An end to the wandering cow
by John Long
If you’re like me, you’re finding the endless chatter about sequestration and transportation funding tedious. So let’s set it all aside for a bit and mark the centennial of a rancorous debate in Salem. For our great-grandparents, the issue of the day was not gun control, but cow control.
Long, a Roanoke Times columnist, is director of the Salem Museum.
February 28, 2013 - 10:59 AM
Good, thought-provoking piece, even “back-talking” at times. My paternal grandparents were self-sufficient farmers, and my grandfather could pay people to help out, even in the Great Depression. The concept “store-bought” was virtually unheard of, as they and most of their neighbors made their own clothes, furniture, etc. Unless someone could do glasswork, however, dishes were bought.
If my grandparents and great-grandparents were alive today, they could tell you when stealing horses and cattle were capital offenses i.e. death by hanging, and a veterinarian had a high social status. Schoolkids, with all the automobiles around you, can you guess why?
#1 Ah yes, the days of Jim Crow, polio, gays being forced to stay closeted and enter into sham marriages, corporations polluting the environment at will, and women being subservient to men. Good times, good times.
Stephen K….when I think about the “good times”, I don’t like to be hopeless: I think about rural areas and forests, and what sometimes happened. For instance, I recall being told by a relative about “two old maids” who shared a house in the community, and had been living together for 40 years. Not sisters or cousins. An interesting arrangement, hmm? Maybe? Right under people’s noses? Just as there were some men who lived together in cabins in the forests surrounding my ancestors’ community…not relations…and no need to move in together because they didn’t have any other place to live. Just men who were left alone in the greenwood. And, I’m not writing about Alec and Maurice in that novel by E.M. Forster,
One of my great-grandmothers was a doctor, and the spring water was safe to drink, at least on my grandparents farm, because I grew up drinking it and I guess I’m all right. Polio was a rare thing in my ancestors’ community, in the forties and fifties, there being only 3 cases. Three of many exceptions.
The things you mentioned were real, and I don’t doubt they were handicapping forces for many (perhaps in the cities?), but I believe there were always exceptional people who managed to get around them somehow. And, I believe some of those exceptional people did what they were meant to do in life because they lived in the countryside, forests, or mountains…and those places hide and protect many things, believe me!
Dear Ms. Watkins….I find your #3 superb. Forgive me, but as I read, kept seeing/hearing Walt Whitman. Thank you. Please don’t be a stranger.
#2 Steven and #3 Angela might not be so far apart. Where I see potential common ground is in the respect for those who lived and prospered in times that were more simple. Yes they were more simple in some ways, but for those who fell on the wrong side of things, times were also much more difficult. Is the purity of the past false if predicated on marginalization by prejudice? Angela is saying she enjoyed drinking the spring water on her grandparents’ farm. But Love Canal used to be a nice neighborhood too until people started getting cancer and birth defects from the toxic chemicals that were dumped there.
–
#1 Angela it’s interesting you say the veterinarian had high social standing. Then how come auto mechanics do not enjoy that standing today? One reason vets had higher standing is because there weren’t nearly as many college-educated people then. Teachers had higher standing then too. I believe veterinary medicine is still a highly regarded profession. Another thing that was different in the 40s and 50s was the highest marginal income tax rate. That might have helped to equalize the vet and the captain of industry in terms of social standing.
…Name Withheld… re: veterinarians/more college-educated people today/ better or worse social standing:
One saying comes to my mind: A gentleman never looks under the hood of his car. That’s what the mechanic does.
A rich person may ride horses, and have herds of cattle, but hires someone( a veterinarian) to cure them when they get sick.
And, oh, how people want to be the gentleman or the rich person!
My guess is that social class divisions and hire/hired relationships have a lot to do with occupations and their standing in society (as well as cultural shifts.) It is true, however, that people of wealth/high social standing might restore and tinker with cars, and even put one or two on the track, but only as a hobby.
The late Paul Fussell, of the University of Pennsylvania, wrote of these things in his Class: a Guide Through the American Status System.
…But not to be gainsaid…Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute, and author of Human Achievement and Real Education, (among others) has advocated that college students, especially those at “elite” colleges and universities should study the not-so-”working class” engineering and veterinary science, as they not only offer good pay, but intellectual challenges and opportunities for societal benefits. Mr. Murray got his degrees from Harvard and M.I.T.
Good, interesting points, especially the one about the income tax rate.
Would all the libraries and cyberspace hold this debate about work and class?