35. The Television ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

The television brought people face to face with a world far larger than Pine Village: a world that had hidden in the shadows of the imagination as farmers of the late 1940s and 1950s had listened to their radios and a world that, despite being described in detail in the dailies and the fat newspapers on Sundays, remained aloof. In the beginning, television’s limited news coverage imitated the highly crafted newsreels viewed in movie theaters, but, gradually, that coverage became better adjusted to breaking news with its raw qualities and lack of polished shapes. With televisions in more and more of the homes in town and on farms, the world no longer lay in newsprint on the kitchen table. There was the world! There, on the television!

Granted, the news occupied only fifteen minutes on weekday evenings. Joe and Ida’s Zenith TV brought in two of the three networks clearly enough. Although the networks already had a commercial stake in ensuring high numbers of viewers, the journalists who read the news, often taken from wire stories, strictly avoided opinion and, in perfect spoken English, offered only the facts as those facts could best be understood at the time.

Broadcasts and telecasts told of the agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union to establish a hot line for the leaders to forestall nuclear war, and Charles, Robert, and their classmates were led in drills to kneel beneath their desks in the event of an exploding nuclear bomb, perhaps in Chicago, which was too close to Pine Village for comfort. In Joe Dan’s Restaurant, veterans of both World Wars openly speculated about World War III. They had seen the world and were wary of it.

The daily news increments may have been tiny, but television sets showed that troubles were not illusions. Radio news had enabled listeners to picture troubles in their minds, and, not infrequently, the troubles as pictured in listeners’ imaginations became either magnified or tinged with a fancy bordering on unreality. Televisions and the evening news came to be trusted as living room repositories of the stark truth: a truth not contaminated by the imagination and not shaped into newsreels. Turn on the set for the evening news, and there they were: true troubles in spoken words illustrated by pictures only a few feet away—just past the footstool! At first—with journalists that had undergone rigorous training and with exacting adherence to high ethical standards—TV news programs could legitimately claim to encapsulate the truth or whatever was carefully considered to be the most likely truth at the time. Little by little over several decades, entertainment with its penchant for shock value would nudge truth aside. Unfortunately, the trust would remain, even when the truth had vanished.

No one was so deluded as to dream that the rural community had been the Garden of Eden before TV sets arrived. The Great Depression had dealt poverty to many families that had no means of recovery. Lives lost in Europe, in the Pacific, and in Korea had left behind broken hearts that could not be comforted. In spite of their vigilance, some farmers had fallen victim to accidents that left grievous injuries. All the same, Pine Village had succeeded in giving its residents a foundational stability: the bedrock of continuity. The television was sending tremors through that substratum.

The television seemed to pose difficult questions. What was Pine Village to do with the threat of nuclear annihilation? What was Pine Village to think about the varieties of unrest that began surfacing in cities across the nation? What was Pine Village to be in a troubled world?

Meanwhile, Ida’s friend Mary Akers dropped her boys, Matt and Lon, in the yard, where they and Robert and Charles played cowboys and Indians with their Western toy guns while she entered the kitchen. Ida switched off the TV set.

“I brought my books,” Mary said, waving her right hand filled with several booklets, then waving her left hand filled with sheets of S&H Green Stamps, “and my stamps.”

Mary was younger than Ida, but they were fast friends. That spring, both had sunburned necks from driving tractors to help their husbands in the fields. They sat at the oilcloth-draped kitchen table and attached stamps to the pages of their booklets. Clerks handed the stamps to customers in grocery lines and at the checkout counters of other stores; the stamps could be redeemed for discounts on goods at a wide variety of establishments. While they affixed stamps to fill their booklets, they swigged instant coffee and chatted about events on the farms and in the town.

“Did I tell you what I did?” Mary asked.

“What did you do?” Ida returned.

“Last weekend, I came around the school driveway past where they’re building the new tennis court on the corner right across the road from you. The workers had left for the day, and I saw three Coke bottles lying in the grass. So I parked and picked up the bottles. I needed just that many to fill my last carton. That way, I had four cartons full.”

“You don’t say.”

“I felt inspired, so I drove straight to the IGA in Oxford and redeemed all four cartons. While I was there, I picked up a box of Crispy Critters for the kids and a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup for me.”

“What did Don get?” Ida wanted to know.

“He doesn’t need anything!” Mary joked.

Ida laughed.

That evening, Joe and Ida took Charles and Robert to Columbian Park to the ball diamond, where they sat on bleachers to watch a demonstration of traditional dances performed by members of the Miami tribe. Men and women, boys and girls, were attired in the clothing of Indians—not the often ridiculously flamboyant costumes of Hollywood Indians but the authentic dress of the various peoples of the Miami, such as the Wea and the Piankeshaw.

As musicians struck the deep-toned drums, a circle of dancers formed. Slowly the circle revolved as the men and women shuffled sideways. The dance was intended to ensure a good harvest. As Robert was enrolled in the 4-H gardening project, he hoped the dance would be effective.

Robert watched in fascination as the circle inched around and around. He wondered if Charles might be enjoying the performance as much as he was, but, when he glanced at his brother, Robert could tell that Charles was bored. Robert stayed focused on the dance after that.

In between dances, an announcer explained to the audience that, long ago, the Piankeshaw and Wea had lived on the land where Lafayette and West Lafayette stood. Robert suddenly felt transported back in time. He felt he was witnessing a culture that had arisen from the rivers, creeks, marshes, prairies, and woods that he knew. The circles formed by the dancers were cementing bonds among the performers and members of the audience while honoring not only the land but also what could not be seen but what could be profoundly felt: the spirit flowing around and through the water, the soil, and the air.

At the end of the exhibition, the audience gradually began applauding. It was not that people were reluctant to clap their hands to show their appreciation—it was that nobody quite knew whether applause was appropriate after such dances that the announcer had carefully placed in the context of Indian spiritual concepts. It felt as if a congregation were applauding after a church service. All the same, the children in the tribes smiled, as did several of the adults.

While Joe drove home, Robert pondered the dances and their meaning. For many days thereafter, Robert slipped away from the evening news telecasts. When he was by himself outdoors, he tried to perceive the natural world in front of him with enough precision to sense its vast spiritual backdrop. A rhythm—a music—lay within the wind. It was faint and came from far away. What was the meaning of that music? Robert tried shuffling sideways in imitation of what he had seen the Miami do, until he had traced a circle in the grass.