A Land of Ghosts

 I went home to the bluegrass state recently. As always, I am pleased by its natural beauty. The Kentucky hills reaching to the sky with lush pastures and creeks at their bases. Rock outcroppings that weep with little streams of water that begin their journey somewhere in the peaks. The pastures are often a quilted pattern of cattle and horses grazing happily on the blue grass. From crossbred to pure bred, painted horses and Thoroughbreds, it is mostly a picture of agricultural bounty wrapped in wooden fences and dotted with magnificent barns.

   As we made our way through old familiar roads however, I was surprised, and a bit dismayed, to find half million dollar houses on land that was not so long ago occupied by rusty-roofed wooden sheds and contented livestock. Where twenty acre pastures fed family herds, now five houses of masonry splendor with four car garages have cut black ribbon paths across creek and grass to scar the quarter. Progress, or some by-product of it, has come to disquiet this lovely place. The city has metastasized and is reaching the heart of this particular rural community. Its encroachment is evident by the abandoned farms.

   Together houses, sheds and barns that once were full of families and their living, now stand graying and folding with neglect. The metal gone from barn and shed roofs exposes ancient wooden shingles, and where those are missing, solid old beams painstakingly axed and placed by able hands, are now naked to the elements and left to perish. Doors are hanging by a single hinge waiting for one more storm to lay them to rest.

   The houses that experienced the laughter, the joys of birth, and the pain of death within their humble walls, now set cold, silent and empty. Houses are just structures until they are occupied, its then that they become homes. You can have a fine house with bricks and wood alone, but it takes good people to make a fine home. For many decades a knock on the door would result in a welcoming invitation. These were once good farms, but now it is only the wind that makes the wooden screen doors open and close. Only the light of the sun through the broken panes is left of the warm glow that was once a farming family home.

   Generations of folks for 180 years or more lived and died on this fertile bluegrass soil. Children were raised. Some children went off to school, some went to war. Some returned... too many never did. There was so much life here once. A farm is a living thing after all. Its’ a cycle. The earth producing sustenance to families, and then the giving back in sweat and toil of the energy received from the soil, is what completes the manner of a simple livelihood that is as old as the human race itself. Now, at some of the farms I saw before me, only memories remain of the vitality that once was.
I am not against prosperity nor am I unappreciative of change when change is necessary and good. Yet, as our nation becomes more and more crowded, our dependency grows increasingly on fragile things. Farming corporations are becoming the rule in agriculture. Big box store shelves are the main source of food. We place our sedentary lives in the hands of technology and pharmaceuticals... in the hopes of staying healthy.

   Media is often the main source of cerebral stimulation for people. Used to be that days working on the farm kept many folks “healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Wealth wasn't realized always in financial terms; spirit and character benefited the most. For most of America that hasn’t been the case for some time now. Our population is moving rapidly further from the family farm or rural life each year. The number of people who have no idea (or even care) where their food comes from is shocking.
Farming and ranching are literally the roots of America. As I watch the life drain from parts of rural America, I feel some trepidation and a great sense of loss. The “good old days”, I fully realize, were often very hard old days. But, they were simple days. Days that built strong people. Strong principles. An amazingly strong nation.

   Strength was gained from the land ...and the stewardship of it. Strength like the once sturdy buildings and fertile fields I beheld in some parts of my beloved home state.

A strength that I fear is slowly, imperceptibly, decaying away.

K L Dennie Jan 2012