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.
January 10, 1963
FOUR DOWN, GOAL TO GO
Every writer who is read, and some who are not, must have his try at describing what it feels like to be four-tenths of a century old.
It feels great. It will doubtless turn out even better than being thirty-nine, which was the best we knew anything about up till that time.
Forty does not bring visits from gravestone salesmen, but a kind of droll requiem is expected as one goes over the hill and starts down the other side.
It was just lately we discovered how pleasant it is to sit with one's back to the chimney, the aging vertebrae suffused in a warm glow.
We still work all night when the occasion requires, but we seem to be getting much better at thinking of reasons not to.
Forty is a deceptive age. A man can have gray hairs, and still do cartwheels when nobody is looking. At forty, the bankers take a fellow to be responsible because he has wrinkles around the eyes and a few deeds salted away in the safe deposit box... but the same boy is lurking there who threw snowballs at hats a few years ago.
If there is something the man of forty did yesterday that makes him short of breath today, he is convinced he could again by “getting into condition a little”.
Af forty a man recalls climbing high mountains, boxing or wrestling all comers, square-dancing the girls till they were dizzy. He is sure he could do it all again; but the mountains are still there, the boxing gloves gather dust in the attic, and though the girls still look the same (Ah, yes!) they never glance at Forty, but only at his sons or nephews.
At twenty we never questioned the policy of concerns that will not hire a man past the forty mark; today we think it preposterous. People vary; we have seen men at forty beaten, sagging, conditioned by defeat to accept more defeat. Forty can be, instead, the end of an apprenticeship that has honed the wits and strengthened the grip in preparation for a career.
Take our word for it, the forties can be fun; we're taking Carl Sandburg's word for it that the eighties can be, too!
February 21, 1963
YOU ELECTED THEM
This is the Silly Season for state legislatures. Illinois simply did not know what lawmaking was till they got the present body sitting in Springfield.
A reaffirmation of states rights, an attempt to order the recitation of the national anthem by every school child at the beginning of each day; and finally an attempt to disenfranchise the poor has capped their early efforts.
State Senator Robert W. McCarthy of Lincoln has attacked this latter proposal as “radical” and “inconsistent with our concept of democracy”. A constitutional amendment was offered which would prohibit voting privileges to otherwise qualified citizens who had received any “poor relief of other public assistance, except assistance to the needy blind,.... within eight months immediately preceding an election.”
“Putting public aid recipients in the same classification as criminals, who aren't permitted to vote, threatens the very foundations of our government,” according to McCarthy. He predicts the suggestion will die a well-deserved death, but he points out its origin as a symptom of a way of thing; all five of its sponsors are Republicans.