The America of Yesterday is Gone

The America we knew in our youth is gone, not ever to return.  This is not a negative statement even if it has negative sentiments.  It is a call to the truth, a resounding call to recognize what has happened and perhaps a few things we can do about it.  If you look closely, you may find a resemblance to our distant path where a community was self sufficient, depending little on what was outside its city limits, borders as we referred to them back then.  Each had its blacksmith, its mechanic, it dry goods store which were miniature versions of our modern day Wal Mart.  Some communities had a form of entertainment even if it was a 16 mm projector used in a makeshift building or tent on Saturday nights.  Farmers sold their goods at a street market on Saturdays when most of the surrounding locals came in to buy a weeks grocery list, to visit a little with neighbors they missed the last time and often times, new bargains for services were made with a friendly handshake.  Wasn’t all that bad but that was a long time ago.

Most of that day will remain dormant but we need to revive pieces.  Why?  You may ask.  Look around at your down town area, how many buildings are vacant.  Some moved to better locations but most gave up.  New businesses were not there to take the space so the buildings are decaying.  When a business closes for good, the jobs go with it.  The jobs in your town are getting harder and harder to find, and chances are, you are traveling further and further away to have one.  Some of you have jobs you hate but you need it to feed the family or to buy clothes, to pay the bills that seem to be piling up.  Eighty percent of our population still live in semi-rural or should that be semi-urban areas.  Many still garden and about half raise some species of livestock.   What we are doing is not enough.  Our world in America is changing and we must adapt or find out we have real trouble on the horizon and we will wake up one morning wondering how it happened.

Government wants to take on the role of provider and sad to say many of our citizen want them to do so.  That will multiply our hardship even if now you think it will be a good thing.  This article is not about the cause, it is about getting control of your life in the smaller communities.  Each citizen must become aware of the peril they face if they do nothing now.  Waiting until the disaster is upon you is way too late.  Let me use a parallel that happened in India.  For centuries the Indian farmer planted the same corn species on the same ground during many generations of the same family.  Sure, those of us who know something of farming know they depleted the soil of nutrients but they made a crop and made a living doing so.  One day, in the interest of improving their lives, a smooth talking individual who represented a world class agriculture business, sold them on the idea of a new corn.  This new corn was so improved that the farmer would triple his crop production.  What the smooth talking devil did not tell them is they would need more water for their crop, more, much more fertilizer and very expensive equipment.

The farmer with his need to increase production grabbed the brass ring on this merry-go-round and turned his crop land over to this new magic maker.  Sure enough, the crop was tripled, but now came the pay day.  The crop was sold and from the proceeds came the cost of the seed, the fertilizer and the heavy equipment and of course, the extra water.  The farmer had nothing left, nothing, not even the seed stock he and family had used for generations.  If he planned to plant a crop, he had to borrow seed from the smooth talking salesperson, also the fertilizer, the extra water and the privilege of using the heavy equipment.  This time as collateral he had to hock his land.  Today that farmer is worse off than had he never seen or heard the smooth talking seed salesman.  Today, India is losing 24 farmers a day from suicide because of what one salesman did to change their lives.  Our national leader are our seed salesmen and they are changing our lives and the way we can survive.  Two things we can do.  Defeat those through elections who are destroying America and two, prepare for the bad times now in each of our own communities.

Again it is not the purpose of this article to discuss the cause nor how to vote out the bad officials of Washington, D. C.  So with that in mind, what can a community do now that will lessen the impact of a disastrous economic picture of the future.  First, return to being a community of people who know and like each other.  One that is aware of the person next door, down the street and get to know their families.  Become a community of self-sufficiency, one that is like an island or an isolationistic community.  Why?  Every penny you spend outside your community hurts your friends, the others in your community.  The ideal idea is to provide for each other, you need a repairman, he should come from your community.  You need groceries, buy them from your local or neighbor farmer.  Take notice of how much of your food comes from places far from your own state.  Face it, do you really need pineapple from Hawaii?  Do you need cashews from Latin America or Salmon from Alaska.  I spent most of my life in south Louisiana and caught most of the crawfish I ate, and that was a lot of mudbugs.  Now I go to the store and find them frozen from China, and if I buy them, most of the money goes to China.  Is that what we are about, spending our money made here so we can send it to them there?  No I do not think so.

So many other things you can do.  Look at downsizing your house, your car, and getting rid of the many toys you own.  If you become a community again, your leisure time is almost without cost if you really work at it.  Remember all the community going down to the ball park to watch a made up game between neighboring cities.  Gosh! Those games were more fun than the ones you zombie-nize over watching TV.   Take the family fishing down by the creek, set up a cook pot and eat what your son or daughter catch, invite neighbors to share or to come along.  Have a good day with the family, get to know one another.  You may find you have been missing your son’s growing up to manhood without you or your daughter beginning to put a nice figure together.  Your wife or husband just may be more fun than you knew since long ago you fell in love with him/her.  Start a garden and sell to those who can afford what you grow, but do not have interest in gardening.  Learn about Aquaponics, and feed a community.  Buy from one another those things you cannot grow.  Get away from cows milk and go to goat milk.  Eat meats from local sources and get away from large outlets with their doctored foods, canned, boxed, bagged, or fresh, chances are it carries some diseases and/or chemicals that are just as bad for your health.

Get your medical people involved with your community as members rather than as providers.  Insist they get abreast of the latest alternative medicines so you do not have to take the giant pharmaceutical companies’ poisons.  Make sure the hospital is a community owned hospital, not owned by the doctors.  When doctors incorporate their bottom line is more important to them than your bottom or other parts of your body.  Help a neighbor to become a supplier of supplements at reasonable cost to each of you.  Learn to barter again.  Start a local bakery and perhaps a local slaughter house, or food processing plant that takes what you grow and puts it in preserving form for you to take back home.  Start enterprises that keep labor, products and money within your neighborhood.  Market your skills and knowledge outside of the neighborhood so you can bring other people’s money into your community.  All jobs should be filled by people who live within your borders, no exception.

I know of several communities who have policemen who drive a unit home each night, where?  To their own community, not in their employer’s community.  How crazy is that?  I would be willing to bet you have teachers who live elsewhere, community employees, garbage employees and so on, all working for you but living in other locations.  Hire your own people whenever possible.  If you start these new businesses I have suggested, start them with people who already live there, neighbors of yours.

Two other points to consider for your new developing or changing to the good community.  Try in every way possible to gain back your school once the pride of the community.  It pulls a community together even if it is just because of a sport.  You become one because the community supports the same teams, the same kids your kids.  The second is more touchy for some of you but families attending church together are healthier than those who do not.  You want your community to become a church going community.  I am not saying to the same church, but each family deciding that Sunday is special for this community and what we do as a community on Sunday is attend church—your own church by choice.  Neighbors who love each other, who care about the welfare of each other will not mind you being of a different faith when all of you are attending church as a community.  Have events that join each to share as a community.

America of Yesterday is Gone but you can recapture the best of it while making your own community the best it can be.  I have but touched the tip of the iceberg, what do you think is best for your home town, or the one in which you have chosen to live, raise a family?  Stay individually isolated from your neighbors and you will surely suffer together, or become acquainted and just maybe you can meet the hard times that are coming and not realize they are here.