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Reflections: 125 years ago, life was starting to change much more than most of us like to believe · Kendall County News - Shaw Local

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  Speaker 1: Reflections one hundred and twenty five years ago, life was
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  Speaker 1: starting to change much more than most of us liked
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  Speaker 1: to believe. Written by Roger mattil And for Shaw Local
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  Speaker 1: News Network. This article is being read by an automated
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  Speaker 1: voice brought to you by ever Litt. As children growing up,
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  Speaker 1: we tend towards the idea that things will remain constant
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  Speaker 1: virtually forever. One of the first lessons we learn, or
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  Speaker 1: should learn as young adults is that the only thing
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  Speaker 1: that remains constant in life is change. When I was
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  Speaker 1: a youngster, I remember wanting to grow up to be
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  Speaker 1: a farmer like my dad. In those days seven decades ago,
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  Speaker 1: farming meant growing crops and raising livestock. Crops were rotated
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  Speaker 1: on a regular basis and included corn, soybeans, alfalfa often
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  Speaker 1: varied with clover and timothy, and oats for the most part,
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  Speaker 1: with maybe a little wheat rye or bar for the adventuresome.
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  Speaker 1: The grain crops were regularly rotated with the hay crops
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  Speaker 1: in order to enrich the soil. Fertilizer consisted mainly of
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  Speaker 1: manure collected each year when the cattle yard, hoghouses, and
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  Speaker 1: chicken house were cleaned out manure was shoveled by hand
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  Speaker 1: into our orange new idea manure spreader and hauled out
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  Speaker 1: into the field where it was spread on the cropland.
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  Speaker 1: There was specific equipment for all of the tasks my
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  Speaker 1: father and mother needed to do on the farm, each
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  Speaker 1: built by a company that made its money producing products
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  Speaker 1: filling those niches. It all seemed so solid and unchanging.
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  Speaker 1: But fairly quickly that whole way of farm life ended.
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  Speaker 1: Diversified farms quickly gave way to specialized grain or livestock operations.
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  Speaker 1: More farm wise began working off the farm full time
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  Speaker 1: for wages instead of growing big gardens and fruit orchards,
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  Speaker 1: canning vegetables, meat and fruit, and selling eggs and chickens.
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  Speaker 1: But looking back through diaries kept by country folk indicates
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  Speaker 1: lots of change, Often major happened before I was even
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  Speaker 1: a gleam in my parent's eye. In fact, before my
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  Speaker 1: parents were gleams in their parents' eyes. Good examples are
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  Speaker 1: the diaries of the Bushnell family, who lived into Caalb
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  Speaker 1: County just across the Kendall County line. They dealt a
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  Speaker 1: lot with Kendall County folk and spent their time in
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  Speaker 1: and around Plano, Little Rock, Sandwich and Hinckley. The normal
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  Speaker 1: view of farming in the early nineteen hundreds is that
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  Speaker 1: it was grueling, lonely work, with hardly a minute for
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  Speaker 1: self enjoyment. But the first thing that strikes the reader
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  Speaker 1: when he picks up twenty five year old Frank Bushnell's
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  Speaker 1: diary for nineteen hundred is the amount of recreation farm
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  Speaker 1: folks enjoyed along with the hard work. Barely a day
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  Speaker 1: went by without one of the family members heading off
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  Speaker 1: for one of the nearby towns, a neighbor's house, church,
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  Speaker 1: or some other place. A constant stream of visitors came
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  Speaker 1: to the Bushnell farm, and family members reciprocated. Often visitors
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  Speaker 1: stayed overnight. Most of the time they came for a meal.
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  Speaker 1: They made trips to town many times each week all
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  Speaker 1: year around, even during frigid winter months. Most of the
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  Speaker 1: year the mode of travel was by buggy or road cart,
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  Speaker 1: but in the winter the Bushnells got the cutter, a
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  Speaker 1: one horse sleigh out and used that to visit and
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  Speaker 1: run errands. When harvest time comes around, modern farmers hit
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  Speaker 1: the fields for very long days, often working well after
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  Speaker 1: dark by the headlights of their combines and tractors. But
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  Speaker 1: just like their descendants a century and a quarter later,
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen hundred, in the middle of the threshing season,
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  Speaker 1: the Bushnells in their neighbors took four or five days
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  Speaker 1: off when the Sandwich Fair began, only to resume the
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  Speaker 1: harvest after the fare closed. Time was also taken off
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  Speaker 1: to attend the Big Rock Plowing Match and a number
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  Speaker 1: of socials sponsored by schools and churches. Then, while they
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  Speaker 1: didn't realize it, something happened at the Bushnell farm in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen hundred that would change their lives forever. Their first
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  Speaker 1: telephone was installed. No longer did they have to physically
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  Speaker 1: travel to a neighbor's house to ask a question or visit.
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  Speaker 1: They could literally let their fingers do the walking. Frank
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  Speaker 1: Bushnell noted in his diary that the family had a
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  Speaker 1: good time talking over the phone wires. But from this
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  Speaker 1: vantage point nearly one hundred and twenty five years later,
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  Speaker 1: it was sort of sad to realize that the bustling
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  Speaker 1: parade of visitors that brought the Bushnells into face to
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  Speaker 1: face contact with their neighbors was on its way out,
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  Speaker 1: to be replaced by electronic rather than physical visits to
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  Speaker 1: friends and relatives. Today, we sit in our homes relatively
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  Speaker 1: self contained. We don't need, as did the Bushnells, to
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  Speaker 1: visit for entertainment. We simply click on our televisions, phones, laptops,
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  Speaker 1: or tablets, and the world comes directly to us. If
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  Speaker 1: we need to talk to a friend or neighbor, we
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  Speaker 1: can pick up the phone, whether they live half the
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  Speaker 1: world away or next door, and chat face to face
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  Speaker 1: or send a text or email. With modern smartphones in
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  Speaker 1: our pockets, we're never far away from instant contact of
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  Speaker 1: any kind with anyone. But strangely enough, we seem to
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  Speaker 1: have turned into a less of a society because we
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  Speaker 1: no longer have to interact with real people. Instead, we
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  Speaker 1: interact with their electronic images, or their electronic voices, or
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  Speaker 1: their typed words. We don't have to speak with groups
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  Speaker 1: of people, so most of us don't. And because we
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  Speaker 1: don't have to run ideas past our neighbors in private settings,
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  Speaker 1: we huddle in our small circles of acquaintances, virtually all
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  Speaker 1: of whom believe as we do, and avoid hearing alternatives
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  Speaker 1: to our own views. The world of nineteen hundred, as
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  Speaker 1: viewed through Frank Bushnell's diary was certainly more primitive than
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  Speaker 1: our own. Frank's father died in nineteen oh eight from
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  Speaker 1: infection after an angry hog sliced into his leg with
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  Speaker 1: its tusks. Today, a few stitches and an antibiotic would
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  Speaker 1: have made Judd Bushnell's leg good as new. But while
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  Speaker 1: the world of the Bushnell family was less safe in
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  Speaker 1: many ways, it was a friendlier place where people enjoyed
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  Speaker 1: more human companionship than we seem to do in our
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  Speaker 1: modern isolated lives. Change is pile the top change, and
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  Speaker 1: while we are better off in many ways, maybe it
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't be a bad idea to look back once in
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  Speaker 1: a while and remember a time when neighborliness was the
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  Speaker 1: way life was lived. Looking for more local history, visit