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. [well, almost all. I have found that his views on homosexuality were those common to his time. Would he have been able to change again? Maybe...]
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.
February9, 1967
DO IT LATER
Solutions to our problems are sometimes not so difficult as they may appear.
Someone we know solved one last week, a middle-aged editor in fact.
Possibly three months ago, he was reproached by his wife for a leaky kitchen faucet.
“I have a red-hot story to cover,” he answered, rushing for the door. “The ladies aid is holding a bakery sale!”
Two months ago, the subject of faucets occasioned a dissertation on what wonderful things a little hardship can do for the character.
One month ago, the faucet still leaked, and still provided a topic for discussion. “Faucets?” replied the editor “With all this research to do on a subject that could save the taxpayer millions of dollars?”
Last Saturday, with a sigh, the editor dragged out the three-foot wrenches, the pipe cutters and the torch, and launched into a discourse on the plumbing theory and the difficulties of this particular job.
“Dear”, offered the editor's wife, “Any muscular idiot can be a plumber, which may be why you are such a good one. Now please don't twist anything off!”
The job, after three months' delay and exaggeration of its size, took five minutes and an “O” ring that cost ten cents.
There is a lesson here somewhere.
April 13, 1967
NO PROPHET
Tuesday's DECATUR REVIEW carried a letter from Mr. Ronald D. Abel of Oreana. Mr. Abel expresses himself freely and well, and makes several good points. When he discusses the junior college issue, however, he permits his polemics to outrun the available facts.
Your editor doesn't mind in the least being described as “the self-proclaimed guardian of the public purse,” but we wonder how much accuracy there is in claims of “negativism, anti-intellectualism, nineteenth century provincialism, and reaction of every sort.” We feel much more comfortable in a criticism that really fits. We'll have to declare, like a lady trying on hats, that this one, “Just ain't the real me!”
“Tender-hearted but tight-fisted” is not too bad, all in all, but then he goes off target again talking about the “high prophet of the north forty”. We have not seen any high profit on the north forty, or the west eighty or the south twenty. All we have seen for years is farm prices so low we end up the year simply trading dollars. The only thing we are high prophet of is the low profit on the farm.
Although he is Abel and energetic as a letter-writer (how could you fail to like such a man?) we are afraid facts would serve better than fancy. The enemies of the junior college are asked to repent for living in luxury on “what they stole from their children's future”. The editor read this letter to his grade-school sons last night, and they laughed themselves to sleep.
Those who are against higher property taxes are pictured as riding in air-conditioned automobiles, watching color television, eating thick T-bone steaks, and carpeting their garages.
You'll have to forgive our being personal about this, since we didn't start it, someone else did. The T-bone steaks are fine with us, but is has been twelve months since we had a set of them in the freezer. Careful cooking of the economy cuts permits those who raise beef to enjoy some of it themselves. Your editor considers air-conditioning on automobiles a delusion and a waste, and color television a luxury for those who are sure they can afford them. We squeeze one hundred thousand miles out of a low-priced six-cylinder automobile with a stick shift, and our TV set is an eight-year-old black and white.
As to carpeting, there is none in our garage (no garage) and none in the house either. We have only had inside plumbing in the old farmhouse a few years, and are still so proud of it that we flush the toilet to entertain our guests.
The children whose future we have robbed... the same ones who laughed themselves to sleep... go with us when we save our nickels and take a vacation trip. The same evening, we had a discussion with our twelve-year-old about the relationships of the Christian and Jewish faiths as revealed in James Michener's massive historical novel, “The Source,” which he had just read. What money we have goes for travel, for good books, for records and a few modest art objects. The parent is no bystander in the process of educating a child. Father and mother are still the primary educators, ably and intelligently assisted by teachers and schools. Measure the difference in students who have passed through the same classrooms, and you have measured the difference in their homes.
Ronald Abel is right when he suggests that education is more important than color television and air-conditioned automobiles. We so believe and so live. He is wrong, however, when he supposes that property owners are that kind of people. He seems to share an attitude with Steve Bellinger of Radio WDZ, who snorted (off the air) “I know about these farmers; some of them are down to their last Cadillac!”
The flippancy and lack of information behind that attitude strikes home with brutal force just at the time when property owners are examining their increased tax bills, bills which support the public and its activities at levels which the taxpayer considers wasteful and unnecessary, and which bear little relationship to the hard, spare life which a great many taxpayers, out of both necessity and conviction, still impose upon themselves.