A few columns ago, I spoke of my labors toward digitizing all of my old vinyl LPs.

Recently, I have made some progress in that project. This is largely because my total disinterest in big-time football leaves me with hours of time that football addicts don’t have. I can use that time on other ridiculous pastimes, such as, well, digitizing old LPs.

Despite my progress, I’m not done yet, and if my recent activities are any indication, men will walk on planets in galaxies far, far away and have a beer with Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia before I finish.

The recent extension of the project is partly the result of Powell’s annual pre-Christmas “Taste of the Season” event. While strolling downtown that evening, I followed my wife into the Habitat for Humanity store, and discovered several boxes of old vinyl records people have donated to Habitat’s efforts. Many of them are in great shape. and some actually look as though they’ve never been played.

Well, given my somewhat eclectic notions about what constitutes good music coupled with my interest in the changes in American culture during my lifetime, the temptation to mine this rather impressive stack of vinyl was irresistible. I wasn’t quite up to the task that evening, but I made a mental note to revisit the store, and a couple of weeks ago, I went on a prospecting trip to find out if there were any gems in that vein of vinyl ore. I ended up adding 15 or 20 albums to my digitizing project

There wasn’t anything remarkable in the music I brought home. Mostly it was light jazz or pop music performed by orchestras, choirs or piano players. A few light classics were in the mix along with a couple of pop singers from the past and country singer Eddie Arnold.

Just for fun, I added an offering from Homer and Jethro, the 1950s equivalent of Weird Al Yankovic. They were mostly recordings nobody but someone like me would want, which explains why they were at the Habitat store in the first place

One record, though, ended up inspiring this column, which, despite its tone so far, may give you something to think about.

The record features a group that was popular from the 1929s until the 1950s, Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. Waring’s arrangements for the group were adopted by many choirs, including the school choirs I sang in five decades ago.

The opening song was a patriotic number,  “This is My Country,” written in 1940 and popular in the 1940s and 1950s. I haven’t heard it for many years, but I remember singing it both in junior high and high school.

It’s a rather simple song, actually, that opens with a slow opening about feeling love for the U.S.A. then jumping to an upbeat tempo to declare:

“This is my country, land of my birth.

“This is my country, grandest on earth.

“I pledge thee my allegiance, America, the bold.

“For this is my country, to have and to hold.”

Some of you may be put off by that “land of my birth” bit, since it leaves out a number of Americans, including my Russian-born German paternal grandma and my English maternal grandpa. But when the verse is repeated, the first two lines change to, “This is my country, land of my choice. This is my country, hear now my voice.”

With that change, the composers of the song acknowledge the importance of immigrants in our nation. Unfortunately, though, I don’t ever remember singing those lines, but even so, the song as written is inclusive, and when I was singing it back in the late 1950s and early ’60s, it was that spirit of unity that I had learned in school.

The second song on the record, “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor,” also recognized immigrants by putting to music words taken from the poem at the Statue of Liberty. That poem, by Emma Lazarus, invites other nations to send their “wretched refuse” to our shores where “I (Lady Liberty) lift my lamp beside the golden door.” 

As I listened to the songs while my computer was digesting them into bits and bytes, I began to wonder why I don’t hear them sung anymore, and I began to wonder, “Were we more unified and patriotic back in 1959 than we are today?”

Maybe we are, but I’m not one who looks back on those days as a golden age. True, I had purchased a bunch of music from that era, I rejected some because it wasn’t very good, and there were parts of the 1950s that weren’t very good either.

Among the troubles during the ’50s was fear of communism and with it, fear of a possible nuclear war with communist countries. Politically, we were divided by, among other things, a Wisconsin senator named Joe McCarthy who ruined some with wild accusations, and socially, the struggle for civil rights and against segregation turned violent at times.

Given those realities, I think those patriotic songs I rediscovered recently were a little too rosy. We may have been a little more patriotic when we sang them back then, but not really very much, and, I’m not sure we were any more unified as a people than we are now.

Still, listening to those songs last week made me feel good about my country, with all its flaws. Maybe if we sang them today, we could all feel better. It’s worth a try.