In the aftermath of the savage murder of innocents by Hamas in Israel, I’ve been thinking a lot about Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. Hobbes wrote:
“In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death…”
And that made me think of my life and the world in which I grew up.
I know my childhood wasn’t perfect, in reality, not many are. Most of our early years are missing something we desired - but all in all, I had it pretty damn good. We didn’t have the material things a lot of people had but I think not having everything made the small things far more valuable to us. My nuclear and extended families took pleasure in what we had; we didn’t despair over what we didn’t.
The adult world is tough. It is tough for us now, but it was tough for our parents and grandparents as well.
Relationships aren’t easy, no matter how much we idealize the “Leave it to Beaver” imagery and ethos, that was a scripted show featuring people who didn’t spend every waking moment in a real family, with real personalities and real problems.
I grew up in a little three-room house in rural north Mississippi, that was roughly 1100 square feet. We had open brick propane heaters fed from a huge tank outside. We had our own water well and septic tank and three channels on a black and white TV. It wasn’t really insulated, and the single pane windows leaked cold air in the winter.
Sounds a little rough, doesn’t it?
That was the bad part – but there is an amazingly wonderful part.
We were close. My mom and dad were my best friends. My mom and dad woke me up, and we always had our breakfast and dinner together. I still remember how great those heaters felt on cold days. The house was too drafty for us to be in danger of dying of carbon monoxide positioning. The water was from a pristine aquifer, clean and pure. Instead of being a slave to a screen, I read everything I could get my hands on and created my own fantasy worlds in my mind. Rather than being a casual observer, I created an participated in a rich imagination – which only made me hungry for more knowledge to build even more complex worlds to explore. I think those experiences meant so much more to me because I had to work to create them. I had skin in the game. It wasn’t just entertainment, it was far more powerful than that.
The single pane windows frosted over on cold winter nights as the humid air inside met the freezing surface of the class forming the most amazing Mandelbrot-like designs of ice crystals. We lived in the county, away from streetlights and as I lay in my bed under layers of blankets warmed by an electric blanket, through those windows I was witness to a kaleidoscope vision of the pitch-black night sky peppered with blinking stars. I can remember wondering what was out there and feeling a magnetic pull to find out.
My summers were filled with unencumbered wandering of the hills, fields, forests, and creeks of the land surrounding our house and my grandparents’ place. Every neighbor knew my parents and me, so they never minded me exploring all over the adjacent lands for days at a time. Shoeless summers toughened the soles of my feet so that even walking on gravel was not an issue. Hunting in the fall and winter, fishing, and gigging frogs in the summer, I had not a care in the world. I was free range before free range was cool.
It wasn’t that my parents didn’t care for my safety, they raised me to be responsible and cautious, what they didn’t teach me about poisonous plants and dangerous critters, I learned from my dad’s WWII Army survival manual and a Boy Scout handbook my cousin gave me. From that, I gained an incredible sense of self, a knowledge of my limits (and how to expand them) and experienced an amazing degree of trust from my mom and dad.
Before I was allowed to carry a .22 rifle or a .410 single shot shotgun with me at around age ten or so, I carried a small hatchet and hunting knife combo I got for my sixth birthday. I was Daniel Boone and Tarzan all rolled into one. As a matter of fact, my most prized possession was a real coonskin cap my mom bought me when we went to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and the Great Smoky Mountains one summer on a camping vacation. Maybe it was because my dad looked like Fess Parker (who portrayed Mr. Boone on TV), for several years running, I wished for a flintlock rifle like the one old Dan’l carried in the Disney TV show.
The world in which my own children grew up was radically different from my life as a child, and the world their children will navigate will be even more so. Even though we tried, we couldn’t give our kids the world we had because the world - and our choices - wouldn’t let us.
There was a time in my life I considered my life as a child something to escape, but today I would give anything to be back in that house, with my mom and dad.
I mourn the world we have lost – because what has replaced it is a poor, nasty, brutish, world reminiscent of Thomas Hobbes’ imagination.
Your childhood description brought fond memories of my childhood, although I grew up in Wisconsin near Lake Michigan. Our family did not have much either, but I had everything I needed and started working at a part-time job at 15 and learned how to save my money to buy things and appreciated them so much more, Thanks for the memories!
Michael, being of about the same age as you (I'm 66), I too long for the by-gone era. I was raised in a small town, the birthplace of the Remington Rifle with factory still in town. The town as I have described it was The Mayberry of the East! Like you I too was raised in a family that did not have much beyond siblings - which were 6 of us plus mom and dad. All meals eaten together, and Sunday meal in the dining room. We too were in about 1200 sq ft house - 2 story with stone basement and the old octopus furnace. The house needed a lot of remodeling, which dad did with the help of us kids and some of his friends. But this was also how many of our friends of the time lived too.
I was longing so much for that time that I wrote 2 books (published) about it. The first is: Ilion My Childhood, My Memories - Growing up in a By-Gone Era, and the second book is: My Rosemount MN. Memories - Teenage Years in My Shoes (1971-1976). Both books not only contain my stories but have many colorful pictures of that time.
Like you, I would move back to that time in a heartbeat. However, all we can do is move ahead, but keep the stories and the memories alive for as long as we can.