The Future is Hollow Without the Past

Dear Boo and Bubble,

It’s been quite a while since I wrote to you.  The neglect is not on purpose…I’ve been very busy getting my book Last Laugh published and out to the terrifying world of discerning readers.  However, the universe works in mysterious ways and something I read last night brought me right back to The Bridge Project and its reason for being.

The words came from the author’s notes in David Baldacci’s book Wish You Well, a story that is a definite departure from his usual plots of political intrigue and whodunits.  As Baldacci explains – “Thus this novel is, in part, an oral history of both where and how my mother grew up.”  This sentence is not the inspiration for today’s blog.  The words that followed spurred me on to compose these thoughts for you.

“Oral histories are a dying art, which is sad indeed, for they show appropriate respect for the lives and experiences of those who have come before. And, just as important, they document those remembrances, for once those lives are over, that personal knowledge is lost forever.  Unfortunately, we live in a time now where everyone seems to be solely looking ahead, as though we deem nothing in the past worthy of our attention.  The future is always fresh and exciting, and it has a pull on us that times past simply can never muster.  Yet it may well be that our greatest wealth as human beings can be “discovered” by simply looking behind us.”

This most eloquent definition of oral history describes perfectly my original intent for The Bridge Project.  By and large, every article I’ve written has referenced a link to your forbears.  Thank goodness, some of them—particularly Joseph Benson Cottrell and great granddaddy Schaefer— engaged in similar practices, capturing an endless trove of stories about those whom they knew and from whom they collected the guiding principles of life.  To me, that’s the most significant point of chronicling days gone by—a future bereft of acknowledgement of the past is not worth having.  It is the wise captain of the ship who navigates perilous waters utilizing the charts prepared by those who went before him.

You are too young yet to grasp the concept that your formation into thoughtful, productive and substantive men began a long time ago.  Your moral perspectives and standards of personal behavior are evolving from a perpetual,familial baton being passed down from generation to generation.  And if a bright future is contingent upon the richness of the past, you boys will certainly experience it.

As is often the case, I don’t have to go very far to find something apropos to my current subject in the writings of great granddaddy Schaefer.  I found an editorial that he wrote for The Greenville News on Sunday, February 13, 1994.  It was inspired by Max Steele, a prolific southern author of the day whom granddaddy greatly admired.  I find it a bit ironic that both Steele and Baldacci utilized recollections of their mothers to pay homage to them and honor the past, which triggered Granddaddy Schaefer to do the same.

“Algonquin has published a book of his (Max Steele’s) short stories under the title ‘The Hat of My Mother.’ Reading these short stories stirred up vivid memories of my own mother.  She was a beautiful woman; black hair, brown eyes, and a figure at age 70 that was the envy of women who had just had their ‘Lordy, Lordy, she is forty’ birthday.  Her passion was music.  She had a lilting alto voice, played the piano, the guitar, a melodica and could blow foot tapping jazz out of a potato (the ocarina).  Her sense of humor was the shock absorber that eased the jarring potholes of her life, which were many and deep.

She became widowed in the depths of the Great Depression and had to put bread on the table for three hungry young mouths.  She didn’t complain; didn’t ritualize the litany of misfortune that befell her lot.  She put on her broad brim straw hat decorated with brilliant man-made flowers, a colorful print dress, and tackled the mysteries of the Gregg Shorthand System as a student at Draughon’s Business College.

She got a job as Bob Ashmore’s secretary when he was the circuit solicitor, and later ran his Greenville Office when he was a member of Congress.  This she did until she retired at age 75.”