Last Saturday…
Kingsburg, California, is a sort of small town that modernism forgot, at least by the measure of the usual landscapes of the Central Valley. Its broad streets, Swedish building façades, good schools, neat homes, and downtown preservation don’t quite reflect the surrounding region’s 18% unemployment, brain drain to the coastal universities, ground-zero illegal immigration, tree-fruit and raisin depression, water cut-offs, general bankruptcy of California, and endemic gangs and their sometimes vicious crime. I was the town’s grand marshal last Saturday at the annual Swedish festival and had time to reflect on Kingsburg’s near century-and-a-half of existence — and its present status as a sort of oasis on the 99 freeway.
An admission: I grew up 4 miles away in rural Selma, and in our teens we of the rougher town thought Kingburgers softer folk. But I had mixed sympathies about the rivalry, as my father’s grandparents were members of the original Swedish pioneers who founded Kingsburg Colony in the late 19th century. Their farm is now the site of the city park and a part of it is marked “Hanson Corner.” I faintly remember the late 1950s in downtown Kingsburg, when as a small boy visiting my grandfather and uncle, we could still hear Swedish as often as English. I remember my grandfather’s (gassed in the Meuse-Argonne offensive and chronically short of breath) stories of his father’s generation, centered around Swedes taking the train (or riding?) to San Francisco to measure the width of Market Street to ensure their own Draper Street would be no narrower, or his mother Cecilia fundraising to ensure a wrought iron fence around the cemetery.
I’ve often wondered how a group of mostly poor Swedish immigrants could migrate en masse to an empty wasteland, form a colony, and within thirty years have created a humane community, impressive churches, banks, government buildings, wide streets, and an irrigated tree and vine agriculture.
Tough, they of course were, and without the technological advantages of our own age, much less the social services safety nets. My father told me his grandfather was directed by the local doc to drink a turpentine concoction to expel a large tape worm of several feet from his gut; he himself at 12 fell on a hay-rake, was impaled, and had half his liver removed (but remember the myth of Prometheus). Another uncle pushed the bellows of a stuck hand-sulfurer and burned out his eye. These were common rural experiences; and I have to assume that our modern ailments like allergies (I saw an ad yesterday for a medicine to address sweaty palms) were not quite considered ailments by the old breed. My point is not to suggest that they were Titans and we mere mortals, but simply to suggest the streets, buildings, and culture we enjoy were all inherited from those who created them at a physical cost we often are clueless about.
They certainly did not have the oil wealth of Libya. There were not the picturesque coastline and islands of Greece. Little coal, bauxite, or any precious minerals were to be found. The land was arid, and mostly empty. Swedes are not generally associated with 100-degree summers. The answer in a word was quiet competence and work. Work for the sake of work, or in Hesiod’s parlance, “work on top of work on top of work”.
I also recall going to a funeral of a Swedish relative when a boy; the comments went “Ya, he worked hard. Ya, he did at that.” I don’t remember too many tears. Everyone stone-faced went back to the house for coffee, and there I heard more one-line assessments: “He worked, he did at that—up before dawn.” “Ya, in the vineyard at dark.”
There was more to it all than reticent pragmatism. Wealth was sought after but not coveted; the rich were neither envied nor parodied; the same with the working poor who were in turn neither pitied nor condemned. The middle, what the Greeks called “to meson,” was the ideal as I remember it, but it was an egalitarianism that came out of an equality of opportunity rather than enforced result. And there was little of the progressive activism one associates with the Swedes of Minnesota or Wisconsin — or at least as one could determine a near century after the town’s founding. Maybe the weather was just too hot in central California, or the original Swedes missed out on the activism of the Farmer-Labor party, or the general conservatism (often manifested more through the Democratic than Republican Party) of the valley won them over.
This is an interesting interview with David Landes done by Fukuyama. Landes work explains very well why protestant European culture has lead to sustained wealth creation opposed to other cultures. Why did the West became rich? Why did North America became rich and not South America? Why do Southern European countries bring the EURO down and not Northern European etc.
Dr. Hanson ancestors were still very much part of that old culture.
http://www.viet-studies.info/kinhte/Landes_by_fukuyama_AI.pdf
So, not all cultures are equal? I am shocked, shocked!
Yeah I know, it is big swing of perspective to not think of wealth as the result of oppression and exploitation of race/class/gender etc.
Nobody bothered to tell us that culture matters at school.
There we go, you mentioned David Landes who should be a “must” reading in college, but it is not -
Yet Jarred Diamond, who injects in his constructions an absurdly deterministic outlook, is praised, done in college and endlessly PBS-ed across the country (on the taxpayers money) -
I always wondered why countries/ societies like Holland or Japan (essentially poor stations) are significantly richer and of more significance than…
… ok, I stop it, I don’t want to see the cultural studies students, pichforks and torches in front my “oppressor” cottage…
… still, I wonder, do Japanese sleep really that much like the…
Ok, ok, I cease…
PS: the last time I heard the term “protestant work ethic” used in a positive manner was from Peter Jennings, some years ago, and, at that time he wasn’t slaughtered for thoughtcrime (for the record: I am not what the cultural construct “protestant” means in this acception) –
and prett
don’t forget the Irish. They were such a drain, should have been kept out.
My wife, a first generation immigrant from the Philippines, might have an explaination for why South and Central America failed to prosper while the North thrived.
“I know of no former colony of Spain that ever amounted to much of anything. The harshness and corruption of the Spanish colonies was just too strong.”
Was she wrong?
Spain was certainly rapacious with its colonies and the mother country was poorly run in spite of its wealth. It transferred an enormous fortune to Europe after Columbus yet ended up bankrupt. Holland, the prototypical protestant trader culture grew rich with few natural resources of the type that made Spain rich for a while. I don’t think they taught their colonies anything but the Catholic religion.
I don’t know, but my father told me the same thing about 30 years ago.
Eight centuries enslaved to the Caliphate left Hispanics with a less than Renaissance mind set. During only five centuries of ‘Christendom’ they tapered off the Caliphate and transitioned to centuries of Inquisition transitioning into centuries of Dictatorships.
Eight centuries of Islamic ownership of the Iberians embued them with a culture and a language infused with Arab passivity toward concepts of responsibility and accountability. Example:
English: I broke the glass.
French: J’ai caissez le verre.
Spanish: El vaso se cayó y se rompió. (The glass fell and broke itself).
While French and Italian form the responsible, accountable sentence as do other Indo-Euopean languages, Spanish holds over the Arabic passive “not me!” form.
When an infant learns its mother tongue from its mother, these things get programmed into its little behavioral microchips.
Latin America’s problems are and have always been Latin American. North America, CIA or not, has only inflicted them with science, technology and products, including loans, that they couldn’t come up with themselves.
Yes, Virginia, Northern Europe and Northern Asia have formed us well.
I concur.
Have lived in the Philippines, and visited many former Spanish colonies. In those countries the bribe is the standard form of political interaction and mercantilism (crony capitalism) is the way the economies work. Our system is somewhat less corrupt (Bribery is still frowned on.) and much more flexible. (Mercantilism is about maintaining the status quo – keeping those on top, on top!) We still have economic mobility and that has made a heap of difference. Not that there aren’t those here in the USA that aren’t working to establish mercantilism.
Very nice Doc. Gave me chills, actually. Am I so wrong, so insensitive, so uncaring to believe with all my heart that this is a tableau of what America (decreasingly)is, was, and SHOULD be? Maybe I’m just old.
A few weeks back, I watched the video “A tale of Two Americas” on PJTV(now archived for members only so I can’t link it). I shared it with my wife, an immigrant, and her response was “I wish we lived in that part of the country” (The America that VDH so ably profiles here). We don’t, we live in the bluest of blue states, Maryland. Honor, hard work and values mean something, damnit! They must! They must or we are lost as a nation!
I see American exceptionalism being ground beneath the boot heel of easy platitudes and soft expectations of “equal outcome” like an old cigarette and my American soul cries “NO! THIS SHALL NOT BE!”
Forgive me, I am overwrought. I had a bad day.
There are still pockets of what you seek in Western Maryland. Take a trip along Alternate 40 from Frederick to Funkstown, then visit Maugansville and Sharpsburg. Things are becoming gentrified for sure, but there is a backbone there. Also, you might enjoy Bob Brugger’s Maryland: A Middle Temperment and books from the Maryland Paperback Bookshelf (search at Amazon).
Yes, I know, thanks. Downy oshun too, hon, all across the eastern shore is the same. Still, this state is dominated by the Baltimore /DC corridor, the congressional districts are gerrymandered to hell and back so that 6 of our 8 districts are in this corridor, producing Democrats, and it’s “normal” to elect a Democrat governor who carries just 3 of 4 counties-Baltimore, Baltimore City, Prince Georges and Montgomery-and loses the rest of the state. The whole rest of the state votes more conservatively, and it doesn’t make a fig of difference.
Now you’re making me cry. Dave, just know you’re not alone. And it ain’t over till it’s over, dammit.
We’ve got to hang on and push back.
Just reflect on the Victor’s forebears’ hardships and those of most of our ancestors. On our worst days we’ve got it pretty good.
Keep the faith.
Dr. Hanson,
Very poignant thoughts on your ancestors. Congratulations on your position as Grand Marshall! There were Swedish ranchers in my mother’s family (Sodergreen) in southern Wyoming; the work was endless, especially for the women.
A couple of random thoughts about the Superfortress: A bakery owner (Arthur Login) here in Albuquerque was a navigator, guiding 35 missions over Japan, out and back with a clean log. Also, I just visited the USAF museum in Dayton, OH, where Bockscar (Nagasaki/Fat Man) is on display. Amazing — there really were guys who said, “Yes, I’ll do that, I’ll climb into a pressurized cylinder and fly on a 16- to 20-hour mission over enemy territory.”
Thank you for your latest writings.
Slight correction…don’t mean to nit pick but it was “Bock’s Car”…piloted by Major Chuck Sweeney…after the drop,they flew to Okinawa where my father was serving with a USN occupation team…he said they came in hot with no landing clearance from the tower due to radio malfunction…fighters on the runway scrambled to get out of the way…they landed and just as they turned off the runway onto the apron,the engines died….out of gas…it was that close.
Greetings:
Thanks for the correction on Bock’s Car, I appreciate it. I should have had it correct because I saw it in Dayton in mid April; your recounting of their return to Okinawa is hair-raising.
Mr McNamara,
I’m wondering about the comment about your mothers family (Sodergreens in Wyoming). May I ask ,who was your mother and or family there in Wyoming? My mother was born and raised on the Sodergreen Ranch as well as her father, John William Sodergreen, and his father homesteaded the Sodergreen ranch,originally, Oscar William Sodergreen. It would be nice to speak to you. If you could take the time to contact me it would be apreciated.
Dani Cash
Dear Mr. McNamara,
My husband William is from the same Wyoming Sodergreen family. I am working on putting some of the geneaology together and would be interested if you have any information.
Best regards,
Lori Sodergreen
My mother was born on the Sodergreen Ranch. Please contact me.
Dani Cash
Lori,
I would be interested in any information you may have regarding Oscar Sodergreen and his brother Charles F Sodergreen. Oscar was my great grandfather and I haven’t been able to fill in all the blanks. Please email me at jomenees@hotmail.com.
Thank You,
Jo
Dr Hanson,
thank you for a wonderful article.
I lived in the US during the Reaganyears and I am now since many years back in my native Sweden. I love both countries but I am concerned about the route the US is taking under Obama. OK, we have a welfare society in Sweden however it is a welfare under strict fiscal responsibility.
“welfare under strict fiscal responsibility” is socialistspeak for a government that takes virtually all of what a worker earns, returns enough for him to exist, gives a portion to those who do not work, and spends the rest on the bureaucracy. Exactly what Obongo & Co. desire for America.
“capability for hard work might give them leeway, some margin in which they might not otherwise have to be so brutal to others to survive.”
…mmhhhmm…
that mentality was much more prevalent 100 years ago ..even 50 years ago. People took responsibility for themselves, helped their neighbours and lived honestly.
I think the acquiescence of responsibility is the biggest factor in the change that is what we see today.
regards
Yes, this abdication of responsibility is the common denominator in our current American society. Just add up the number of times you hear ‘rights’ vs. the number of times you hear ‘responsibility’. It’s not even close.
Doc, I grew up in a small German town above Cincinnati called Mt. Healthy. It was an old tailoring town that made over half of the Union Army uniforms during the Civil War. It was also a frequent stop for the Underground Railroad (One of my friends houses had a large basement with a hidden door into a further room where the runaway slaves were hidden).
As a young boy, we had large Memorial day Parades, a city park where you cold swim for $3. a summer and enough old Germans who sat on their front porches that your parents would always get a call if you were too far from home or even looked like you might be up to some kind of mischief! No one had a lot money but the vast majority had enough. Gardens in every yard and the Cincinnati Reds on the radio during humid summer afternoons (yes, I do think Pete rose should be in the Hall of Fame!)
Life had a different tempo back then. We own a small lake house in Cherokee Village, AR. It is the closest place to Mt. Healthy I have found. People who answer the phone at the Water Board or the town hall actually speak the Kings English and are efficient, capable. All transplants from Illinois, Iowa etc. Thanks for a great reminder of the people who built my town, watched over us and gave us something much better than they had. I went back for my Mom’s funeral last June and they hadn’t changed a bit. Many of those old Germans came up to me and wanted to know all about my family and my life. Most of them had stories about me and my siblings. I was completely unaware of most of them at the time. always watching over us, always having an eye on bob and Joans kids, always there. victor, I don’t think we have that anywhere now. Thanks for a good article, anyone who reads it and doesn’t realize we are missing something doesn’t get it.
Good read Dr. Hanson.
Growing up on a dairy farm with 132 milking cows back in the late 50s and into the 60s we also knew about work stacked upon work.
Up at 3am, work until 7 and thanks for required schooling for an 8-18 year old, come home at 3pm and do it again until I fell into bed at 9.
Get up the next day and do it again.
I and many other young men were happy to march off to Vietnam to get out of the barn.
I used to tell city dwelling soldiers-
“this is not work, its just a bunch of sweat and danger.”
My father was also raised on a dairy farm. His own father died when he was 19 and he and my uncle did the farm work and also held down factory jobs in order to support their mother and 3 younger sisters.
He always told me that after doing farm work, every other job he had seemed easy in comparison.
I don’t doubt the veracity of your statement concerning the long days and hard work.
I follow the blog of a dairy farmer: Northview Diary. She writes beautifully and relates the day-to-day struggle to stay afloat during a period of depressed milk prices.
Drop by for a visit.
Tell her Cathy sent you.
http://northviewdiary.blogspot.com/
Wonderful picture of better, but harder, times. If you want to know the real builders of our culture and character then you must take a stroll throught our cemeteries. The oldest headstones tell the finest stories : the builders, defenders,the self-sufficient, the cause of our being. Cultural memory is so brief and sadly the most important lessons are lost to those who need them most. Thanks VDH.
Beautiful story, Mr. Hanson. That kind of courage makes me weepy–not the courage of war, though that’s substantial. It’s the courage of everyday that you described.
Thank you for writing this.
Could I ask for a sequal, perhaps, that discusses their faith and how that affected their lives?
I, too, believe that this community is descriptive of America’s heart. The details may differ, but the values remain the same regardless of community or region. IMHO.
Very much enjoyed this piece. It reminded me of my German and Irish
(unblended unlike me) uncles and cousin who went off to war in 1942, the Irish cousin off to the Pacific, the Germans off to Africa and Europe, there to fight against…the Germans. They were unarmored, ate lousy food, were not well dressed for the conditions, lived and slept in the dirt, and did what they were told. They luckily all came back and didn’t talk about their war experiences until long years after the war.
Then there were the other Swedes who stayed in Sweden and built the workers’, or should one say the non-workers’, paradise. Perhaps I’m being too harsh. I’m sure it took a lot of hard work to socialize the Swedish government. Not a task for slackers. Look at our own good ole libruls. Hard at it every damn day.
Beautiful tale of times past, Doc. The Swedes of California’s Central Valley remind me of the Norwegian logger/farmers of the Hood Canal area of Washington’s Puget Sound. “Able and willing to perform hard work” was all that was needed on a man’s resume, whether he toiled in the mills, the woods, the docks, the boats or the farm.
I recall my father’s response when I (at 14) asked if I could play baseball with my friends. We had been re-roofing the the house for nearly ten hours at the time, which I thought warranted a break. My tall, imposingly built father scowled a me, flexed his shoulders and inquired gruffly, “What’s the matter with you, don’t you want to work?” To him, anyone who didn’t expect to work 12-16 hours a day was indeed defective. As a young man, I adopted (and held to) dad’s work ethic. He passed in 1996 at the age of 86, and I miss him dearly.
An interesting and entertaining chronicle of the life of a Norwegian immigrant was compiled by my late uncle, Captain Torger (Tom) Birkeland. It is titled, Echoes of Puget Sound, Fifty Years of Logging and Steamboating”. It is out of print but available through Amazon or other bookfinders.
Speaking of the old days. They didn’t complain. That was bad form. They had a sense of humility before, and fear of, the gods. The Scandinavians were (are) stubborn. Unfortunately, the men are now feminized along with the rest of the US. I say its loss of faith, or maybe more importantly a loss of humility, that did it. Palin is the only major political figure these days who seems to be able to express or understand this. Is she Scandinavian? Paradoxical, I know, being a woman who seems more masculine than most American men but then so was Margaret Thatcher. And yet both remain(ed) quite feminine and desirable.
I think this is a huge area of interest: defining the masculine qualities as opposed to the feminine and what feminism has done to both, and what its doing to our culture. Conservatives, I think, are giving to much credit to the Left by over-analyzing their “ideas.” I don’t think they have any. They act more like spendthrift housewives, especially Obama, utterly unconcerned about where the money comes from and only interested in fake, overwrought victimhood and the spending. I’m suggesting that a crucial psychic imbalance is at work in the West; in its way the polar opposite of Islam.
It shows what hard work and determination will do. Enjoyed reading your article.
Thanks for an wonderful essay of small-town life. I grew-up in Mesa, Arizona and learned to work hard both early and late. My Dad would say, (if not once, a thousand times), “You work hard and long all your life. then you die. That’s your job. Get on with it”. I’m sixty and the longer I live, the righter Pop was. Dan
Saltherring and Fred Beloit,
we do not have a socialist government in Sweden nowadays. We have a moderate (borgerlig) alliance with lower taxes and the cutting of welfare benefits on the agenda. We are fully aware of the dangers of budget deficits, that is what I meant with welfare under strict fiscal responsibility.Obama is taking the opposite direction, expanding welfare in spite of a glaring budget deficit.That is the Greek way.
Unfortunately many people think of Sweden as the old welfare state stereotype. We could learn a thing or two from the NEW Sweden.
Glad to hear Sweden is moving away from socialism, although I’ll believe it when it happens. And I detest America’s deficit social spending, but then I find socialism reprehensible under any condisions. My late mother’s family in Sweden often spoke of the hated confiscatory government that destroyed a good many peoples’ desire to better themselves through gainful employment. When the government takes more of your paycheck then they leave to you, why would anyone work?
You have 8% Muslims now, I believe, and your 2nd city, Malmö up to 15%, while overall your immigrant population overreaches 15% to keep your factories going, those that you haven’t sold off foreign corporations that is.
As with Americans, your patriotism blinds you to what’s coming.
I grew up in Los Angeles and have none of the small town nostalgia of so many of the responders, but enjoyed the comments just the same. My grandfather came over from Denmark in 1914, got tuberculosis working in a coal mine and still went on to USC and a successful career as a dentist–he was the hardest working man I have ever known, coming over regularly to my divorced mother of six’s home to do yard work, etc. This past summer we met a Danish couple and traveled with them for three weeks in southern Mexico and Guatemala. It became clear that the same work ethic my grandfather epitomized had not changed over two generations. Long live our northern european brothers and sisters!
I think the Swedish work ethic is well worth emulating, and goes hand in hand with the ideals of the modern Tea Party. However, I think the key weakness of the Tea Party is that they criticize government spending and handouts, while simultaneously taking said handouts (Social Security especially). To be successful, we have to be like those old Swedes and say forcefully that not only do we not approve of the policies of Welfare, Union payoffs, and the concept of Social Security, but we are willing to forgo all those things and truly live on our own. Get closer in our communities, recognize the value of multi-generational families, keep what you earn. These values are all but gone in most of the US.
Our forefathers and founders were willing, and did die at times to defend the founding principles. I’m willing to give up the social diapers forced on us from birth if it means returning to those principles. I’ve never had a problem with hard work (I’m late 30s). In a sense it doesn’t matter. Soon we’ll all be out of money anyway, and the only currency will be what you can provide to stay alive.
Thanks very much for the article. It reminds me of some (but of course not all) of the folks here in the rural highlands of Panamá, not far from the border with Costa Rica. Things here are unlike those in the big cities. The welfare society has not embraced them, nor have they embraced it; they work. I almost said they take pride in doing so, but that would be not quite accurate: they don’t seem to feel that it is something of which to be either proud or ashamed. It is just the way things are. Still vital and active men in their 70′s work hard, with picks, shovels and machetes, often more than eight hours per day and more than five days per week. There are voluntary organizations to help those no longer able to work and lacking extended families to care for them.
When the ditches along the roads need to be cleaned, the people get together and assemble on Sunday mornings with shovels to clean them – otherwise, the heavy rains this time of year (May – December) would overwhelm them and the already not-too-great unpaved roads would get worse. They don’t get paid; they just do it because it is necessary and because that’s the way things are. It may be the government’s job, but the government doesn’t do it well or often and so they do.
The homogeneity of these places may be a partial explanation. I don’t know.
The article made me a bit nostalgic about my trips back as a young kid in the mid 1940s and later to visit my grandparents in Patrick County, Virginia, a generally rural area in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I haven’t been back for decades, and the place may well have changed for the worse. That may be among the reasons I haven’t gone back – I prefer to remember it as it was, and I can experience many of the same characteristics here.
Things change. Boquete, a town about thirty-five KM (forty minutes by car) from our small farm, has changed. There are now many, many Gringos there, many living in gated communities and interacting little with the locals. Their presence has brought some good restaurants and many previously unavailable amenities there and in the closest city, David. Are those amenities worth the cost of the changes accompanying them? I don’t think so.
It may well just be the old fogy in me, and I recognize that many things are better now than in the good old days: modern dentistry comes to mind. Still, Perhaps we should start at Brigadoon Society, to encapsulate still pleasant places in a sort of time warp, to continue as they are and only to have brief contact, once a day each century, with the “modern world.”
Since my heritage is Norwegian we all know there’s not a bit of difference between us and the Swedes.
Work for work’s sake is bunk.
I have Norwegian kin who live on Sequim Bay on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. The late patriarch, Olaf, settled and lived there for 60+ years. He cleared 60 wooded acres by hand and built his home from scratch – he built the mill to saw the boards. He was a work for work’s sake kind of fellow. In that 60 years he never had/took the time to see the beauty of the Pacific ocean (take a look at a map of Washington). His life was work. All had to be done as in the Old Country. He could care less about anything else. He lived in the cocoon of the misery of constant work. He might as well been a slave.
He pulled his six kids out of school as soon as legal so they, too, could live his miserable life explaining that one didn’t need much education to swing an axe or drive a truck or plow a field.
Hard work and sacrafice are admirable but work for work’s sake doesn’t necessarily make for living a life that nurtures growth and the joys of discovery. That is what really makes a life worth living.
‘Herr’ Hanson,
Thanks for sharing your heritage and the collage of values and experiences that make up the fabric of who you are as a person, your hometown of Selma and Kingsburg, and the thread that continues to weave its way through life in your part of California.
You’ve given us a reference point for what resonates as a sense of truth all over the country. It is who we are, where we’ve come from and what we can aspire to.
I can see that it was an honor for you in Kingsburg last Saturday. Even more is that you brought to life the residual of their being and made their souls live again for all that they put in.
And that is a gift to us all.
Gratefully yours, for this one, and every other thoughtful piece you’ve written.
Long may you run!
Enjoyed your article alot.
Grew up in Iowa with a bunch of folks of Norweigen ancestry. My family is of Danish descent.
Lots of hard work and not much chatter.
Dr. Hanson-Thank you for the truly wonderful story. My paternal grandmother’s family moved to Kingsburg in the early 20th century. They moved from Nebraska where my great grandfather met my great grandmother after he had emmigrated to America from Sweden. Your article reminds me of the many stories my grandmother told us about growing up in Kingsburg and how she loved her life there.
My grandparents and father are buried in the cemetary just outside of the town and I make a point of driving down the wide streets in Kingsburg whenever I visit their gravesites. It’s a wonderful community and the heritage of the Swedish people, as well as that of the other immigrants who have lived in Kingsburg, is one of which I am very proud.
Thanks again for reminding me of my roots and the pride I enjoy from being a decendent of such good hard working people.
Excellent essay Dr. Hanson!
I am particularly lucky living where I do in south central Pennsylvania, a very red area politically. My routine is to take walks through a cemetery right across the street which is 320 acres small. Over there are 1000 Civil War veterans buried with their small bronze GAR emblems and faded white marble typical Civil War memorial gravestones and more than a score Revolutionary War soldiers grave stones more than one of whom was probably with Washington at Valley Forge. In fact there are soldiers buried over there from all wars and even one signer of the Declaration of Independence. Phillip Livingston, the signer, was here on a visit and died here. Return to New York was impossible and so he was buried. Most of the graves which date from before 1950 are empty the bodies long having since rotted away along with the coffin. All the graves are now dotted with American flags in preparation for Memorial Day services which the owner of the cemetery holds in front of the Iraq/Afghanistan flag memorial containing a flag for each of the dead of that conflict. When over there I feel the spirit of this great country. We even have a piece of the World Trade Center worked into a monument to honor the local servicemen who were awarded varying honors for their service. Even Major General Franklin is buried here. He was the scapegoat for the Fredericksburg loss of the Union. American exceptionalism is not dead here but nationally just temporarily muted by the Prevaricator in Chief and the sick culture that trickles down from the rot at the top.
Jag alskar Sverige! However, it’s really tragic that these strong and sound roots are almost gone in both the US and Sweden. The subtle but strong depression there in Sweden (something Dr. Hanson has written, I believe, about Europe in general) is, I believe, strongly rooted in the brooding fact that the individual can’t make of himself what he desires, can’t really follow his bliss and make life happen for him. The government controls the message on almost all things political and social, and the Swedes delude themselves into going along. I remember feeling somewhat sad every time (and it happened a lot) a Swede would wistfully look at me and say “You Americans are so friendly, so happy.” Ultra-liberalism does that to you- your never “deeply” suffer but you will never be truly happy. They prevent failure by defeating success.
I grew up in the Stockton/Modesto area, and my family owned cattle and farmed. I left home and moved to Los Angeles in 1984. On my many trips “home” I always stopped in this community for fuel and food-I would never EVER stop in Fresno or some of the other communities along 99-they were “rat holes”.
One time, due to the fog, I pulled over and stayed the night in a motel in town-it was clean and the people were wonderful. Even now, if I was to drive from LA to Modesto-I would skip Delano, and others and make my stop at this place.
After I retired from LA City, I began to look for a place so I could “get back to my roots”. Dairy Cattle, horses and small town life. Sadly, many of the communities in California have been “over run” by the State Goverment, special intrest groups, developers, you name it! This way of life is vanishing in the “Golden State.”
So, I fled to Texas-oddly, two large diaries are where I now live east of Dallas. The smells, sights, and people take me back to times growing up-a simple time. These Dairy Farmers are also from California!
Tonight, I will fly back to California for a funral for my aunt who was a dairy farmer-she was a wonderful person. I am hate the idea of having to return back to the state-sadly, stories like this are rare with each passing year.
I guess the point to this is-I am glad someone is left in California who values hard work, and the feel of small town living! I moved away to Texas to get that back into my life after 25 years in Los Angeles. Thank you for the artical!!
Well, you’ve certainly brought back memories of my grandfather who was born to Swedish immigrants. While a city dweller, he certainly embodied that work ethic. He quit school at a young age to go to work, put himself through night school to become a master machinist and eventually became part owner of a machine shop. If by dour one means ill-humoured or gloomy, my grandfather was anything but. He dearly loved music, played several instruments and had a beautiful voice. When I hear the old hymn “How Great Thou Art” I hear him joyfully singing it in Swedish. No, I would never describe him as dour.
I loved your grandfather’s anwer about selling the horse. If in a similar circumstance I am sure mine would have said the same.
This article is exactly how Garrison Keillor would sound–if he lost all sense of humor and turned into a bitter old man.
On his best day, in his best mood, Garrison couldn’t touch this clear-visioned paean of admiration to the people of whom Victor lovingly writes: “My point is not to suggest that they were Titans and we mere mortals, but simply to suggest the streets, buildings, and culture we enjoy were all inherited from those who created them at a physical cost we often are clueless about.”
Shef,read this again. Take the blinkers off and read it again. If you see bitterness, you’d best look inward for the source.
Nice piece. It and the responses are a welcome relief from the relatively shallow Obama-bashing often heard here recently, because through this topic we can inch toward the idea that humans and their responses to modern, hence non-agrarian society are more complicated than our politics portray them.
I have some nostalgia for the agrarian life, and indeed have recreated some if it for myself with a big garden, some hunting, a voracious woodstove, and many hours spent in nature, working or playing. But most of modern society, whether on the left or the right has gone in a different direction. Ironically, most of those going back to the land in New England, tend to be of the green, often organic persuasion; the antithesis of Tea Partiers on Social Security and Medicare, but as always, generalities are too often clubs we use to bash, or at a minimum, grumble bout those who are different than we are, or how today, things are different from the way they used to be.
So much of what has been discussed here revolves around the issue of “work.” The nature and availablity of work is in constant flux. Most of the things at which the old farmers and loggers worked so hard are now done by machines. There are so many more allegedly wonderful things that we need to buy so that we can see all the glitzy culture flashing by us. In that context, isn’t it humorous to see Fox News as somehow a return to the “old values?” The complexity and difficulty of what faces us is daunting, but then, this piece reminds us that it always has been.
I can answer the riddle of why south America ended up the way it did and North America thrived.
I have come to this conclusion as a northern European living and working with our southern cousins these last 20 years.
As in all things it comes down to character and intellect.
Th main distinct differences between the people from the north and the south are that the northerners are a mixture of competitive and cooperative whilst the southerners are ALl competitive.
This makes it impossible for the southerners to create the complex, functional companies and societies that the northerners do.
The second and most profound difference is the incredible ability of northerners to project into the future, to plan and organize , something the southerners just cannot do with any competence.
for what its worth!”
One of my most fondly remembered former high school teachers, Jim Arneberg, used to proclaim in jest: “Ten thousand Swedes ran through the weeds, when chased by one Norwegian.”
http://leohsalumniassoc.com/alumni%20stories/arneberg/arneberg.html
Perhaps in the case of this Norwegian it might have been the safest tactic.
Humorous cartoon showing the difference between average Americans and members of the Obama Administration at http://drawfortruth.wordpress.com/category/politics/
Check it out if you need a laugh.
Brian@18,
Social Security is not the handout you propose. Everyone receiving SS paid in. The Pols spent the funds on welfare-statism; there’s the handout. Now, we’ll have to raise the retirement age to 70+, and you’ll be paying in for another 3-4 decades.
Great Article. Yes cultures are different. Many ethnic groups from Europe thrived her. What did Spain do different when it colonized….they made babies with the natives……
Ben Franklins believed the English shouldn’t even mate with German women for goodness sake. Only the Spanish went after women,girls and little girls wherever they were. Probably lots of rape. Strange, because men of Spain don’t seem like that now. I guess I did not talk to many when I was there. They kind of ingnore the tourists and you ignore them. They are probably still the same.
Hej Doc! I’m a swede and I’m proud of my country, perhaps not the contemporary one who is on a slippery slope downhill thanks to political correctness. However, I’m proud of her generally and historically. I’m also proud of that so many immigrants has done so well on the other side of the duck pond. I’m curious to if you understand or speak the old language? Last year I stumbled upon a list of swedish-americans on Wikipedia. There was quite a few I didn’t had the faintest clue they had swedish ancestors. Quite an impressive list though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swedish_Americans
Your description of the attitudes towards rich and poor seem to fit the word lagom from Swedish.
“The Lexin Swedish-English dictionary defines lagom as “enough, sufficient, adequate, just right”. Lagom is also widely translated as “in moderation”, “in balance”, “optimal”, “suitable”, and “average”. But whereas words like “sufficient” and “average” suggest some degree of abstinence, scarcity, or failure, lagom carries the connotation of perfection or appropriateness.”
I alwasy look forward to these entries Dr Hanson. These could be my father’s stories from working the ranch in Cloverdale. Italians or Swedes, they were all the old breed.
Wonderful story. Stoics like them were the norm in America. Happy as free men to be able to work, eat, defend their new country, raise families and worship the Almighty was all they wanted. When its all over, that’s all we can really hope for. As Aristotle said, “……life is just the memories…..”, and anyone who carry’s ancestors memories with them is a very rich person. Even those that are “written on the wind”.
The comments are certainly interesting. The picture VDH paints is not an unusual American tale. Look in your own family tree. VDH is closer to his roots than many of us nomadic souls, most people don’t take the time to learn about and honor the people they came from. Take a good look at the comforts we’ve grown so accustomed too. One can’t help to think we are squandering it all by turning our backs on these ancestors.
I wonder if past generations didn’t live a more satisfying life? They worked “hard” by today’s standards but they were healthier and happier than many who live life growing fat on their autos on highways and in their cubicles. Imagine being around your family and a supportive like minded community instead of a bunch of people you don’t really care about? How’s the 401k?
Dear Prof. Hanson:
My grandfather also was gassed at the Meuse Argonne. Of course, the doughboys couldn’t smoke at night, and so they chewed. Family legend has it that Grandpa never learned to swallow his chaw, as did the rest of his company, and so when the gas siren went off, the second or so it took him to spit before he put on his mask was just enough to allow a wisp of mustard gas to enter his lungs. He was hospitalized but returned to active duty.
His father was a Bavarian who came to the States in 1884. Ironically, his hometown was just a few miles to the north of the Meuse Argonne. It’s possible that Grandpa fought against his cousins, but not likely. It seems that his hometown regiment was obliterated at Verdun.
Grandpa spoke German at home,and as a boy he spoke German at school. The war changed that. His father was a handsome man, quiet, dignified, tough. On his way home from work one evening his wedding ring got caught on one of the finger grips on a streetcar handrail. He slipped as the car pulled away, and lost his ring finger. Apparently he picked up the severed finger, put it in his pocket, stopped the bleeding with his handkercheif and walked home.
Grandpa died at age 74 from throat cancer. We always blamed the mustard gas, but it might have had something to do with the two packs a day of Camel unfiltered cigarettes that he smoked almost until the day he died, not to mention the home rolleds that he and his buddy, a Dutchman named Joe Bloom, rolled and smoked silently as they rocked on his front porch.
A lovely meditation, Professor. Thank you. I think this must resonate with a lot of people who still remember a different America, and our forebears who made it. We may not demonstrate it through being maimed by farm equipment, but we have the capacity always in us to be such Americans again. In spite of the hollowness and brittleness we see in too great abundance around us, I think the great challenges of the coming days will not be the downfall of our people, but our finest hour.
Well, what do you know, just when I’m about to give up on VDH as writing nothing but disguised political hit pieces, he writes something insightful! Exactly my thoughts on my own ancestors (Scottish, Norwegian, Spanish) who were of the same mind. Hard working, honest, surprisingly resourceful, suspicious of wealth, and conscious of the legacy they would leave behind. Growing up poor by modern standards,but going on to be ship captains, chief engineers, diplomats, devoted mothers and wives, and yet never selfish or greedy or conceited…what marvelous genes. The flip side ? As mentioned by VDH, easily drawn into patriotic wars as soldiers, with no questions asked, and sometimes suffering the consequences. Organic people to the end…I miss their kind today, but wonderful memories.
Thanks VDH…!!
Nice story and very explanatory…
I graduated from Fresno State 3 years ago and more than a few times my Sunday morning drive was down the road parallel to 99 on the east side of the railroad tracks to where it ended in Kingsburg (the “old highway”). Of all the little towns out there Kingsburg seemed to be the nicest. There seemed to be more people milling about the churches after Sunday services. I liked to go over to the market (Vons? Nob Hill? Lucky?) and try some of the Sunday only BBQ out in the parking lot.
Dr. Hanson – If you could write about the colony of African-Americans that settled just south-west of there. I think your readers would enjoy it, I know I would. The place I refer to is some sort of county park these days I believe.
Thank you
Dr. Hanson – I am a long time follower and reader of your books. I grew up in the Sunnyside-Lone Star area, graudated from Sanger High, with family in Selma, Fowler, Sanger and Kingsburg. This piece of yours struck a cord. Is there an email address where I could correspond directly with you? I want to share part of an oral history of my father which I think you would find interesting. Please feel free to reply to my email address, tpacker@gordonrees.com.
Thank you, Tom Packer
Being a half Swede from Northern Minnesota, I can attest all of those characteristics were true of us as well. The hard work, thrift, and civic mindedness were true as well as the less than shrewd business sense. Owning and working the land was what made you independent.
Dr. Hanson:
Thank you for well-written and much-deserved tribute to the Swedes and other Northern Europeans of your childhood, the stoic and hardworking folk who helped build modern America. My mother is Danish by birth, maiden name of Andersen, spelled in the Danish way “sen” instead of the Swedish manner “son.” I am now middle-aged, but even in my youth America was a very different place than it is now. I can only imagine how different it was in the decades before I was born.
These days, we are told constantly of this-or-that group which deserves our attention or whose history we are mandated to study – whether it is Black History Month or something else. But there has been no tribute for Northern Europeans, whose efforts have done so much to make America great. Indeed, to suggest the idea in some quarters is to be labeled a racist. Still, whether it is politically-correct or not, I cannot help but feel a sense of gratitude for their efforts, and a degree of pride in their accomplishments. I am reminded of this when I visit my wife’s hometown.
I married into a family from a rural Kansas farm community, and upon visiting my wife’s hometown for the first time, I quickly gained an appreciation for the incredibly hard work, resourcefulness, and pioneer spirit of the people there. Most of the people have European roots, whether Scandinavian, Czech, German, or perhaps something else – but all consider themselves Americans through-and-through. The town routinely sends its finest young people into the military; patriotism is real there. People are genuine, and don’t hold with pretense or “getting above your raising” (putting on airs). Folks attend church, respect their elders, and help each other out in tough times. Being a good neighbor means something in a town of only 3,000 souls many hours from the nearest big city… you rely on your neighbor and he relies on you. Folks know how to fix things, because replacing something broken isn’t always possible, or maybe it is too expensive. I used to think I knew what hard work was, but after seeing these folks get things done, I am no longer so sure.
And the people of this small town, like those Swedes Dr. Hanson knew, shrug it off as no big deal. My mother-in-law, who is in her mid-70s, thinks nothing of getting up at 4AM to make a 100 pastries for a sale or for a social gathering of some sort, and then running off to work all day in her garden or pick some odd hours at her job, the one she supposedly retired from a few years back. She and my father-in-law participate in a list of civic and volunteer functions as long as my arm, and set a county record for units of blood donated. My admiration for them knows no bounds, I consider them among the finest people anywhere, not only my in-laws, but all of the people in this small town. Going there is like visiting a better America from the past. Frankly, I am sometimes jealous I wasn’t raised there. I continue to believe that towns like this, and the one Dr. Hanson writes of, are the deepest wellsprings of what makes America great, and worth preserving for future generations. Perhaps I am guilty of idealizing, as many conservatives do, the past and rural America, but none-the-less, I stand by my observations.
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