2007 Soap Box Archives

Long Ago and Not So Far Away

In a recent interview I was doing, the subject came up about the social metamorphosis our nation has been through in the last half-century or so. The loss of closeness among old friends, the non-stop lives most of us live
and the lack of family unity.

Thinking and talking about such things started me remembering some of the things I feel have given my life stability. Simple things that leave indelible impressions on a young mind and gives you a long lasting sense of well being.

For instance, it used to be that on a summer evening if you walked up and down the streets of America about twilight you'd find families sitting in rocking chairs and swings, taking in the evening air, talking, laughing and
just being a family.

The evening meal, which we called supper, was always a special time when you all sat down at the table with a kind of, The hunter is home from the hill sort of feeling, a sense of belonging to someone and something, sharing your life with people you knew would lay down their lives to protect you and make sure you had a chance in life.

In my family and the society I grew up in hunting was a right of passage and the boys got their own guns at around twelve years old after receiving meticulous training on gun safety.

Almost every boy toted a pocket knife at all times, even taking it to school but you'd never dream of taking it out of your pocket in anger no matter how many playground fist fights you may have gotten into. It was a tool, for opening feed sacks and trimming fishing lines and such.

We treated our elders with respect, had prayer in school, recited the Pledge of Allegiance, carried in firewood, helped tend livestock and gardens and were eligible for corporal punishment at the hands of a teacher or if you
stepped too far over the line, the principal.

With the exception of a few gas stations the businesses were all closed on Sunday but on Saturday the streets of small rural towns were jam packed with people doing their weekly grocery shopping, the ladies gathered in knots on the street, the men congregated in the barber shop and the kids in the theater taking in the weekly black and white western movie.

Rural people for the most part slept with their doors unlocked and families took turns having the preacher and his wife over for Sunday dinner.

A handshake was a contract. Everybody worked for a living and a man who wouldn't support his family was not considered to be worth much at all.

High school football games were important events and graduation was a special time with the last few weeks of school a kind of bittersweet season of accomplishment and loss, time to cut the apron strings.

When I look back I feel a sense of loss when life was simpler and there was such a feeling of community and family, of helping out and really caring.

They say you can never go home again because home just isn¹t there anymore.

Pray for our troops

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

October 22, 2007