How Did We Get From There To Here?

By Tom Morrow

  Most of you reading this probably had a relatively quiet and safe childhood. Those who grew up with a lot less in life than they have today appreciate where they are and how they got here.
  Back in "the good old days" when I was growing up in rural Iowa, my Sister and I really had no idea what our family financial situation was. If we needed new shoes, clothes, or money for school lunch, our parents made sure we had what we needed. Dad was a meat market proprietor; Mom was a housewife. Most moms in those days were housewives. Divorces were rare, and bankruptcy was even rarer. There was one man in our little town who didn't have many friends. I asked my Dad why that was, and he replied, "Well, he claimed bankruptcy a few years ago." Dad later said that bankruptcy was back in 1935 during the Great Depression. It was 1956 when I asked the question. But, I understood many of the towns folks' attitudes. The man always drove a new Cadillac, which might of had something to do with the town's attitude.

  The population of my hometown was around 1,500 if you counted all of the cats and dogs. Everyone knew everyone else. Few secrets were held. The fact many people were on telephone "party lines" might have been the source of much of the gossip. One day a friend of mine ran his car in the ditch about two miles east of town. By the time he got back on the road and into town, his Dad already knew it. There is something to the old adage, "It Takes A Village..." There was a number of small pranks I pulled when I was growing up, but somehow every one of them was soon discovered by my parents -- usually my Dad, who grew up in our town. There was a great number of older folks who remembered when my Dad was my age, so it was pretty hard to escape notice.

  Crime was something that happened in the big cities like Des Moines, Kansas City, or St. Louis. Burglaries, robberies, theft of any kind just didn't happen in Seymour, Iowa. The Wayne County Sheriff's office only had three or four deputies. None would hardly every come to town unless called in for a specific reason -- after all, it was a 14-mile drive from the County Seat. The area Iowa Highway patrolman breezed into town a couple of times a month, but that was just to visit and have a coke with our local car dealer. If there were any problems bordering on law breaking, it was handled by local businessmen, parents, and more likely, the school superintendent. He was a 6-2, 250-pound giant of a man and no one messed with him. He was well-liked by everyone. Most parents had the attitude that school teachers and officials could do no wrong. If you got in trouble at school, you had more trouble when you got home.

  Compare the 1940s and '50s with today. I still take the old hometown newspaper, and some of the reports are almost unbelievable. I would never guess that it was the same town. There's usually a crime report in each week's issue. Today, Seymour has less than 800 residents, but there's probably more crime in one month than there was all the years my Sister and I were growing up. This past year there was everything from murder to armed robbery, as well as quite a number of drug-related crimes.

  Now, I know what some of  you might be thinking. What's the big deal? Times have changed. Yes, but mostly not for the better. The difference, as I see it, boils down to one word: Respect. Probably all of you were taught about respect early in your lives. It's something that was earned or freely given. What we didn't learn at home, school, church, or scouts, many of us learned in the armed services. We were taught early in school the pledge to the flag and the importance of reciting it each day. We were taught about the flag, its importance, and the history of the nation. In school, we got a good grounding in state and national history, geography, and civics. Upon graduation from high school, we knew how our various levels of government worked, how we became a nation and the key players in it formation.

  We were taught respect that different people went to different churches. In our part of the state, we also were aware not everyone was a Republican. A few Democrats were tolerated, but respect was given and expected to all. At least 70 to 80 percent of the young men from our county served in the various services during World War II, and again during the Korean War. Respect to any man or woman in uniform was expected and freely given.

  A few years ago in one of his last interviews, Gen. Alexander Haig talked about his long military and government career. Regardless what you might have thought about him, he said one thing that I think can be traced to the beginning of the corrosion of respect throughout our nation. Haig was Richard Nixon's chief of staff and when Nixon was considering doing away with the draft, Haig pleaded with him not to do it. He maintained that spending at least two years of military service provided young men a good grounding of what our nation was all about -- how it worked, and why it was important to the nation and the world. In the interview, he pointed to the fact that hardly any of our elected leaders in Washington, D.C., had any military experience.

    As simplistic as this might seem, put respect back into our society and imagine how much better things would or could be changed. In Washington, alone, things would be better. Respect would be a precursor to compromise. Imagine what that would do to our everyday lives.

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