From the Heartland
Earlier today, a reader sent me the following in an e-mail. With the writer's permission, which I just obtained, I'm publishing the letter. It provides something of an antidote, I think, and an answer, to issues we've been dealing with these past few days on Off Times Square. -- Constant Weader
Yesterday was Flag Day. Several times throughout the day I thought about the times at my country school when all the classes (K - 8) would go outside first thing in the morning, raise the flag up the flag pole, and say the Pledge of Allegiance. There were two teachers and no para's with around 50 children. The older helped with the younger when that was needed. We learned to learn from our older and wiser peers, and then to help teach the younger children when we were the older and hopefully wiser ones. We valued the education we received. We learned well, played hard, and grew up in that two room school house.
At home, I learned that neighbors helped out each other for the big jobs like shelling ear corn, working the livestock, driving the cow herd to and from summer pasture, and doing an injured or sick farmers harvest in one day with 20 or more families working to get that crop in! All of this involved sharing your turn as well as those bountiful noon meals (dinner's) jointly cooked and consumed from heaping, mounded plates.
Church was a social as well as religious event. Singing was a big, big part of the process. I tolerated having to go every Sunday, but did not mind the choir practice on Wednesday nights because we had a good leader. She made us feel good about ourselves by working hard and learning how to sound decent. My Mother served countless meals in the church for all of the funerals. Each family that could, would provide the food and drink, knowing that at some point as time marched onward, the favor would be returned.
Our neighborhood garden club kept one of the historical markers along the railroad right of way (something to do with the Oregon Trail ) decent looking throughout the summer. This involved adults and children pulling weeds and watering. Sweat and toil for no pay.
There was no pay for any of this other than to know you were doing the right thing and making things better. That is what I felt when I grew up on the farm and in the small community where many of my relatives had always lived. Security. Friendship. Struggles. Caring. Learning.
None of this had to do with how much cash a person earned. Sweat. Harvest. Praying. Sharing.
That is what the Flag representing country and community meant to me then and continues to mean to me now.
I am From-the-Heartland.