Editorâs Note: Bill is spending time with family today. We expect him back tomorrow. Below, we share an essay from Thanksgiving 2015 where Bill recounts a special conversation with his mother.
BALTIMORE â Markets have been calm over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Americans â distracted by friends and family â had better things to do than panic.
We celebrated at our family farm in Maryland. In addition to Thanksgiving, we attended a family reunion and a grandchildâs christening.
The three family events focused our attention on family history and how the culture of Southern Maryland has evolved over the last 50 years.
Whether this has any parallels in other parts of the country â or whether this has any significance â we donât know.
But weâll tell you what happened anywayâŚ
Those Were the Days
At the family reunion, we each brought our old photos and tried to identify the people in them. Many were almost 100 years old.
The grainy, brownish photos showed people in romantic poses â at a windblown, empty beach⌠a couple in front of Model A Fords in Bonnie-and-Clyde-style outfits.
One showed an uncle out in Wyoming in 1928 in a cowboy outfit. Another showed a family on the lawn â five blond children along with a father wearing a bowtie and a mother in a long, frilly dress. Nobody smiled. There were workhorses. And tractors. Barns.
âThatâs Uncle EdwardâŚâ said a cousin.
âNo, thatâs Uncle HalâŚâ said another.
âI canât tell⌠It looks like a woman⌠Isnât that Aunt Ellen?â
âLetâs ask Anne.â
Anne is your editorâs mother. At 94, she is the oldest member of the family. We count on her to remember.
âLetâs see,â she said, studying the old photos. âThatâs definitely Uncle Hal. But I donât know who that is on the left.â
If she didnât know, no one would. The poor man was lost. Gone from family history, erased by time and indifference. We hoped he was not from our family at all and that his family remembered him at its family reunions.
âBut look at Frank,â mother continued. âHe was such a handsome man.â
They all looked handsome. In the 1950s, these were people we knew only as old people. But here, on film, they had been captured 20 or 30 years before we were born. They were good-looking. Young. Full of life.
âLife is full of so many surprises,â the matriarch went on. âYou just never know how things will work out. Iâm surprised Iâm still alive.
âSome of these people weâre looking at had such wonderful lives. Others â many of those who seemed to have every advantage â lived in ways that were very sad.
âYou canât predict it. I mean, I feel so lucky in so many ways. And I donât understand why I should have so many good things happen to meâŚ
âThese people were all my friends and relatives. They were all so much smarter than I was. And so much more at ease in the world. I was always very timid, shy⌠painfully shy. But they were so nice. They always tried to include me.
âThose were the days!â
A Different Rhythm
The Chesapeake Bay area was a farming area then. You were either a farmer or a waterman. There wasnât much else to do.
And so the rhythm of life had only two main tempos: farming, which almost always meant tobacco, or the bay, which was mostly oysters.
There were no suburbs. No office workers. No marketers. No baristas. No app developers. And no strangers.
âEveryone knew everyone else,â mother went on. âAnd if you didnât know the person personally, you âknew ofâ the person. You knew what family they were from or what church they went to⌠and whether they were a tobacco person or an oyster person. There just wasnât much more to know.
âBut it was so much fun. In the summer, weâd drive down to Fairhaven [a little community on the bay]. Weâd go swimming. The bay was clean⌠or at least we thought it was. And there was no one at the beach there.
âJules [Motherâs brother] drove down in my fatherâs Packard. It was a convertible. It was such a pleasure to drive down the gravel road to that beautiful beach. Weâd spend the whole day there. And then weâd go to Aunt Lillianâs or Aunt Ellenâs or Aunt Sophieâs for dinner.
âThere were always tomatoes and corn on the cob directly from the garden. And somehow, they found time to bake a cake â from scratch. It was full of butter that they got from their own cows.
âOr if it was the winter, weâd go ice skating on the West River. Weâd go down to Ivy Neck and make a fire on the shore. Weâd play hockey on the ice until the moon was out. And if the moon was bright enough, weâd just keep playing until we were worn out.
âNow, the bay doesnât freeze the way it used to. You have to remember â this was before the war. We had no idea what was going on in the rest of the world. And we didnât care. We only cared about our world. Our world was safe. And we were all happy.
âIt was very different then. It must be hard for you to imagine it. Today, everybody is so worried about what happens on the other side of the world. And everyone is so worried about money.
âI donât know why⌠but we didnât have much money, and we didnât worry about it, either.
âI was a few years younger than everyone else. And theyâre all gone now. I mean, Iâm happy to be alive⌠and to still be with the family. But sometimes, I miss them all so much that I can barely stand it.
âYou see, I loved them⌠as I love you. And I want to see them again. All of them. I knew them. They knew me. We were friends. We were family.
âNow, everyone lives in the suburbs⌠and everyone is a stranger.â
Regards,
Bill
Category: Economics