Historian Victor Davis Hanson, writing op-ed for The Los Angeles Times, looks at our growing divide between rural and urban folks, with particular emphasis on the declining influence of the rural. With a historian's long perspective, he sees in the rising dominance of the urban nothing good.
Like Hanson, the DrsC identify as "rural." Over the past several days we have been doing repairs on a shed we constructed in "10 easy steps" some 28 years ago. Over the years we have reroofed that shed, hung a new door, given it metal siding, painted it several times, and installed a much sturdier floor. Had we not done all this it would now be a tumbled down derelict.
We ripped off trim that the weather had basically destroyed, visited the lumber yard for replacement materials, got out the table saw and cut replacement pieces, drilled and screwed these in place, caulked and painted, and got it all done before the rain started.
Written that way it sounds like something a farmer would get done before lunch. In fact it took a couple of out-of-shape seniors several days interspersed with considerable rest and whining about hands sore with arthritis.
Staying in touch with what is required to keep things functional is part of rural reality. As Hanson notes, in urban reality, not so much. Our lives have bridged the two, as does his. Our careers were the essence of urban - as professors - while we chose to live in the country on acreage.
I grew up in a rural setting, on our commercial orange grove adjacent to my uncle's turkey raising operation. I made the money for my first car trapping gophers out of the orange orchard - they kill the trees by eating the bark so we killed them first, whenever we could.
Tractors and the like were part of the fabric of that life. The first powered vehicle I ever drove was an old Ford tractor, long before I was old enough to drive a car. Fun times, good roots.
