Posted: January 2, 2009
The Bookends Of Your Life
There are a couple of reasons why ag journalists are among the more likely to bracket their lives. They live a life constantly filled with deadlines and their activities are somewhat governed by the seasons of the year.
The result is that they tend to live in time compartments and pay close attention to when one ends and the next one begins rather than looking at their life as a whole.
The passing of an old year and the beginning of a new one is the one time when that aspect of living comes into sharpest focus. It's also a reminder that we, of all people, need to maintain our perspective of the passing of time. Otherwise, how can we transfer that to readers who also need to be reminded there is more to life than simply hammering away, one at a time, at all of its bits and pieces.
Indeed, incorporating historical perspectives in what we write is the only way to emphasize the importance of certain agricultural developments, particularly those concerning research or the introducing of new cultural practices. Explaining economic trends also requires the revealing of facts and statistics from a historical as well as anticipated future perspective.
That perception does not come easily or automatically. That's the reason that once in a while, you need to take time to renew your appreciation of the passing of time. Here's a method I guarantee will accomplish that quickly and effectively.
To do that in a way you can easily understand, I'm going to present a composite of several pilgrimages I have made to locations prominent in my increasingly distant yesterdays.
I grew up in a rural community of about 150 people about 40 miles north of Indianapolis. The post office closed years ago as did both grocery stores, the fuel distributorship, the combination hardware store and John Deere implement dealership and the Nickel Plate Railroad depot. Over the years, some houses in town have continued to be neat and well maintained. But others have been abandoned, dramatically modified or removed. The house in which I grew up managed to survive intact until about five years ago when it, too, was torn down. Increasingly, there is little left to which I can directly relate. As one resident told me during my last trip back, "this place would have been dead had it not been too stubborn to die."
My grandparents lived on a farm about two miles away and my uncle had a farm almost three miles away. I spent a lot of time on both.
Of the two, my grandparent's farm, sold after they died, has undergone the most radical changes. The forested areas on both sides of the farm where we used to have weiner roasts were converted to cropland back in the early 1980s when the cry went out to farm "from fencerow to fencerow." Most all the outbuildings were torn down. A hog operation was built where the orchard and chicken house used to be. On the north side of the farm was a winding and willow shrouded creek where my cousins and I made great use of some great swimming holes. Oh yes, the creek is still there. But its beauty was ravaged when by county decree and with Federal help, the willows were cut, the banks were beveled and the creek was straightened and channeled.
Two miles east is the small town where I went to school. The building, so typical of the early 1900s, was a two-story brick structure with a gym added to one corner. There was a large playground with teeter totters, sliding boards and a maypole swing. The last class graduated in 1963 and two years later, the building was torn down. It's all gone now. Even the pond back of the school where we kids caught frogs was drained and converted to a corn field.
In the three local cemeteries is evidence of where the last generation has gone, the generation of adults who hired me to mow their yards, bought newspapers and magazines from me and told me of things that had happened to them such as wars in which they had fought and faraway places they had visited. In one way or another, they all contributed to what I know, how I act and what I have been able to achieve.
Reaching out a few miles, the county seat still has its stately 19th century courthouse. And wisely, the city fathers turned the old school building, a soaring stone structure with round turrets, into a museum. But the Clinton and Roxy theaters where we saw shoot 'em up westerns, Snow White and newsreels on Saturday nights were replaced by banks and parking lots.
Down in Indianapolis, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Monument Circle from which many of the city's streets radiate, is still there. It was into the big fountains at the base of the monument that hundreds of deliriously happy and fully clothed people climbed to celebrate the ending of World War II.
It's strange how one expects change to happen everywhere but not where they grew up. Not where they had so much innocent fun. Not where their world was so small. Not where they prepared to leave to do things both dreamed and never dreamed.
But it does change. Some of it comes as easy as the first green of spring. But much if not most of it comes as harshly as the first frigid winds of winter.
Despite all that, I urge you to take time to return to where you once were. Or if you never left, take stock of what is and compare it with what once was. It will help you look beyond all those compartments in which you now work.
It will give you a new awareness of what you must yet accomplish and help place in proper context the present information you, as a journalist, share with others.
Most of all, it will do much to identify just where the bookends are in your life.