Change is Inevitable
What would they think? So much has changed since then. Change is inevitable. Some of it for the better, and some of it for the worse and still, some of it is just change. Not black, not white, just gray. People preach change, and then resist it, others stand back and watch. In the end nothing changes...But change itself. But, what would they think if they could see everything today? Would they be impressed, worry or would they say that not much has really changed? They saw so much in their life times, one born before first flight to see men on the moon and a shuttle in space. Once every road they knew was dirt, Live stock ran free and electricity occurred in town. They knew life when radio was rare and before television made it's way into peoples homes. We say that...Made it's way, but it was invited, not nearly the invasion we make it to be. They saw the Chestnuts die out. They saw the farms, the logging and the pulp mill. They saw allot change. Change is inevitable, some of it for the better and some of it for the worse. What would they think? What would they think of change that changes how we define who we are?
The Appalachianist
The Appalachianist
posted by Hill Billy Rave | Thursday, December 03, 2009
13 Comments:
The "they" of your posting doesn't have a defined antecedent except for the changes that define them or a period before those changes took place . . . pehaps before 1900as a start, but they could be anyone before a certain change or discovery took place. All of us live in a time capsul of sorts, and there is a wistfulness about this posting that is especially a part of the history of the mountains . . . a sense of loss as well as acceptance of change to my mind anyway. I have it too. I have got to think about this before I can give a good answer. It made me think. Did you get the card sent you? Thanks for the posting. Bill
I recently posted this on facebook: "Without change there can be no nostalgia" -Paul Theroux
Yes, Bill, I did get the card. Sorry about that. Since then the address you sent it had changed. Send to PO 359 and I'll get it.
Sagem this is true...
. . . but did it snow?
It did up high. I hunted in a high place that morning and it was a pretty snow. The other side of the Balsams got it.
I think the snow might come down the mountain tonight . . . get the dogs in the house . . . er, their house. Had lunch with Randy Almindinger and Ray Presnell. I was glad to see them . . . mentioned you and hope you are well. Bill
My proof:
I lived in the barracks while attending Basic Electricity & Electronics training at Naval Training Center San Diego (in beautiful, and rich, Point Loma). There was a cigarette machine near the quarterdeck, which was cool because I was a smoker back then.
It would be late and we'd be drunk (yeah yeah... we were baby sailor mans)and out of smokes. We wouldn't be in any condition to walk to the off base convienence store for more, so we'd eventually relent (and by eventually I mean immediately)and use the cigarette machine near the quarterdeck. So with that said, based on my interaction with that evil vending machine, I can confidently challenge your declaration. Change is not, in fact, inevitable.
Two points:
1. Yes that was a torturous route to a punchline.
2. It is in fact true that for some unknown reason, in the navy a building's foyer is indeed called a quarterdeck.
Who is 'they'?
Uh oh...I'm already talking like I live in the south. ;-)
I meant...Who are "they"?
My Grandfathers, Murf.
Ed, the next time I'm at NSCS Athens, I'll remember that. That reminds me of a Raccoon story...
I noticed that, Murf.
Thanks for noticing. Maybe I'll fit in much easier than I think I would if/when I move south. :-)
Murf, it is difficult to be a Southerner in the best of times. Faulkner said it best . . . my paraphrase . . . well, the past isn't even the past or words to that effect. Southerners carry our kin in our minds. They come along with us where we go . . . they come along . . . with our memories of them . . . land and place . . . for better or for worse. It is who we are . . . right down to the ground . . . and it passes gender and race . . . .
It is a shared quality . . . and yet I wrote of the "they" of App's posting and knew the answer because the answer is "us" almost as if we believe in ghosts and spirits and re-incarnation. Once long ago and far away and coming out of the fields with a roll of barbed wire that had been taken from fencing the wire itself was put in the branches of an old oak tree . . . the branches stretched across the road in front of the house. The wire was to be used later. Well, later never came. The wire, stuck there in the tree, became a monument to a momement in time when the man who drove the tractor under the tree put it there.
That is how the wire was talked about in the many years that followed through time and death and change. It was never taken down by kin. People had to move away, but the wire was left there. The family died out or moved away and the wire is missed in conversation because it came to represent the man and marked the change of a sort that had occurred with the passing of time.
I have never understood it either, but then I was born in Connecticut to a Southern mother. The winds are blowing cold in the mountains tonight. Get out a blanket or two and keep warm. The spirits and times passed will be out and about and in the morning bear tracks around the dog houses and ice to break on the water pans. Bill
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