Small Towns

The Land Of Might-Have-Been; Jeremy Northam, vocal; Christopher Northam, piano

Tiny as it is, Bruce, South Dakota, has an American Legion Post. Dad belonged to this company of military veterans for many years. As long as I can remember, Dad held the office of post adjutant and took on the job of making telephone calls and sending out post cards to alert members of upcoming meetings and events. Dad’s friend, E., was treasurer of the organization. He and Dad worked well together, along with other officers, to make it a serviceable group. They gave out scholarships to students, organized weekly bingo, provided help for unfortunates, put together a Memorial Day program every May and did much, much more.

E. worked at the bank. Whenever Dad needed to discuss financial issues concerning the farm, he would drive into town and talk to E.

More than likely, at stome point, Dad and E. served time together on the council at Grace Lutheran Church. In addition to all of this, they shared an interest in guns and hunting.

I could tell you similar stories about my Mom and her involvement with the ladies organizations at church and with the American Legion Auxiliary. There’s an awful lot of crossover as far as memberships are concerned.

Oh, and by the way, to top it all off, as I have been told and reminded for almost forty-five years, most of the citizens of the town of Bruce are related to each other.

Community in Small Town America, as you can see, is a dense network of relationships. It’s not about if you know each other. It’s about the ways that you know each other.

In the big cities, you can create sudo-communities. You can put together bunches of people that have similar interests. For that matter, you can also ignore people that live in your general vicinity. I suppose it more resembles a club … than a functioning community. As human beings, we (mostly) have that “herd” mentality in common. There’s more efficiency in working together than in working alone. So, I don’t begrudge the tightly-knit circles of friends that form in thickly populated areas.

But if you want to experience a real community – where your place is not conditional upon race, vocation, politics, beliefs, religion, health, level of education, work ethic, abilities or opinions – just you and who you are, being a body amongst a few other bodies, offering who you are to, and what you can do for, the general needs of the collective – a willingness to coalesce a lattice of kinsmanship or kinswomanship amidst a microcosm of the world so far away – to belong if only because this is where you live – then park your laurels in a small town for a season. When population precludes quantity, the bonds of rapport, camaraderie, amity and friendship have sinews of steel.

You really have to pay attention for the first half hour of the motion picture “Gosford Park”. Director Robert Altman assembled a “dream” ensemble cast for an upstairs/downstairs-type murder mystery in which every member of the sixty-one member company is important. At the outset of the show, family and guests arrive at the English country home, Gosford Park, of Sir William McCordle. And they all bring their butlers, maids and chauffeurs. Your job, as a viewer, is to keep track of which butler, maid, or chauffeur downstairs belongs to which family member or guest upstairs. As you can imagine, the result is not very unlike the matrix of social and family connections in a small town.

The film takes place in the 1930’s. One of the characters in the movie is the British composer and actor Ivor Novello. His claim to fame is the writing of the World War I song “Keep The Home Fires Burning”. Several times during the picture, actor Jeremy Northam, as Ivor Novello, sits at the piano and performs several of Novello’s songs. But one stands out: “The Land Of Might-Have-Been”. Director Altman chose it for the movie’s closing scene where the cars are driving away from the mansion.

Somewhere there’s another land

Different from this world below,

Far more mercifully planned

Than the cruel place we know.

Innocence and peace are there –

All is good that is desired.

Faces there are always fair;

Love grows never old nor tired.

__________

Shall we ever find that lovely

Land of might-have-been?

Will I ever be your king

Or you at last my queen?

Days may pass and years may pass

And seas may lie between –

Shall we ever find that lovely

Land of might-have-been

Credits: To the citizens of Bruce, South Dakota, complete with faults and strengths, still, a community extraordinaire.

This is my normal Saturday individual track posting.