The following column is an adapted version of an essay I submitted to National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” project. The topic is one that never goes out of style — history.
In school, I studied history along with the other basics. I did my English and math homework first, though. To me, they were less abstract. From my history text, I memorized names and dates. Catchy terms like ‘Boston Tea Party’ and ‘Sagebrush Rebellion’ lodged in my brain, but not necessarily with their stories and historical significance. As a young girl, my concerns gravitated around the here and now, not the “then.” I wanted to know what was for dinner, how late I could stay up, what the shy new boy thought of me, or when I could next drive my dad’s old Willy’s jeep — scrunching my nose and pulling the gear shift with all my might.
In college, I learned about philosopher David Hume’s assessment that each of us is defined by a bundle of experiences. And, indeed, now I believe that this bundle of experiences is as vital to my makeup as is my skeletal structure. It took my own history in the making to realize the merit of all of the world’s history in the making.
My mother is from Germany — what used to be East Germany. In 1961, she sailed from Bremerhafen to New York Harbor during the same week the Berlin Wall dramatically appeared, as if suddenly shoved up from beneath the city. The building of the wall juxtaposed with my mom’s arrival in America echoes the nation’s foundation upon principles of freedom and opportunity. Aha, this harkens back to my history classes. In 1989, I watched television images of the wall crumbling. I was riveted to the unfolding of an event that will join the Boston Tea Party in future history texts.
My father learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during Sunday lunch at Grinnell College. He had been drafted into the Army Special Training Program, but as a pre-med student, he had been deferred from duty and whisked through a fast-track medical program. He wore a uniform all through medical school, but never went to the front lines. This training set the stage for my dad’s rewarding career as a small-town family physician.
At home, I believe that footsteps of the past have poised the American West that I know for its next incarnation. John Wesley Powell explored the vast and tumultuous rivers in the Colorado Basin, rivers now tamed by engineering feats like Hoover Dam — a Great Depression inspiration. There is the restless capitalistic spirit of those who came to mine for silver and gold in the 1800s and have returned in quest of natural gas and oil. The Homestead Act dotted the landscape with settlers, cows, and crops; now the Baby Boom adds its retirees to an ever-urbanizing landscape. And all of this is only a small part of the bundle.
I believe that honoring history helps us understand the present and prepare for the future. It shouldn’t be a surprise that war, waves of immigration, a vigorous spate of oil and gas drilling activities (with oil shale exploration coming out of the mothballs) and other variations on “settling the West” — they are all happening — again.
Kristine Crandall’s column runs in this space on alternate Fridays. Reach her at birke@sopris.net.
