Alfredisms

The Polk Progress was a Nebraska treasure that ceased publication in late 1989 after 82 years as a weekly newspaper. From 1955 until its last issue, the editor and publisher was the late Norris Alfred. In its last few months, the Progress had 900 subscribers in 45 states. Alfred was a remarkable Nebraskan with an uncanny eye for connecting the present with the future. Prairie Fire has collaborated with the Alfred family, the University of Nebraska School of Journalism and the Nebraska State Historical Society to locate and archive many of Norris's writings. We are capitalizing on our good fortune to present many of the Norris Alfred writings to our readership. We believe that his observations are as fresh and relevant to today's world as they were when originally written.

“Some Holiday Notes”
Dec. 30, 1982

Within the Polk, Neb. Horizon the world was white Christmas morning. The big snow had slipped past to the north leaving only a thin covering here. If snow is a Christmas blessing, we are grateful for its thinness. Thinness in snow cover, the human silhouette and line of cursive script, is preferred. It is not admired in hair on head, winter coats or soup.

The thin blanket of snow covers the winter remains of summer’s differences. Is it a hay field under that snow or did the farmer raise a crop of soybeans? Fence lines are disappearing from the rural scene, along with barns, and each succeeding winter the snow-covered terrain regains the more open range look of an earlier time. With imagination we eliminate the farmsteads in sight and gain a glimpse of what the prairie once was.

We do this imagining from within a warm car, willing to forego experiencing the cold of a wind-swept prairie winter day. From a warm car we hear the wind’s cold roar and are grateful for technological comfort. This protection removes us one step from reality. A step we take without hesitation. Keeping warm on a cold day is an imperative need, whether we get it from a furnace, an internal combustion engine or a thick winter coat.

News pictures of the homeless, huddled for winter warmth over city sidewalk grates, does not comfort our conscience. We justify unconcern with the rationalization we can do nothing about it here in Polk, Neb. They probably caused their cruel circumstances and can only blame themselves. That may, or may not, be true. We cover cruelty with a blanket of indifference—another step away from reality.

Indifference endangers us because if one person can be regarded with indifference, so can we. For it is true we are responsible for and to each other. That is the reality of our humanity. In Polk, the give and take of daily living can provide a storehouse of remarkable experiences for a weekly newspaper, such as Abbie Green’s delightfully described “messes.”

Years ago Abbie operated the last produce station in Polk, Green’s Produce, and was an interesting neighbor of the Progress printery, until she quit and returned to her peanut farms in Georgia. She maintained a storehouse of material for decorating her produce station window for the various holidays, religious and civic celebrations, and had enough to decorate other Main Street windows, also.

One Christmas season she came to the Progress office and asked if we had seen her mess in the window of the veterinary’s office and also the mess she had in the produce station window. She added there was a third mess fixed up at her home. These messes were her Christmas displays, and we have always remembered them as Abbie Green’s Christmesses.

Fortunate are those whose memories are pleasant.

Years ago, Polk’s kindergartners and first graders opened each Christmas season on Main Street by singing carols as they stood in a circle around the Christmas tree in the intersection. Before the initial festivity the children gathered in the lobby of the Polk hotel to keep wam and organize the “sing.” During the wait for all the children to arrive, Mitchell Werner, first grader, bloodied the nose of Roger Brockevelt, kindergartner. The music teacher had her hands full stopping the flow of blood and maintaining order among the other children.

In honor of closing the switch, turning on the Main Street Christmas lights, went to the child whose name was drawn from a box of paper slips on which the children had registered their names as they entered the hotel lobby. The quietest child in the lobby was chosen to draw one slip from the box. Written on it was the name “Mitchell Werner.”

Justice is not served by chance.

Ken Sand, superintendent of Polk schools years ago, eventually settled down as head of a large school system in Iowa. As a sideline to his job, he collected “excuses” which pupils brought, written by a parent, explaining their absence from classes. He sent us a copy of one literary “prize.”

“The reason the children hasen’t attended school regurely the So Called buss driver hasent even attempted to Pick the children up. If it even Looks like rain, the road the children live on is parshley Under Construction And he wood have No trouble Picking them Up if he Wood Just do so. I No the roadIsent this bad because I drive it My Sealf. It seems to me that the Shenandoah School Sistem is Just as Much of a Joke as it Was When I Went down there Ten Yrs. Ago. Thank you, Sgt. George Houston.”

Education is served by chance.

“The first human who hurled a curse instead of a weapon against his adversary was the founder of civilization.” —Sigmund Freud.

Reinhold Aman, who claims to be an authority on abusive language, states that Americans desperately need a how-to book on swearing. “We have a rich vocabulary of a good 2,000 earthy epithets, yet we are reduced to a bare handful in everyday use. You know the words—the dirty dozen.”

Aman is on the right track to “peace in our time.” If the military will stockpile an arsenal of cusswords…!? And hurl curses instead of nuclear missiles?! For peace among us—cuss, cuss, cuss.

A HAPPY CUSSING NEW YEAR!

Bookmark/Search this post with:

Delicious  •   Digg  •   StumbleUpon  •   Facebook  •   Yahoo