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Mabel and Elsie Are Leaving
By Walter Mills
Now that I have gotten to the point in life where I spend a few moments every morning with the obituary section of the newspaper, I have come to realize that we are fast losing a generation of Elsies and Lotties, Minnies and Mabels.
These are the women in their 80s and 90s who saw the Great Depression in its entirety, whose fathers were off fighting the First World War while there was still something called the Austro-Hungarian Empire to fight against. They were young women in their 20s and 30s when the Second World
War left them alone on the Home Front, listening to radio reports from Europe where their husbands and brothers were fighting the last good war of the century.
Their obituaries often have a great similarity - "She was a homemaker who enjoyed quilting and gardening. She had six children, two of whom preceded her in death. She was active in her church and was a member of the Ladies
Auxiliary Fire Department and the Ladies Aid Society."
They lived in a time when the country was still largely rural, when canning and quilting were both necessities and social activities. Many of them attended one-room schoolhouses, and were married in the same country church where their parents had wed and next to which their great grandparents were buried. They did not often move far from the place where they were born.
In the small-town newspapers of fifty years ago, their comings and goings were recorded on the social page: "Charles and Sadie Tewksbury report a visit for the month of June from her cousin, Minnie Cooper and her husband Roy Cooper of Elmira, New York along with their four children." Family
reunions, church suppers, Red Cross meetings were the everyday entertainments and news events in the times between and after the wars.
For the most part these women stayed at home and took care of the house and children, or worked on the family farm. Most of them married for a lifetime, and almost all of them outlived their husbands, and often a child or two. They were accustomed to loss, to hard work and their rewards were usually intangible - a clean home, respectful children, a place in the community.
Along with the loss of the Netties and the Irmas we are seeing a decline in the great tradition of sociability, of social and civic activities, that was a defining characteristic of America for its first 150 years.
I recently came across an article by Robert Putnam, a Harvard sociologist, called "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital". By almost any calculation, Putnam says, we are losing our connectedness to each other as well as our sense of civic responsibility. In one whimsical example he
discovered that although more people than ever go bowling, bowling leagues are in a drastic decline. Shriners and Lions Clubs, Elks and Jaycees, women's clubs and Red Cross volunteering have all taken nosedives.
Alexis de Tocqueville, one of the earliest of American observers, saw us a nation of joiners, forever forming associations. Our habit of civic democracy on a local level was what made our national democracy so successful.
As I write this I can glance out the window and see across an open field to the Grange Hall, an old building with peeling white paint. One Thursday evening a month a small group still gathers for Grange meetings, but I cannot imagine that it is not the last remnants of what was only one of many strong and active civic organizations.
Putnam's disheartening message is that it is social interconnection that assures a healthy democratic society, and from voting to volunteering at the parent-teacher group, to regular church-going to bowling in leagues, we are
no longer a nation of social people. Instead we are small units, wrapped up in our own insularity in front of the television with a video, or plugging ourselves into the disembodied Internet.
Their names sound strange to our modern ears - Lottie and Minnie and Mabel. The sound of a far different, and some would say, better generation. Funny old ladies with old-fashioned names. But will the Grange Hall be empty when
they have gone away?
(The above column originally appeared in the Centre Daily Times and is
copyright © 2002 by Walter Mills. All rights reserved worldwide. To contact
Walt, address your emails to wmills@vicon.net)
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Walters work also appears at: recipedujour.com
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