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.
May 28, 1964
KILL THE UMPIRE!
The tragedy in Lima, Peru, where perhaps 300 persons died in rioting set off by a referee's unpopular decision in a soccer match, raises questions as to the nature of the human animal.
True, people have been crushed to death in panics in this country, but the frightened victims had flames at their backs to drive them beyond reason. It appears to have been a remarkable accomplishment to gather in one stadium enough brutality and cowardice to cause men to trample women and little children to death simply in order to escape a little tear gas. Tear gas, even in an enclosed room, will not kill. One could sit down and weep for twenty minutes, and it would be gone.
Brutality and cowardice are ever the same thing, because the truly strong are the most truly gentle. That stadium fell of spectators screaming for the blood of a referee because he rendered an honest decision brings to mind the bullfight crowd in Mexico City in 1908, described in the current issue of TRUE magazine.
A great many Anglo-Saxon peoples have nothing but contempt for the “sport” of bullfighting, and this writer is among them. Nowhere else is the spectator enabled to drink so greedily of the heart's blood of courageous men and brave animals, both of whom die for their pleasure on the sand of the arena.
There is a Spanish saying that to truly have lived, one must have fathered a son, written a book, and fought a bull. We know the meaning of all three. As to the bull, many and many of the readers of this page have collided with an angry bull; not for play, not for show, but simply because it became unavoidable. You have been there know the feel of pitchfork or club in your hands, and the certain knowledge that you had one stroke and one only. You know the difference between quiet courage that is there when it is needed – in women as in men – and the sham variety that puts on a forced display for public approval.
Bill Pickett was a Negro cowhand out of Texas. Few people know that he was the inventor of “bulldogging” steers. He traveled with Colonel Zack Miller and the 101 Ranch Wild West Show, a competitor of Buffalo Bill's traveling outfit.
Pickett once wrestled and threw a wild bull elk, but his most terrifying experience was attempting to contend with both a wild fighting bull and a wilder bullfighting crowd in Mexico City. Entering Mexico in December, 1908 Col. Miller was soon engaged in a newspaper controversy with the haughty toreros, who did not think much of throwing a scared steer. The offered a large bet that the American cowpuncher could not attack one of their fighting bulls AND HOLD ONTO THE HORNS FOR FIVE MINUTES.
From the beginning, the crowd was furious with Pickett. They booed and jeered when his fleet cowpony was unable to bring him into position at the shoulder of the twisting, charging, super ferocious bull they had chosen. Finally, Pickett stopped his horse directly ahead of the charging bull, and slid off onto the terrible head with arms around the thick neck and knees clamped on the nostrils. Unable to dislodge the man by frantic efforts, the bull began to tire, and Pickett began rocking it back and forth by twisting the head.
Seeing a man about to throw their dreadful toro down on the sand with his bare hands, the crowd went insane with rage. They threw rocks, bottles, boards in an attempt to kill the man. The Mexican timekeepers refused to ring the bell at five minutes, or at six, or at seven, and Pickett was rescued only by his own American comrades who rode in and lassoed the bull.
A troop of cavalry was necessary to get the performers safely away. Perhaps this kind of behavior, and that at Lima, and the actions of Mississippi and Georgia white men beating and burning Negroes; perhaps this is the norm? Perhaps we should be grateful when people behave better. At least we know that when you go to a basketball game and hear someone shout “Kill the referee!” it is merely a vocal exercise, and the fan who throws so much as a wad of paper onto the playing floor is looked upon as unsporting.
PARKS FOR THE LIVING
Among the awkward and totally unnecessary problems we visit upon ourselves is the problem of trimming grass around tombstones. As population mounts, we are going to see increasing armies of greenskeepers and sextons at work in vast acreages of marble monoliths.
You may think it inconsequential now. People have a marvelous tendency to hold on and close their eyes; many a generation has managed to get through their lifetime and be gone without really facing the problems that beset their time.
Consider England, where close to two thousand years of burials eat up the modest area and use the time and effort of their people in tending them. By now they have become aware of the danger, and 35% of all their dead are now cremated and the ashes scattered.
China was worse; there, some cemeteries went back three and four thousand years, and the rigid cult of ancestor worship dictated that every grave be given reverent care. At length, one out of every ten agricultural acres was graveyard. We may criticize the Chinese Communists for many things, but they did at least one good thing; they plowed up those cemeteries which were slowly strangling China's agriculture to death.
Some modern cemeteries attempt to solve the problem by requiring that all graves be marked by bronze plaques, flush with the ground. The mower flies right over them; yet this is merely a halfway measure. Why occupy the earth “in perpetuity” with your remains or ours?
We propose the establishment of a new kind of cemetery, a Memorial Park which is not dedicated to grief, but to the functions of any other park that serves the living. In one massive wall of a stone pavilion might be set bronze markers giving the names and dates of those who made the park possible for their descendents to picnic and play in. The mortal remains could be cremated and scattered on the flowerbeds; the lime left in the crumbs of bone should grow good roses.
Genealogists searching for permanent records could not be better pleased than to find bronze set in stone and protected from the weather; yet no foot of earth would be lost in futile praise of what has been.
Our people's growing need for green parks would be served. Not long ago in Decatur, we saw a flock of boys playing softball at the back end of a large cemetery. It was the only greensward in the neighborhood and the dead had it all to themselves. Can you blame those boys for slipping through a hole in the fence?
We have had love and laughter, sunshine and storms. We slip away. Thank the Merciful God that our blood brightens young cheeks and moves young feet across the grass. The Earth is theirs; let us make arrangements, while we may, that they may enjoy it!