Fifteen years ago, I joined with neighbors for a spring clean-up day at Pleasant Hill Cemetery, a half-mile north of our home. Generations of my family are buried there, now including my parents, which wasn’t true at the time. There was a young lad there that Saturday morning and I asked who he was. “Oh, that’s Jimmy, Joe Johnson’s son*. Don’t you know him?”
I thought for a minute. “No, but I know his dad. I know his grandparents. I knew his great-grandparents. In fact, I knew his great-great grandparents. So, yeah, I kinda know who he is.” I mention this as evidence that although I’ve lived other places – in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania – I’m basically “a placed person,” six generations deep. And rural North Iowa is my place.
Quoting Wallace Stegner on this topic, writing to his former student, author Wendell Berry, in an essay entitled, “Wendell Berry, A Placed Person”: “Your province is… the farm, the neighborhood, the community, the town, the memory of the past, and the hope of the future – everything that is subsumed for you under the word ‘place.’ Your ruminations most often deal… with human relations, love, marriage, parenthood, neighborliness, shared pleasures, shared sorrow, shared work and responsibility. Your natural move is… outward toward membership, toward family and community and human cohesion.”
I can only aspire to be half as good a writer as iconic authors Stegner and Berry. I can, however, subscribe to – and claim for myself – a sense of “placeness” similar to that defined by Stegner.
Last week, I received a special mailing. A friend, a distant relative, Lorna sent me several items after sorting through family keepsakes, including a printed program, “Names of Pupils Enrolled in the Mona High School for the Year Ending June 21, 1895” Mona, Iowa. It lists 61 pupils in the “First Division, F.A. Penney, Teacher,” another 50 pupils in the “Second Division, Miss Minnie Hopkins, Teacher”. (Mona, an unincorporated community of about 40 people, is a mile from our home, a half-mile north of the cemetery.)
I know or am related to many of these students, a list that includes Lorna’s grandparents, Mina and Peter, who are also MY great-great aunt and uncle… YES, the very same people I referred to above, when I mentioned knowing Jimmy’s great-great grandparents. (Come to think of it, it means I’m also distantly related to Jimmy.) Also included is Fred, Peter’s brother, showing up as “Freddy” on the list. He died in the ‘30s so I never knew him, but his granddaughters were Mona schoolmates.
I see the name of our childhood neighbor to the east, Gilbert. We all called him Gib. His daughter was my second Sunday school teacher; his great-niece was my first. The farmstead is still in the family. My childhood neighbor to the west, another Peter, is also on the list. He and Mom shared the same February birthdate, although Pete was forty years older. The widow of Pete’s nephew lives there now.
My great-great aunt Daisy’s name appears. As do several Farleys, the family for whom “main street” in Mona is named. Also, two Cobb daughters, children of the physician who practiced in Mona. August’s name is on the list; he and his family once lived in the home my parents bought in the early ‘50s, where I grew up, the place where my brother and his wife now live. Alfred’s name is there, janitor at the Mona School when I attended… our source for scores of afternoon Twins games.
So, what does it mean to be a placed person? My interpretation: It suggests you know a bit about the neighborhood and, more importantly, about your neighbors. You know, you care, you support. It means you’re engaged in local activities, participating whenever possible. It obligates you to show up, to pitch in, to help out… contributing to a vague but still vital sense of community, a place bound together by more than mere geography.
I’m most grateful for your gift, Lorna. It reminds me that being a placed person requires ongoing attention and a sustained commitment to the neighborhood. It’s a commitment well worth keeping.
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*-Jimmy is a pseudonym.
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I’m pleased to be part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. These are my colleagues: