In today’s post at Amerika.org, Brett Stevens interviewed me about the Southern Agrarian movement. Amerika.org is one of those refreshing islands of original thought on the web that makes you stop and think. As with any good writing – indeed, with anything in life that truly makes you stop and think – you probably won’t agree with everything you find there, and that’s a good thing. Take a few moments to read the interview and discover what else Mr. Stevens has to offer at Amerika.org.
I just read a small part of your interview at Amerika.org, specifically your definition of an agrarian. The love of the land is something that most people nowadays just do not understand. Out of the five children my parents had, only my brother and I have that love for the place we grew up and called home. All of us moved into town when we became adults but the two of us spent all that time trying to get back to what we consider home. I am fortunate enough to own and live in our old homeplace and he now owns the land across the road that went with it. It’s definitely nothing to brag about – the house is small and needs work and there aren’t very many acres of land. But it’s ours. It’s the place we grew up, where we learned about family, right and wrong, hard work and hard times. Our spouses and children could never understand why we were drawn to that place. On the day we buried our Daddy, we both even ended up going back to the homeplace and walking over the land. At any given time during the spring plowing, you might catch both of us stopping in the field to pick up a handful of the fresh turned earth to smell it. Or during hay cutting, we will pick up some fresh cut hay and smell it also. There’s a sense of peace that falls over us each time we turn on the road to that place that just can’t be described. Somtimes late in the evening, just before it gets too dark to see, we can still hear Mama calling us to supper and the sound of all of the kids laughing and playing. We can’t deny the pull that the land has on us. We live on it, work on it and take what we need from it. This may not have had as much to do with your interview as I thought it did when it started out but people that don’t have this feeling for the land just have no idea what they’re missing. Thanks for letting me ramble.
Lisa, thanks for “rambling” – there are so many folks who simply don’t understand, and what you’ve just written provides a nice glimpse into what Southern Agrarianism is all about. Years ago, I recall my father telling me about his memories of the smell of freshly cut hay and how just a whiff of it would bring back those memories.
Wonderful comment by Lisa.