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.
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ReplyDeleteWhat a flood of memories this evokes! We had to crouch by our desks for atomic bomb drills, and my cousin had a fall-out shelter in her back yard. While we had S & H stamps, my mother tended to collect TV (Top Value?) stamps. My job was to sit with the moistened sponge and fill the books.
ReplyDeleteEleanor, many thanks for sharing your memories! The 1950s and early 1960s had been the best of times, to use Dickens' phrase. By 1963, circumstances pointed to a slow decline toward the worst of times. In what ways will the farm family at the heart of my blog novel manage such changes as having to consider the threat of nuclear annihilation? Readers will find out in future chapters!
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