Dr. Bruce Smith ([url="https://inkwellhearthandplow.blogspot.com/"]Inkwell, Hearth and Plow[/url]) is a retired professor of history and a lifelong observer of politics and world events. He holds degrees from Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame. In addition to writing, he works as a caretaker and handyman. His non-fiction book The War Comes to Plum Street, about daily life in the 1930s and during World War II, may be ordered from [url="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=93188"]Indiana University Press[/url].
How good it would be to have a deliberate day. It could be any day of a random week, or it could be a holiday. It would be better to plan it ahead a bit so as to enjoy its approach, anticipate its imminent arrival. We could savor it even before it arrives.
Herewith are some random observations from the Heartland along the old National Road west of Indianapolis.
Several Walmart stores in this area have undergone makeovers. The main change has been to rearrange most everything in the stores. Nothing is where it used to be.
A very close friend of mine is a mental health therapist. I’m an historian. We’re both in the same business, actually, the business of understanding human behavior. She works with present day behavior and past experiences. I work with present day behavior and past experiences. We have lots to talk about.
Over many years of teaching and advising students, I often used less elegant language to give them this adage: One of the most important choices we make in our lives is who to listen to.
As kids we don’t have much choice. We heard often that we should mind our mothers and listen to our elders. It’s a good concept, but not without its dangers. As kids we really are in no position to know better, and the younger we are the less likely we are to be able to choose wisely. We have no choice, really, at a young age but to hope that we get the guidance we need from the right people.
Every year the approach of November 10 still gives me chills and a deep sense of horror. It was on that date in 1975 that the sturdy Edmund Fitzgerald disappeared beneath the always icy waters of mighty Lake Superior, the victim of a deep low pressure system that developed in the southern plains before racing up across Lake Superior into Ontario and up to James Bay.
It has been a quiet week along the old National Road here in the Heartland. It was the peak of color for this year. It recently looked like it might be a rather unremarkable leaf season, but after the sugar maples went to yellow-orange-red the ridge lines came alive with the bright yellows of the tulip poplars and hickories. By Wednesday there were more turning trees than green ones. On Friday morning only the pines and junipers and cedars were still all green.
It must have been around my twelfth year when I discovered the idea of the Renaissance man. From the Britannica: “…an ideal that developed in Renaissance Italy from the notion expressed by one of its most-accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), that “a man can do all things if he will.” The ideal embodied the basic tenets of Renaissance humanism, which considered man the centre of the universe, limitless in his capacities for development, and led to the notion that men should try to embrace all knowledge and develop their own capacities as fully as possible.”
I think the COVID epidemic changed most everything. We’re still trying to sort that one out. Because people were supposed to avoid contact with others, many put off regular healthcare checkups and treatment. Now we’re trying to catch up, making us even more aware of the changes in many of our countries. This new awareness means we see things better than we did before.
October 16 in the Heartland
The bloom appeared just yesterday and I had to take a photo. All around were the beginnings of gold and carmine in the trees, the white pines holding firm with their evergreen needles. There in the rose bed was what has to be the last gallant effort of the horticultural year. The heavy buds opened with no bugs to bother them and stayed open all night, hoping for enough sun in the morning to attract the notice of the honeybees otherwise gleaning from the last of the calico asters. This morning they’re perfection itself, with old fashioned sweetness in their scent.
We had nearly an inch of rain on Thursday, then the first Fall-like day arrived in my part of the Heartland on Saturday. A temperature in the 40s announced it when I woke up Saturday morning and decided it had been a mistake to leave the windows open overnight. T-shirts and flannel layers topped with a fleece suddenly became very much in vogue around here.
Our small moment of luxury doesn’t have to be remarkable and it doesn’t have to last long. Like power napping, even a short pause will help. Ten minutes has transformed my day many times.
When we can’t actually stop or sit down, even a slight breeze helps. Maybe a cloud slipped in front of the hot sun for a little spell. If we’re sweaty and in the middle of a job, take the time to notice and be grateful.
There are many songs that take us back to a different time. The best of these songs take us back to happy days that we can remember with positive emotions.
This song, written by Bernie Wayne and Lee Morris in 1950, charted well for a young Tony Bennett in 1951, reaching the top 20. As is often the case, other artists picked up the song and recorded it, but the interpretation that everyone remembered was the 1963 version, recorded by Bobby Vinton on the Epic label.
Historical artifacts are often the product of circumstance and fate. The further we go back in history, the rarer are historical artifacts. Stuff deteriorates, rusts, rots, burns, fades, gets buried, and becomes food for bugs. Go back to the medieval period and documents are fairly abundant but incomplete and sketchy. Go back to the ancient period and artifacts are much rarer, much less complete, and very sketchy.
Questions in the classroom are always best in the moment they arise, and waffles are best when they’re right out of the waffle iron. Likewise, baked potatoes are never better than when they first come out of the oven and bacon is best when it can be enjoyed with a little smoke from the campfire. And so it is with late summer flowers. We can enjoy the photos later when it’s cold and they’re long faded, but today we can mix the very air with their fragrance and contrast their color with the deep greens and golds of September. Today, before they are a pleasant memory, they are real and in the present moment.
This past Friday I went to a small town in the Heartland you’ve never heard of. It’s an immaculate little burg with manicured lawns and well-maintained homes. There is no stoplight, and not even a flasher light. There’s a main drag about two blocks long with a stop sign on each end. One end is at a county road and the other is at a town street that connects to another county road. There is a volunteer fire department, a bank branch, a masonic lodge, a hardware store, and a small post office.
Author’s note: Recently friends and I have been working together to welcome an exchange student from Europe to the Indiana University Campus for a semester abroad. Many memories flooded back into my mind as we worked to offer an experience that would be as remarkable as mine was.
Oh, they were heady days. We still had troops in Vietnam, but President Nixon had pulled troop numbers way down. The drawings for the first lottery draft had come and gone and I had a very high number. I had finished high school that year with improving grades, but a very good thing had happened when I finally had a history class during my senior year that was taught well. It was a first for me. I wanted to know more.
Whether microscopic or all-encompassing, mute constituencies make the best causes and the best weapons. Perhaps you’ve heard of some of them. There are the whales, there’s the snail darter, there are the homeless, there are the stray dogs, there are the stray cats. There are the monarch butterflies, there are microorganisms in the soil, there are various pests, and there are the anonymous starving masses of the world. There are people whose slavery ended 150 years ago.
The loss of trust can happen in our daily lives and in the wider world around us. Sometimes we act foolishly or impulsively or unthinkingly, calling into question the trust others have placed in us to act responsibly and be dependable.
Any loss of trust affects personal relationships. We see this in addictive behaviors. When people become addicted to alcohol or drugs, they sometimes behave impulsively or break the law to feed the addiction. They are driven to do things they normally wouldn’t consider.
How could anyone drive through our beautiful and bountiful Heartland and think it was boring? There’s no telling what you might find around the next turn or over the rise coming up. If you’re lucky when driving west along the old National Road west of Indianapolis, and in the surrounding countryside, you just might come across a fine mixed gaggle of geese.
This is a topic about which people have very strong feelings. After the past week of sweltering heat across the Corn Belt, I just couldn’t resist.
So first of all, if you’re still reading after seeing the headline, please accept my gratitude. I’d like to meet all three of you sometime for a cup of coffee in an air-conditioned diner!