Reverence For the Past, or The Wonders of an Attic

Sometimes it’s a struggle to understand why everyone doesn’t have a reverence for the past. How could it be? Things weren’t always as easy as they are now, at least that’s the way I look at it. Knowing what life was like way back when helps us understand our own times better.

My family was a study in contrasts in the same small town in the Heartland. One side had come from Tennessee coal mines and had struggled during the depression of the 1930s. From 1932 until the end of their lives they were staunch Democrats, but couldn’t really tell anyone why, except to say that Hoover had made their little girls starve. They worshipped FDR. They looked at the world cynically and with much pessimism. After war work brought them out of their depression gloom and into the prosperity of the 1950s, they remained self-centered, with a bitter edge. They didn’t like to talk about the tough times they had survived, and they didn’t want to recall it. There was nothing old in their house. Every couple of years there was new furniture and a new decorating scheme. The latest appliances always gleamed white in the kitchen and in the basement laundry area. There were new cars on a regular basis. They enjoyed an active social life at the lodge and the lodge auxiliary. They dressed well. They traveled occasionally and always had season tickets to the local high school basketball games. I was one of their twelve grandkids, but never felt welcome there.