“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one” - A.J. Liebling
My father Bob Wilson took this to heart, and bought one and started his own newspaper, the Prairie Post of Maroa, Illinois in 1958, and ran it until he died in 1972. It never had a circulation of more than 2500 or so, but every week, he would fire off editorials at everyone and everything from local events to the actions of the nations of the world.
He may have been a Quaker peace activist in a Republican district, but his love and support of the farming communities garnered him enough respect that he eventually ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1962, though he lost. (He might have tried again, had he not died of an accident while only 49.) Many of his views ring true today. And he might have been willing to change the ones that fell behind the times. Although raised in the casual racism of the 1920s and 1930s, at the age of 15 he took stock of what he was being taught and discarded much of it as being wrong, and lived his life with respect for all.
I decided to transcribe his old editorials (I may make a book for some of my relatives) and every once in a while I will repost one here, as a view of how the world has changed wildly, or remained stubbornly the same.
September 29, 1960
THE STREAM OF LIFE
We are constantly amazed at the persistence of the folkways woven into the fabric of our lives.
The editor had a German grandmother, only a generation or two removed from the “Old Country”. How strongly the homeland of her people survived in speech and custom, we did not know till some years after she had died.
We have never been fond of the ordinary white bread one finds in the grocery store. It is a tasteless white pulp, loaded with chemicals to make it appear fresh long after it is stale.
In Germany, in 1946, we ate something that convinced us bread was a real food. It was “Schwarzbrot”, real German pumpernickel in thin, tasty black slices.
It reminded us dimly of something we had eaten before, and when they explained how it was made, we knew. They steamed it, of course; and it was the same “Steamed brown bread” our grandmother made when we were very small!
The persistence of songs is amazing; as a boy we heard W.O. “Pete” Galloway, over in “Pollywog” east of Latham, sing an Elizabethan ballad he had from his grandfather... and he, from his. It mentioned streets in London, the London of three hundred years ago.
The nursery rhymes we tell our children are mostly out of England long since, and the fairy tales come from many lands, possibly a thousand years old.
The speech of some older people is flavored with words that have been obsolete for an age. Grandmother did not “clean house”, she would “redd up”. It is an ancient Anglo-Saxon verb. A thing of little significance was “picayunish”. The picayune was the smallest Spanish coin, and Spanish coins were in common usage in the pioneer Midwest.
Someone who is boss is sometimes called “The bull of the woods”. The phrase hearkens back to the wild bull, the Aurochs, ancestor of our domestic cattle, which became extinct just four hundred years ago!
Many of us use expressions such as “Like a bear with a sore head”, when even our great-grandfathers may never have seen a live bear in its natural surroundings. We say a thing is “Not worth a Continental”, which refers to the currency issued by the Continental Congress, and its devaluation after the Revolution.
What we want to say is that a man who has lived forty years in the Midwest, has lived here ONE THIRD OF THE TOTAL TIME since the white men settled Illinois!
We are telling the old stories now to our little boys, and this is only the sixth time this has happened SINCE THIS NATION WAS FOUNDED.
Only six times for parents to teach children to speak, to sing, to draw pictures, to ride a pony; to know who they are and what their relation is to other people!
There is not much change in six generations in the pattern of family life; television, sputniks, and nuclear power to the contrary.
That family which was cheerful and thrifty and self-reliant and industrious six generations ago, is probably the same today.
What is true of six generations, is to a degree true of thirty. Just thirty exchanges of language and tradition and behavior patterns from parents to children, carry us back to the Middle Ages, when the Viking ravaged the coast of Europe, and the Hun scourged the Eastern Plains. Thirty generations to Feudalism, sixty to the time of Christ.
Populations intermarry, certainly; but in the main, like marries like from century to century. Even here, even now, one may see features that suggest Saxon and Dane, Firbolg and Pict, the anglicized Roman and the westernized Asiatic.
How do you meet adversity and success? Your children WATCH YOU, more than they heed your admonitions. If you find courage, and laughter, and generosity in your heart, and sincere religious faith, didn't your parents, more than anyone else, put them there?
The individual can break the chain; more so in America than in older countries where caste and “position” reinforce the natural tendencies of a family to continue as they were. It is no small thing to be oneself transformed; a changed man or woman will reflect light down the centuries, through their children, their students, indeed all who know them.
It is intriguing, is it not, to think of your ancestors a thousand years ago, and your descendants, a thousand years hence, as people very, very like yourselves, looking out with eyes much like yours, at a world in which they play a very similar part; and think, act, and talk much as you do today!
If you would change, remember that the weight of centuries resists your effort. But remember too, that you can succeed; and the pattern you set for yourself and encourage in your children may endure in young minds and hearts beyond the time when written history can recall the existence of any of us.
October 27, 1960
SMOKE LESS – LIVE LONGER!
Newspapering calls for some pretty long hours at times, and a newspaper man must be excused for the fondness he displays for the “national” advertising that comes his way.
One reaches in a filing cabinet for the schedule, and drops a ready-made ad into the paper. No typesetting, no legwork, no sweat. Send in the bill and get the money.
We an understand and sympathize, therefore, when most of our friends who publish weekly newspapers accept and use in their papers the advertising orders for cigarets which all weekly newspapers lately received.
Ordered for our several papers, the ads represented a considerable amount of money. We have refused them.
The order was accompanied by a letter from the newspaper organization which represents weeklies in securing national accounts. The order, they write, “...seems to us to be worthy of a little added recognition on your part. Some publishers have already indicated their intent to comment... in their news columns.”
We agree that the advertiser was wise to try weeklies to sell his product; the hometown weekly REACHES PEOPLE, and IT IS READ.
We are frequently alarmed, however, at the eagerness of the whole advertising business to sell, sell, sell – no matter what the product, no matter what the price, no matter what the end result on the reader who buys the product and uses it.
In this case, the end result is frequently LUNG CANCER. Impartial tests have demonstrated the high incidence of lung cancer among heavy smokers, and only the massive counter-propaganda of the giant tobacco companies has kept this from becoming generally known.
No, you will not see any ads for “coffin nails” in this newspaper. You know where to find them if you want them.
We are grateful to the people who farm the prairies of Central Illinois, and live in the small towns and cities; their two-dollar subscriptions, and their ten-dollar ads support an independent voice for the farmers and plain people of this area.
If the day comes when we can no longer publish newspapers without licking the hands of corporate giants such as the distillers of whisky and the makers of cigarets, then we will no longer publish.
This is your newspaper. So long as you want us here, we will be here.