Due to
America’s historic and present-day cultural diversity, I may be going out on a
limb to speak of the American “psyche”. Nevertheless, I will assert that the
current, self-woven fabric of the American psyche is being ripped apart by
diametrically opposed forces inherent in its weaving.
On one hand,
our mythologized, historically ingrained desire
for, and idealization of, the values
of independence, mobility (both geographic and social), “rugged individuality”,
bravery, and self-reliance has been, paradoxically, satisfied and intensified
by the destructive forces of unprecedented technological change and extreme
social dislocation that occurred during the horrific twentieth century.
On the other
hand, in response to the above-mentioned
destructive forces, an equally strong, mythologized desire for social
continuity, familiarity, communal but family-centric activities (both social and
economic), nurturing, and conformity has been manifested. These desires have given rise to a desperate
need to belong to a place-specific but
time-independent safe, idealized “community”.
This community,
or “small town”, is located temporally in an ill-defined mythological and
nostalgic agrarian past, and located geographically in New England, the
Southeast, or the Midwest. Exploring the forces driving American urbanization
and the resulting disappearance of interpersonal and economic bonds
characteristic of “small” community life presents a complex topic beyond the
scope of this essay.
Indeed, the great majority of 18th and 19th century Americans lived in small, stable communities that existed over many generations, as a walk through an older, non-urban church cemetery will confirm. Examination of economic and family records suggest these communities were cemented together by blood and social interdependence. The decline and disappearance of “small town America” is coincident with the end of the “Pax Britannica” during the first decade of the 20th century. The ensuing fifty-year world war, of heretofore-unseen savagery, was fueled by technological advances and extreme social dislocations. The final demise of small-town American life may be dated to the creation of artificial “small-town” communities such as Levittown, NY in the mid-1940s and universal availability of instant communication by telephone, radio, and television by the early 1950s.
Obtaining an answer to the question: What was it like to live in a small American town “back then”? is problematic. History is written by the victors, and is of limited use in the study and interpretation of vernacular culture, which deals with the story of the vanquished. Therefore, capture of unprocessed recollection or narrative is critical to preserve the stories of people ignored by historians. Collection of these data is left to folklorists or enthusiasts operating at the fringes of academia. 19th-century small-town recollections are unfortunately beyond the range of individual human memory. Recollections of early to mid-20th-century small-town life will invariably be colored by the above-mentioned mythology and nostalgia, because this was the time period of rapid urbanization, cataclysmic societal change, and social fragmentation. Study of material culture artifacts is useful, but provides at best equivocal interpretation. Perhaps useful answers to the question: What was it like to live in a small American town “back then”? may be found in art, specifically, in literature. Certainly, not in journalism posing as literature; the small towns of Agee and Evans’ “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” (1941) are a nightmare vision of a dying social order. Alternatively, fiction exemplified by Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio” (1919) or drama exemplified by Wilder’s “Our Town” (1938) could provide more “truthful” information. But I think the essence of small-town America may be expressed by a combination of poetry and music.
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