Ruralhood Parents

Young parents of the Ruralhood. Beautiful parents. Beautiful people.

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Rural Loneliness

The Welcomed Voice of Neighbors and Friends

"The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.” Pearl S. Buck

Causes of loneliness in the Ruralhood (for me growing up) were:

• Party lines
• Distance
• Lack of new experiences
• No public transportation

As child I didn’t feel lonely, but as a teenager I felt lonely –many times. Adults went to the local stores and post offices to chat or they would stop by a neighbor’s home to talk. I remember seeing farmers on their tractors in the middle of a field stop just to talk to another neighbor driving by.

Siblings were a good source of company for children.

Some of the women in my community did not know how to drive. I felt very proud that my mother could and did drive. Her mother did not drive and depended on others to get her where she needed to be. I don’t remember her ever having a problem getting anywhere. However, the lack of the driving skill limited women on where and when they shopped and visited. This also limited their independence.

Church and school activities helped with rural socialization and perhaps lessened the feeling of loneliness. Personally, I looked forward to attending school. I loved learning, but what I most desired was to see my friends. People need interaction with other people. Rural people too.

The party line (definition in sidebar) in our home was a big inconvenience for a teenage girl. Often times, I felt I had very important information to contribute to and extract from-my friends. However, the phone line always seemed to be busy with four or five families sharing it. The people that seemed to be using it the most were the women. I was very careful and quiet in testing the line to see if it was free often covering the mouthpiece with my hand. Many times I couldn’t resist in listening to the matrons of my community rag on another. But before I whined about the injustice, I would remember that my paternal grandparents could not get a telephone in the area in which they where they lived- at all.

A dangerous aspect of seclusion in any culture is domestic violence. It happened in my community. Rural people tried to keep their own secrets, but, children will tell. It wasn’t until I volunteered with a domestic violence organization that I realized how the rural location (even today) is a prime location for violence against women.

Rural Significance
Today’s rural person has many opportunities to seek companionship through land lines (no party lines please), cell phones, texting, vehicles, email and social networking. What might be suffering is the one-on-one interaction of my childhood between people face-to-face. My question might be: Are we less lonely today with so much technology at our fingertips? Or have we moved loneliness to another level?

Rural Entertainment

If today’s child was told that his or her day included going to a freshly plowed field to hunt for arrowheads that child might be confused. In my Ruralhood life, walking a plowed field was a familiar occurrence-one that I took for granted and now cherish as a memory.

Most of the time my dad would go on his own, but other times he would load up his family and we would walk the fields in search of arrowheads. Often called Missouri Jones (as in Indiana) by his cousin, my dad was very interested in relics of the past. He loved exploring caves in our area, climbing the cliffs and hiking along the rivers. It was an interesting childhood living with my dad.

On one such field outing, we went to a family member’s plowed field. Once we had climbed out of the car and walked to the field, I would watch my dad. He seemed to have a method. He would walk up and down the rows, eyes rarely leaving the ground. My eagle-eyed mother (it seemed) usually found the first treasure of the day.

During those days of discovery, I learned respect for the earth, for those precious artifacts and family. I also learned that what seems disturbed and tossed about is actually an opportunity to grow.

There are times when recollection is quite vivid because of an emotion or experience that has occurred, thereby, making an imprint on the memory. One of those times happened on one of those field days. I don’t remember there being many rules in the open fields that were close to family farms, but I am sure I was told to not wander. Those seem like familiar words. That day, I decided to walk in the opposite direction of my parents. I looked at them and they weren’t watching so I walked away. I wanted to see how far I could travel in that seemingly endless field. So I started off on my own and was hoping I would find something very special to show my folks upon return.

Photo: I found this arrowhead nearly 30 years ago on the road outside my house when it was a gravel road.

I walked for what seemed like hours on my skinny little legs until I got to the end where the turned earth met the untouched grass then brush. The earth smelled crisp and bit my nose with its musty aroma. It was a wonderful aroma–raw disturbed earth. When I finally got to the end of my adventure, I felt triumphant- proud of myself. I turned to look at my family and they appeared far away and tiny against the dark earth and cloudless blue sky. At that moment I felt little and vulnerable. Then something in the thick brush stirred. This was my moment of truth. I was out of the protection area of my parents. There would be no saving me from the bear that I could hear coming and I was certain wanted to eat my little child body .

I sprinted away from that noise with more speed than a small child should possess. I tripped only once on one of the many clots of earth that I was trying to hop over to be with my family again.

I don’t know if they ever noticed that I had wandered off. More than likely, they had and wanted to give me a chance to correct my own behavior.

Of course, there was no bear in the bush.

Rural Significance
Entertainment changes as fast as the seasons of the earth. What my grandparents did as children for play (if they indeed had time for playing) was certainly not what I did for entertainment. My father tells that his imagination was his toy. My mother loved playing sports. My children’s play was linked to technology that I didn’t have as a child. And of course there were toys. Toys for early generations were made from every day things. Most of my toys weren’t homemade, but purchased. My children also had purchased toys and games.

What was the significance of entertainment in my Ruralhood? The most noteworthy thing about it was family togetherness with simple activities that grew forever memories.

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Gathering Places

Gathering places were incredibly important to rural areas when I was a child growing up. Whether it was in the smaller country towns or in the larger towns, places to congregate was a part of the Ruralhood. Gathering places meant different things to me at different ages.

When I was a small child my favorite gathering place was my maternal grandmother's farm because there were many cousins to play with every Sunday after church. I don't remember one Sunday when there wasn't family gathered at my grandma's home.

The country stores in my small town were also places to gather. (The photo is one of the stores as it stands today.) Since I lived across the gravel road and a state highway from both stores, I could watch the people of the community come and go. People would gather in those stores or outside to talk about prices, who got married, who died, and who ran off with the milkman. It was an exciting place to visit. It was an exciting place to watch. It was an exciting place to live.

The river was also a gathering place for adults as well as children. It was a great way to cool down in the summer and probably a good way to tire out the energetic children. It was also a great way to gather with family and neighbors to swim or wade. An occasional farm dog also helped himself to the swimming holes. Swimming holes, however, were dangerous. On occasion people were killed by the undertow of the river's current.

Churches were a normal gathering place not only for the typical church service, but also for revivals, church socials and singing Sundays. I have often said that I have been inside nearly every church in our county because of my grandma. Every time a church door opened she seemed to be there in attendance- and not only at her own church. And she couldn't drive. She was a faithful example to me.
In my small country town was a community building. People gathered there for town meetings, family reunions, pie suppers and clubs. The public restroom was an outhouse- out back.

The school in my rural community was also a place where the community could gather to watch their children play sports, attend carnivals (photo is of me and my co-candidate in the carnival- first grade) or see each other at parent/teacher conferences. Children (mostly) liked going to school to learn, make friends and to have social activities apart from their family.

Significance

The significance of gathering places to this rural child was the sense of familiarity. All children need and want familiar places where faces mean security and where love abounds. My rural culture fed me my pride with knowing the people of my community where everyone did know your name or at least to what family you belonged.

My First Home

I was born in 1956 in a small rural town about 18 miles from my grandparents farm. I lived on that farm with my parents who were 17 and 20. They were young and had very little money of their own. After I was born, we lived with my maternal grandparents for six months on their dairy farm. This was my first rural home.

There is a very interesting nightmarish event that happened right after I was born. Personally, I don't know how my family lived through it.

My grandparent's home was an old farmhouse (see photo first on the left). As a newborn, I slept between my young parents in their bed at night. At least I did that night. I imagine my mother was very nervous about taking care of me and wanted me nearby. I was her first child after all and only a few weeks old. One night, after my parents went to sleep, my mother tells, I awoke them -screaming. When someone turned on the light they saw me lying in the middle of their bed with blood all over my head and hand. My mother was panicked and tells that she pulled the cover over her head crying hysterically. I am sure she loss all thought processes right then. My grandparents woke up as well.

{At some point they decided it must have been a rat who was interested in the milky smell on my hands and started chewing my flesh.}

You can imagine what a mess that was - a tiny hand and large rat teeth. It could have been my face. They bundled me up and took me to the doctor in that same town where I had been born. The doctor told the group of worried adults that he could not give me a rabies shot. I was too young. So they took me back home, watched me and waited for whatever time was needed.

Back at the farm, my grandfather searched his home until he found the rat in the attic with a nest full of items that had gone missing. Of course he killed the rat, but in the meantime he was so upset that he started having chest pains. My grandfather had a heart attack six months later. We had already moved out of their home and to Joliet, Illinois where my father had found found work.

I always knew that my grandparents "doted" on me. My grandmother use to tell me how she and grandpa would sit and hold me for hours. My mother tells how grandma would not let her take care of me until she reminded grandma one day that I was her (my mom's) baby. I never saw them raise their voices at each other- ever. So, this seems funny to me. Two wonderful quiet women discussing who should take care of me.

My rural identity began on that farm where my grandparents worked the land, where my mother grew up with four sisters and three brothers and became the woman who raised me.


Commentary on the Significance of Home

I have always believed that because of that particular time, when we lived with my grandparents, a bond was created. People from my Ruralhood loved deeply. Parents opened their homes to their grown children if they needed a place to live. Households sometimes held more than one generation. Later, after my grandfather died, my uncle and his family lived with my grandmother until she died in her 80's. She helped raise her grandchildren. He and his wife helped with the farm.

As a child, I remember that family was very meaningful in my Ruralhood.

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The Rural Significance- Introduction

The rolling hills. Dense woods. Farms. Harsh winters. Humid summers. Creeks. Rivers. Caves. Cliffs. Loving people. Nosey people. This was, in part, my experience of growing up in the Ruralhood in Missouri. Rural living in Missouri began for me in 1956. It meant you were part of a community and you got the best of everything the simple life could offer, except perhaps, opportunity because you lived so far from a city.

When I had to think of a thesis question for my graduate course, I thought about my rural culture. I thought about the benefits and the disadvantages of growing up rural. This brought to mind how rural roots seem to invoke negative emotions in some people. In fact "rural" seems to be something that we might just be encouraging our youth to flee. As teenage students we were told that the only way to escape such an injurious world of farming and poverty was education. No one ever told us, as students, that we could seek education and perhaps return to help our community home and be proud of our rural culture.

No matter where you grew up, that culture is worth exploring. Take at a look at your childhood home. It was a part of your life's recipe that made you the person you are today.

And so it is that the life of a rural child is filled with lessons learned and a life worth experiencing.

Although, I didn’t finish that graduate program, I am still interested in my rural roots. I want to share my thoughts on the mindsets and prejudices of rural living. And I have the desire to tell my experiences - the good and unsavory - of growing up in the Ruralhood.

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