’s military history in real time. Beware, though, that the term fruit salad is like the N-word, to be used face-to-face only by those within the fraternity as a friendly term, but never by those on the outside.
I propose similar awards for residents of Greater Johnstown, service/combat ribbons to acknowledge our time in this backwater, which has become a front line of sorts when it comes to violent crime.
Admittedly, I never served in the armed forces of this nation. I reached the age of 18 just as the selective service draft was being put on hold. I still was required to register for the draft and have a card classifying me as 1-H, a holding category just in case we didn’t exit Vietnam and needed more troops.
The joke was, the 1-H meant that in case of ongoing war, we’d be held as hostages.
I’ve never been shot at, just like many current military members, but the odds of that changing are growing with each passing day. Maybe a stabbing? I do, after all, routinely transit Moxham, Kernville, Bridge Street, the last becoming our modern day interpretation of the Wild West’s lawless Front Street in Dodge City, Kansas.
Of late, the violence has intruded on Geistown and Richland Township. Can Southmont, Westmont, Upper Yoder be far behind?
This is being written Wednesday morning and, so far, there have been no reports of violence. It is, however, still early.
The latest chapter in the carnage reportedly occurred very early Tuesday morning at the Coopersdale Homes, yet another of the public housing outlets that have served as incubators for such.
This time, sketchy reports indicate a fight by numerous women, being observed by two males, one of which stabbed the other. Those same sketchy reports indicate the stabbing victim just might have been more than an innocent bystander, with indications he was the aggressor before being stabbed and might have assaulted some of the women before they began fighting each other.
All that is left to be reported is whether he is another imported mischief-maker from Filthydelphia or, as a door-to-door canvasser for utility service told me the other day, possibly from Baltimore. This man noted his house has a nearby encampment of almost an entire block of former Baltimore residents.
A little fruit salad for our shirts or blouses would be tangible recognition of our plight of living with this Johnstown decline, and perhaps galvanize the public to refuse to accept this.
It would be a daily reminder that our once “Friendly City” has become more like downtown Chicago.
The ribbons would give people something to talk about at those candlelight vigils, or in public meetings during which our elected officials give nothing more than lip service to the problem.
I’d wear one with an uncomfortable mixture of pride and shame.
Sam Ross Jr's site 