From the Prairies

“To understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart.”

J.D. Vance – Best Selling Author and Yale Law School Graduate

It is continually surprising to me how I see things differently now than I did in my youth. I am 68 years old, not exactly at death’s door, but it now matters to me where I will be buried. I first moved from Rushmore in Nobles County, Minnesota where I was born, in 1970. I returned in 1975 and left again in 1983. I have lived in the Minneapolis – St. Paul metropolitan area since, a period of over 35 years, 40 years if you count the years between 1970 and 1975. I have lived in the house that I live in now longer than any other place in my life. I am anchored to this community. I know thousands of people here – co-workers, members of my church, neighbors, service club members, business people, government officials and so on. I graduated from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. This is where we raised our children. Why do I have this irrational sense that I need to be buried in a little cemetery east of Rushmore, Minnesota – to go back to where I came from?
In his New York Times best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance talks at length about his ties to his hillbilly roots. The book is widely thought to be a descriptor of the angst being experienced by working class white people and as a partial explanation of the election of President Trump. (This is a related but separate discussion.) Vance’s grandparents were part of the migration from the rural South to northern industrial centers. In Vance’s case, the move wasn’t geographically far from his native Kentucky, only to Middletown, Ohio. The cultural distance was much further. Vance’s family’s jobs at Armco Steel gave them economic gains that they could only dream of in Kentucky. But their second-generation family’s American Dream has been shattered. The loss of American manufacturing jobs and the downturn of local economies in the Rust Belt have been a big part of this. But there is more afoot than economic woes – Vance articulates it by telling his life’s story.
The “more” still is with Vance, even in his life as a successful investment banker living in San Francisco with a Yale law degree, a beautiful wife, a New York Times best-seller and more money that he could have ever imagined. The “more” relates to the feelings within him (and in me) that question whether we will, or CAN ever be more than where we come from. Will he always be a hillbilly? Will I ever be more than a poor farmer’s kid from the wind-swept prairies of Southwest Minnesota? Will the part of me that is inextricably tied to where I came from ever allow me to be a part of another world? But it goes beyond that – do I WANT to be a part of another world?
It is easy for me to not-miss some of what my first home has become. There are NO family farms like the one on which I was raised. Agriculture has become corporate, high tech and competitive. Huge livestock confinement factories foul the air for miles around with a stench that I never smelled growing up on our farm. Small towns like Rushmore are dying and children still leave for better opportunities elsewhere. The closely-knit churches where every mother felt entitled and responsible to take care of and discipline every other mother’s kid are getting to be few and far between. Backfilling the losses are problems we normally associate with large cities – drugs and violence. The culture there will evolve, and no doubt survive, but it is a different culture than I grew up with. So, what is the allure?
I suppose my family growing up was like most families – a mixture of positives and negatives. I am sure my vision is clouded by time, but my family was still the source of my core values:
• Hard work is a virtue – anyone who works hard is inherently valuable and anyone who doesn’t is not respected and of diminished value. For whatever other flaws they may have had, my people worked hard. They were industrious and fiercely independent.
• Family is first – friends are wonderful, but they may come and go. Your family is always your family.
• We live in the best country in the world. We can complain and criticize, but we wouldn’t trade it for ANYWHERE.
• Our children will be better off than we are. They will be richer, smarter and more successful than we are.
• We trust in God. To us that means that we go to church and support the church. Sometimes we fall away for a time, but we ALWAYS come back because our belief in God makes everything else make sense.
• When friends or neighbors are in need, helping them is not optional, it is required.
• We are common people – we are nothing special – we are of value only because we adhere to our other values. We never should think highly of ourselves.
• We are frugal people – waste is inherently bad, no matter what the situation. Fix it – don’t throw it away until it CAN’T be fixed.
• Its OK to not be financially successful as long as you were honest in your dealings with everyone. My Pop said, “the first law of business is that the other guy has to make a buck too”.
I think maybe what bothers me is that because I cling to these values that I don’t “fit in” here. I am too unsophisticated – I haven’t achieved much status and, in many ways, I haven’t tried. My values are not in keeping with what it takes today.
• Take care of Number One, no one else will.
• Work smart, not hard.
• Get ahead no matter what it takes.
• Your ARE something special (whether or not you have ever done one thing that is worthwhile) and people need to treat you that way.
• My country OWES me things and I am angry when I don’t think the government has treated me well enough.
Things aren’t all that bad and I might just be a cranky old man. And it is probably irrational and things might change, but something inside of me says I need to be laid to rest next to people who saw the world in the same way as I do and lived their lives in that manner.