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Farmer Luther Welch says his father's prediction that people would become consumed with greed has come true. |
AS THIS YEAR'S bad
I focus both on the world view of the 76-year-old Northumberland County farmer and on a warning his father delivered long ago.
"More than 60 years ago, my father predicted I would live to see four things: People would be consumed with greed, Americans would be taxed to death, folks would get more educated but lose common sense, and we'd live under a dictatorship," he said.
Welch, who has donated the land, farm equipment and labor to start the Northern Neck Farm Museum near Burgess, said he believes all four things have come true.
Especially the last.
"If you have to apply to one group to dig a ditch on your property, ask someone else where you can spread manure and file for permission to put up a building on land you've had in the family for generations," said Welch, "I'd say that's a dictatorship."
He also believes his father, Ray, was on the button about taxing us to death, a feeling underscored by all the recent bailouts.
What bothers me is that there aren't more people who think like Welch.
Our society is moving away from folks who are self-sufficient, who produce something and who believe in an increasingly outdated notion of living within their means.
Through the years, Welch has shared with me stories about the way he and other farm families were raised.
He detailed the hard work by children and parents alike to produce food from gardens and livestock, raise crops and keep buildings and a can-do spirit intact.
"When I was born, they paid the doctor with a baking ham and a gallon of warm milk," he said. "You used what you had. It's the way things were done."
Welch can't believe how many young couples he sees today with big houses, big cars and big debts to get everything their parents worked a lifetime for--wanting it all by the time they're 30.
It struck me that if you took some of the big banks, mortgage firms and even a company like General Motors, and put folks like Welch on their boards, things would be done differently.
But mainly, I think he and others in his generation, which learned about doing without and sacrifice in World War II, learned something recent generations have missed.
True happiness and a life's worth aren't measured by paychecks and possessions.
They're measured in a life that produces something useful or improves the lives of others.
Life also is enriched if that work gives you a connection to the land, and to those who came before you.
Right now, this financial crunch is hurting all of us.
But seen another way, this crunch can be a wake-up call, forcing us to re-examine how we live and what we value. It can push us to downgrade the pursuit of "stuff" and upgrade connections with those we hold dear.
In the long run, it can help us with a life-changing reordering of our priorities--reversing all those things Welch's father predicted
Rob Hedelt: 540/374-5415
Email: rhedelt@freelancestar.com
