The Wilkinson County, Ga., field where Will Brack grew cotton in the 1930s. Photo by Andy Brack.
By Andy Brack
Editor and publisher, Charleston City Paper
CHARLESTON, S.C. | Ninety years ago, the red, sandy field in middle Georgia buzzed with agricultural activity as a grandfather worked the land to coax cotton out of 12 acres. It was hard work for a man who left school after seventh grade. After ginning a crop and paying back a government loan for seed and fertilizer, he pocketed about $50. For the year.
For all of the talk these days in politics about going back to simpler times, people forget the sweat and toil across a South with no air-conditioning, few phones, little reliable electricity and the soul-numbing racism, misogyny and poverty that filled every rural crack and crevice throughout the region. It was a different time.
Fast forward to the post-World War II years when my father grew up – not on the farm, but in Macon, Ga., where the family eventually shifted from renters to owners of a small home. Communication and transportation got better. Prosperity bloomed as more people moved off the farm and sent their kids to decent public schools. Some even became the first in their families to get college degrees.
The family unit was still strong as in-town folk often returned to the country to visit, eat, attend church services and generally commune. And while times were changing, the old bugaboo of race lurked in segregated schools, cafeterias, bus stations, theaters and daily interactions. “The good old days” still weren’t all that good for too many people across the South.
Then came my generation where the late 1960s and 1970s saw huge changes with conflict among the old and young over civil rights, war, pollution and lifestyles. What emerged was an inward-focused culture that was more equal and diverse, but too comfortable with ego and greed. Too much of family got shoved aside for the all-important “me generation.”
Again, communication and transportation got better. Technology surged with endless solutions to generational problems. But politics started getting more divisive, just as more people prospered. And in the South, lots of newcomers started moving in, which changed things even more.
Now look at today’s youths, with their high-speed internet and social media obsessions that shrink society to a mobile phone and often put families on the sidelines. Oh, they can move money instantly, Facetime with a friend in Romania or learn a language using an app. But too many seem lonelier than the poor Southerners in times of my grandparents and parents. Today’s Southerners are connecting but getting more disconnected.
Florida-born humorist Sean Dietrich taps into this dichotomy as he plays banjo, piano and accordion to 200 audiences a year. Just this month in Charleston to a crowd of more than 400, he sang everything from church spirituals to the theme from Beverly Hillbillies. The mostly older, white audience knew the words and sang along.
Dietrich, 41, tells stories of the disappearing South, the region of the country where “I worry my children and generations beyond won’t appreciate the Sunday church dinners on the grounds with tables laden with the best fried chicken, weird jello ‘salads’ and desserts galore.
“These stories are mostly about growing up in this interesting and diverse hotbed we call the South and there are so many shared experiences that we have from growing up in this part of the world,” he says. “And I fear that that way of life that we experienced when we came in — at least my generation — came in on the tail end of that way of life, and it’s falling apart.
“Everybody’s learning how to talk like Midwestern sports announcers. Everybody is learning how to be this global community instead of this rich, strong region that we used to experience.”
It all worries me too – the disconnect with extended family, the technological onslaught that sends us deeper into personal holes, the polarized politics grasping at a past that’s not going to come back.
And while society now is more diverse and has more knowledge, I don’t think I’d want to grow up in the challenging world that kids encounter today. What about you?
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