Undergraduate /
The Tale of Grant Wood - perspective writing about anything [5]
I had to do some perspective writing about absolutely anything, so any feed back would be highly appreciated!I have lived my entire life in this good old cottage, as white as the clouds that swirl over us every single day. I farm around the clock, and I go to church just about every Sunday. Fifteen years after fighting in the War to end all Wars and not a bit has changed about me or my little girl. We love our nation as always. Life on the prairie has always been sedentary. Except for the occasional howl of the prairie wind and the tooting of the Chicago-St Louis express way off in the distance, we are a quiet place. Tumbleweeds and hills form our ever-expansive landscape. American flags adorn every hill visible. And churches dot the cornfields like black spots on cows.
We are away from the cities and their outrageous quality of life. The city is for those who are too lazy and are likely to get carried away by bad influences. By living away from the hellish nature of cities, we can avoid those speakeasies and those rebellious youngsters who need to learn to go to church instead of getting hangovers. If they can read the instructions of booze-maker, they can read the Bible. That's right. We do not need to be living in the city where folks can do just about anything and get away with it. Their life revolves around the new Model T's and the escapist silent flicks. But for us it's the Oldsmobile. We prefer the dust roads to those new superhighways that disturb the tranquility that we enjoy here on the farm. They receive much more help than they need and deserve. And we are the ones who have to finance them. Those tax policies are withholding the hard-earned fruits of our labor! A tornado swallows our home, but we break the ground, not the government! When grasshoppers and rats invade our wheelbarrows, we remove them ourselves. We don't need institutions to do them for us. We are farmers. We are Protestants. We aren't as moralist as the Puritans but we do take ethics seriously. Our productivity is useless if outside institutions taint the benefits that we reap. In the countryside, we are self-sufficient. The pitchfork is our tool to a life of well-being. We do not need Hoover to increase government influence and compromise our work ethic. The life we live is satisfactory, and we want to keep it that way.
Recently, a depression hit our fabled nation. People are out of work and looking for scapegoats and institutionalized help. If one came complaining at my door here in the middle of nowhere, I'd think of him not as a fool, but a troubled person who needs guidance and advice. I would show him my jumpsuit underneath my cloak, and expect him to drop those jaws. We don't succumb to begging for money, we work for money. Our nation did not rise simply because people did not know what they had to do, or they escaped from reality through booze. We rose from bed every morning and went off to work, looking only at the barn or the factory. And we remind ourselves that we've accomplished something on our way back home. I farm for countless hours, but it's how we become better people. By putting your ethics in the way of your desires, rewards are fulfilled. They're done so either through having them go to the market in Chicago or people coming to buy our traditionally-grown food.
My little darling spinster lives with me, in the good old Iowa countryside. She is as innocent as just about any country girl. She milks the cows, and she sews the undergarments and removes weeds from our farm. She attends an all-girls Protestant school where she studies how He created the world, and how fanatic theorists have dispelled the sanctity of the Bible for their own gain. They're heretics! She enjoys sitting on the porch and letting the godly sun light up her face, symbolizing the brightness inside her. I want her to be as pure as her looks. Either she'll marry another Protestant, or she'll not marry at all. And she belongs in the house. She does not leave and find work on her own. She maintains the family and maintains our traditions and makes our future generations remember their grandfathers. Her American mindset is reflected in her clothes. They were originally her great grandmother's who bought the colonial-era clothes at an auction at Independence Hall in Philadelphia during the Centennial Exposition back in the day. She is a devout American and a devout Christian.
Our life is simple here. Every morning, I get up at 7 o'clock to the rooster and the swinging of the restless pendulum. Sitting on the bed, I face east and watch as the sun rises up with the ease, ready to do its heavenly job of channeling its energy to grow food just like me and my farmland. I am reminded about my wife who died of rabies. A stray dog from nowhere bit my nectarine on the leg as she was grabbing the chickens in the chicken pen, and she fell ill. She died on our wooden and brass bed, the same one where my father died. Those nasty wails just won't leave my head, and will always resonate throughout our home for as long as we own it. Our neighbors and church folks all attended her somber funeral.
Yet, I still continue to live the life. On my way to the bathtub, I pass the portraits of Washington, Ben Franklin, Lincoln, and the Virgin Mary. A plaque given to my great grandfather by General U.S. Grant is up by the portraits. I then wear the jumpsuit and put on my bronze spectacles with a cracked lens, and then cook bacon. My lass, on the other hand, begins mopping the wooden floor, unmindful of the fungus and spider webs. She then cooks cornbread and bacon for breakfast. Usually, we would have mashed potatoes and gravy for lunch, and stew for dinner. But on Sundays, we fast, and spend our day either at our farm chapel or at the community church with our other families. One family at our church has children born every Christmas day since the wedding. We go there in our Oldsmobile pick-up, coughing up dust and avoiding running into our valuable farm animals.
We say our mass, and then have the Sunday conversations. Surrounded by the little ones with their carefree lifestyles, I talk to the priest, who was once a bank owner in Jefferson City. He tells me that while he was working, he would notice billboards advertising booze, the skirts of women reaching up to the knees, and people driving their cars at 30 miles per hour on local roads. He came from a family where religion was as strict a code of ethics as Puritanism. His brother was banished from the township for sneaking on a freight train and attending a speakeasy in Ohio. He wanted to become a priest to escape the decline of Victorian and conservative values in our nation.
I go home, and then I take off my church cloak, put on my jumpsuits, then head to the fields. Using my tractor, my pitchfork, and my biblically shaped perseverance, I grow the potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes that would transform into the food we eat and our now-hungry population eats. I work like this for as long as my body can sustain. Then I put the pitchfork and wheelbarrow aside, and head to the dinner table. My lass is with me, and we silently eat dinner. We then sleep.
The life out here is so simple compared to those blind urban folks who would dehumanize themselves and America's image while reveling in booze. We are away from such an atmosphere, and we are happy with it. Folk music as opposed to jazz, we Iowans value the American tradition and the Christian tradition.
