There is nothing sadder than losing the history of your family, your way of life, your closeness to LIFE ITSELF, and the feeling of your ancestors presence in the land, along with all you knew and loved, and "are", to "progress"
I remember all the little dairy farms that once were all around here... I remember Gilbert's most of all because I passed it on the school bus every morning and afternoon and went to school with one of the sons... I mean, I knew who he was, but we really had never talked
One day I saw him at school, probably in 1963, and he was so depressed... I asked him why... and he told me that his father was selling the farm... I said OH NO and how I felt for him...
At first he was defensive saying people say that but noone really knows how it feels to lose your home and way of life like that , that had been in your family for generations and you felt all of that history and family around you when you were there... and then I said, " Yeah, well I do!" and he stopped and looked at me...
I told him I knew how it felt, because we had had 9 acres of land and my father and grandparents had had their own little farm there before I was born, and I was one of the 5th generation to live there... It wasn't a farm like his family had, but it was still natural and felt like HOME because I knew every tree, many of the animals, and every part of the land and the cycles of nature there better than I knew the back of my own hand... It was my heart and soul, my peace and my dreams, but we'd had to sell it too... in 1959
He looked up at me with tears in his eyes and in the silence and a few words, we had bonded in some way... and he was so glad that someone understood how he felt, and so was I... finally someone who knew what it felt like...
... Most people in the area had never known what that was like. Farms were few and far between... Population density had been low... but new people had been moving in and building new houses on small parcels of land and they knew nothing about farming and hated the smell of the cows... which was like perfume of the gods to us
I didn't really see him much after that and I don't remember if we ever spoke again... but it made a difference to both of us... I felt it, and I saw it in his manner and in his eyes
I don't even know whatever happened to him... but that moment stands out in my mind and lingers with memories of former times that are who I really am, in a world I have merely adapted to since then ...
... like this farmer, who knew every generation of cow as individuals on his dairy farm... and lost them all... to slaughtehouses... and his whole way of life AND his livlihood as well.... Making it even more tragic for people like them, and the boy I knew at school, than it was for me
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