Rural status

When Once Destroyed is a book I've written about what was lost and how it was lost in the forced destruction of a north central Indiana town in the middle of the 20th century.  As I researched and interviewed, and in the process of thinking about what I had to say, I discovered things that had not occurred to me.

Among the things lost, I noticed, was the existence of a rural, small-town, regard for persons diminished in the mass-culture portrayal of who we are, now, in 21st century America.

For 42 years, my sister, Linda, taught third grade in the very same Grant County, Indiana school district in which we were raised. Her husband John was a Point Isabel mechanic and captain of the Green Township volunteer fire department. My great Aunt Vernie was a farmer, an owner-operator of both a primitive Mississinewa River resort and a Somerset restaurant, and she was the founder and leader of the school cafeteria staff, for which she was perhaps best known. 

All of them lived modestly in a place where their contributions were highly valued by the people among whom they lived. Their generous spirit enlivened their communities. What happens to their spirit when their place disappears? There is no room for that now.

Aunt Vernie and Pop, my grandfather. Photo from home movie courtesy of Tom Snyder.