“Our Town” was the first song Iris Dement wrote, a ballad to the disappearing small towns across much of the country. America has always had a love affair with small towns, usually through the big screen eyes of Hollywood, but we've enough great novels written on the subject; after all, hasn't everyone read Main Street by Sinclair Lewis? Perhaps if you're over the age of sixty you took the time to enjoy the writing. There were other such novels about our disappearing American settings. And who could forget that Pulitzer Prize wining play by Thornton Wilder? It was also made into a movie with a very young William Holden. Never heard of it? The score for the film version was written by Aaron Copeland. Never heard of him either? Well, say goodbye to “Our Town”, the sun is sinking fast.
I am not here to write about nostalgia, although I will write about the past, write about our histories; notice the plural. We can go on the internet, the new media, but I really don't know what to call it except recycled videos dressed up in new clothes. Almost everybody and their brother has a presence on the internet at one place or another, all what is called social media and all featuring influencers; the new profession paid through advertisements or subscriptions. And these are all very talented individuals, just ask them.
At the turn of the previous century they would have been called vaudevillians, most living in what were little more than flop houses (very, very cheap hotels with hot and cold running bedbugs), and barely making enough for a scant meal a day. Talent then was barely worth a nickel. But I hear tell some of these social influencers make a good middle class living, just like the old timers who became successful as entertainers to larger audiences. As I said, I will write about our histories and of 'Our Towns”, past and present. It takes an old geezer like me to do it, the young have no sense of history.
Since our schools, the exalted educational system the various teachers' unions, the National Educational Association, and a host of other Alphabet organizations have failed to provide instruction on how “We” as a nation evolved, I suppose I should begin with a few insights. Most immigrants to America (in the early days of the colonial system) were, for the most part, penniless and often worked as indentured servants, although the term slave would have been a better fit for most of them. The period of indentured servants was usually fixed at seven years although longer periods were not unknown and certainly not rare. If the owner of the servant complained that the servant had not lived up to the conditions that period of enslavement would be lengthened until the debt was judged paid in full. And the servant could buy the debt but this was a rarity. My own family came from Scotland in 1724 into the port of Boston and traveled as far north as Maine to settle. Other Clan members went south of Virginia and through the Cumberland Gap where they carved out their own settlements. Still others headed west through New York and into Ohio Territory. Very few European citizens ever immigrated to the Colonies unless they were desperate, and still later as many decades passed, few in Europe though America all that desirable.
Immigrants found the colonial cities filled but expanding. The local farmland ever expanding westward, and so most employment opportunities were of an agricultural nature. Few European who came had trades they had practiced in their home country but for many the spindle and spinning wheel were familiar enough for women, while a strong back would suffice for manual labor for men. One came to build a new life in a new country that was still under construction. Now what most of our vaunted public school teachers do not know, and therefore cannot teach, is that for the first twenty years or so the local governments were communitarian; no, not communist, there is a difference. Sometimes we associate the Shaker movement with socialism but they really were communtarians; sorry socialists, you're wrong. If you don't know what it is, go look it up.
America has always been a country established by the constant move of population from the eastern coasts ever westward. Now sure, some people took a shortcut around the horn and found themselves in either LA or San Francisco, but that's another story. The establishment of small farms in the northeastern part of the colonies was due to soil conditions, rich soil but full of rocks, big and small; hence one of the favorite building materials for houses, barns, and fences. The mid-Atlantic states had better soil with far fewer rocks, and being more southerly climate wise, could produce a wider range of crops.
By the time one reached the Carolinas, the agricultural selection had changed to crops such as rice, sugar cane, indigo, cotton, and tobacco. With the vast tracts of pine forest, one could also produce pine tar and other naval stores. Georgia did some of that on its narrow coast, but its red clay was planted mostly in cotton and some tobacco in the northern part of the state. From Virginia south we saw the normal crops for local food consumption, although the northern and western part of the state produced large crops of corn, wheat, and oats; Virginia produced far more tobacco than cotton. At this time, there were no states where cattle production had became an export to other states.
What about roads, you say. Well, what about them? If we ranked how civilized countries were by how developed their road system happened to be, Italy is number one on the list thanks to their ancestors, the Romans. Those ancient people were really great at road building and managed to build many in France and a few in England. Ah, but the French understood the need for roads far better than the English.
There is literally no place in England that is more than forty miles from the sea, therefore most goods traveled by boat. At one time the English and the Irish alike built canals to facilitate commercial transportation but it was the French who elevated road and canal building to an art form. A look at the map of France shows the river waterways for transportation, but to connect them one needs roads and then a few canals as well.
In fact, one can travel across France in almost any direction by canal and river. The French also learned that placing trees along the sides of the roads only served to keep them from drying out after the rains, something neither us nor the English ever understood. The only roads that were paved in the early days were the streets in the center of larger cities, otherwise it was all dirt; And don't forget the ditches by the side of the road, as we hadn't concerned ourselves with proper sewage removal. My god, we were a filthy place.
Every residence in town had an outhouse, public houses may or may not have had such conveniences, and the farms, well, that was up to the owner. Of course some enterprising individuals would 'build' a road and charge a toll for its use. A piked pole or turn style was place across the entrance and would be moved aside when the toll was paid. This gave us the two different names for main thoroughfares, Turnpikes and toll roads. Often these roads through the more rural areas were little more that logs split in half, placed on the ground, and covered with dirt. Newer models used thick planks instead as sawmills came into being.
Transportation was a national weakness since most longer distance transportation was done by boat. These were coastal vessels that handled both cargo and passengers, making the seaports the most important, the most population congested, the most industrial (what industry there was at the time), and the most financially important of all colonial cities. Fishing ports also doubled as shipping ports. Farm produce was often carted to these ports or cargo floated down rivers and large streams for transportation to larger cities. But then came two developments that changes the accepted way of doing things.
First, as the need grew for greater transport capabilities, there was a concurrent rise in industrialization. Coal was being mined in central and western Pennsylvania while the demand increased greatly along the seaboard. Finished woolen and cotton goods needed to be transported into the hinterlands for sale to an increasing agrarian population while that same population need to transport corn, wheat, and oats to the seaboard. First came the digging of canals, and then the construction of railroads. Funny things happen when you build canals and railroads; people build homes, and then small towns, and then even small cities next to them. Hotels, restaurants, and other businesses spring up. The building of “Our Town” occurs.