A staple of American self-esteem is that we Yanks are brave, free, independent, self-reliant, ruggedly individual, and disinclined to accept abuse from anyone. This was largely true in, say, 1930. People lived, a great many of them, on farms where they planted their own crops, built their own barns, repaired their own trucks, and protected their own property. They were literate but not educated, knew little of the world beyond the local, but in their homes and fields they were supreme.
If they wanted to swim buck nekkid in the creek, they swam buck nekkid. If whistle pigs were eating the corn, the family teenager would get his rifle and solve the problem. Government left them alone.
Even in the early Sixties, in rural King George County, Virginia, where I grew up, it was still mostly true. The country people built their own boats to crab in the Potomac, converted junked car engines to marine, made their own crab pots, planted corn and such, and hunted deer. There was very little contact with the government. One state trooper was the law, and he had precious little to do.
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2 comments:
Those good ole days are way gone. The farms would be shut down for improper zoning and land use, the protection of your property is a violation of gun laws, the naked thing is not going to fly (I can see indecent exposure charges), building the boats is going to lead to a DNR fine along with the crabbing and deer hunting and Andy the sheriff had better wake up with gang members ready to shoot him over a traffic ticket, etc, etc. Yeah the good ole days are gone, we are now in the Nightmare of the liberal's America.
Wow...I went to 11TH grade in King George High School. Its gotten a lot more city-fied since those days, especially with Dahlgren Naval Station.
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