Craig Fees, "Letters to Times: Youth Replies" , CONTRA COSTA TIMES, April 9 (1987), p. 26
To the Editor: In response to the letter of Mr. Jerry Wentling printed in the Times March 30, I - a teenager - resent what the Honorable Judge Philip Gilliam of Denver had to say about my generation.
Very rarely, do I bear the "plaintive cry — ‘what can we do; where can we go?’ " so vividly described by the judge in the quoted article. Rather, I hear “I can't go, I have work to do," or "I haven’t got time today." What pleasures we seek are earned, and no more than those of our elders
If I had storm windows to hang, I'd hang them. I help paint the house once yearly; I do help with the yard, wash the car, clean my room.
In attempting to build — or at least, design — a water craft, I have found little encouragement from that same generation as the judge's, which righteously tells me to build a boat. I am in training now for that job I am too young to obtain, and so I am attempting to get outside training.
When new music groups began to form they were little encouraged and, in fact, their style was degraded [I think this was intended to be ‘derided’]. This was the attitude from those who tell us to work ard work hard.
Besides being an acolyte, Mr Gilliam, I do all my studying, and if I am not too tired, I do read the several outside books required both by school and to maintain my sanity.
After having collected for different charitable functions several times, I find that from the 20 or so families I visit, there is received, at the most, three to five dollars overall. Mr. Gilliam: Tell them the world does not owe a person his living, that rather one needs to help one's friends and community cheerfully.
And sir, is it not my generation supplying men to the draft for Vietnam, for volunteers to aid in such projects as the "candy stripers," the unheralded “amigos" participating in summer aid to Latin American countries?
Further, I believe my generation is less lost in fantasy than that of the good judge's.
It strikes me fearfully that his generation has too long governed, and that for six more years I must wait helplessly while the “parent” generation involves the United States in a mess that if my generation does not untangle, it will be blamed for. That his generation should have so little tolerance as to attempt to ban the "hippies" from San Francisco, I find repugnant.
To paraphrase and add to the judge's closing paragraph: I am a teenager. I am tired of appeasing, taking insults, being the object of disrespect, discriminated against, suffering because your every whim and fancy does not have to be ratified by my generation, so uncontrollably involved in the results as it is; tired of your ego which makes me eternally wrong; the bad example presented by your generation to mine.
But, mainly, I am tired of generalization. Some teenagers such as have been described do exist. But far fewer than I have become acquainted with.
Thus, it seems a bad habit of the "parent" generation to condemn those of us in the majority with the minority mistrained by adults. But this is not to condemn the entirety of adulthood.
Craig Fees-Douglas
Walnut Creek