Depression to Affluenza

In 1959 I was driving south of Smithfield on 301 hwy. At the intersection of 701 hwy I saw a young man hitchhiking (AKA thumbing) a ride. I recognized the young man and stopped. Jim, where are you going?, I asked. To Clinton, he said, to speak to the Young Democrats Club. I had known Jim (James B. Hunt, Jr. went on to become the popular four-term governor of NC.), since he spoke at my Four Oaks High Future Farmers of America Banquet in 1955 and again when he was President of the NC State FFA in 1955-56. For whatever reason that late afternoon, Hunt didn’t have access to an automobile. It was the year of his graduation from NC State University. Nothing would stop this determined, ambitious, youthful man from fulfilling his obligation.

These were times not too distant from the depression years; many families had not yet attained all the material comforts that eventually most of us have come to enjoy. In those prior years, 1933 to 1943, my father did not own a car. During those years our family’s mode of transportation was horse and wagon, unless my daddy could borrow an auto from a brother. Some people rode “Hoover carts.”

I was born in 1937. Dr. Luby Warrick, a country house-call physician, assisted my delivery; estimated cost, $25.00. It was a one-room storehouse, my family’s residence, where I was born in Bentonville Township, Johnston County, NC, on what is now known as Scout Road, which runs across the northern end of Bentonville’s historical American Civil War battlefield breastworks. The storehouse had been built in earlier years by my maternal granddaddy Eldridge Troy Westbrook, from which he sold limited general merchandise and commercial fertilizer. His young boys drove teams of mules and wagons twenty miles over the forded branches, creeks, rutty roads, and paths to Goldsboro to haul fertilizer back for his own use and sale to local farmers.

Across the road from the storehouse my grandfather had built a frame two-story house (pictured above with grandmother Westbrook, my mother Louise, the youngest, and other siblings) in which to raise his nine children. By now, in 1937, the stately home, which had been illuminated with a modern carbide lighting system, only had kerosene lamps for lighting, because there was no money to maintain the once modern lighting system. There were no electric lines in many rural areas in early twentieth century. And now in the Great Depression years there was no money to buy commercial fertilizer. Furthermore, the rich fertile soil of the Westbrook low-grounds would not grow corn even with fertilizer, because the pH level of the soil (or increase in acidity) became so low that crops would not grow. On the lame dark, fertile looking soil, only broom straw grew lustily in the acid soil. People would come from far and near to cut the straw for free to make their brooms to use in sweeping the home, because there was no money to buy a factory-made broom. On May 8, 1914 President Woodrow Wilson had signed the Smith-Lever Act authorizing cooperative extension work between the Land-Grant Colleges and USDA. That research and knowledge of correcting the pH level by use of lime for crop production had not yet been widely disseminated by a local cooperative extension service; there were poor communications, no phones to rural areas and much less than ideal dirt roads to the county seat of Smithfield.

Just down the road three miles toward Cox’s Mill, my paternal grandfather Bedford Cox (pictured with Cox family, standing behind Micajah Cox, my great granddaddy) in 1930 had mortgaged his horses and wagon to buy commercial fertilizer, essential to producing the crop. But at harvest none of the crops could be sold because there were no buyers or it was a giveaway price. Therefore, there was no money to satisfy the obligation, so the Goldsboro firm came to repossess the horses and wagon soon after the note came due. That was a devastating, emotional blow to the family as all were left crying, including the youngest, Bernard, who was only five years old. However, within several days the firm sent a message to come and pick up the horses and wagon, for the firm had repossessed more animals and equipment than they could use. The firm had no way to redeem the repossessions. Fortunately, the next year tobacco and other crops did sell, and the note was paid in full.

The year of my birth there was some light on the horizon; CP&L ran power lines by my granddaddy Cox’s place. But back at the storehouse home where my daddy, with the help of his brothers, would soon begin building a modest wood-frame house, it would be another ten years before South River Rural Electrification ran lines to bring my family into the modern world of electrical appliances. One of the happiest days of my life, at ten years of age one May evening, was running to meet my daddy as he returned from a day’s work in the low grounds to be the first to tell him of the long awaited and hopeful event. Electric lights!

Today, I often remember the summer and winter evenings of the oil lamps, doing school lessons by the warmth and partial light of the fireplace. Many summer evenings now as I appreciate the cool bedroom at bedtime, I am reminded of those summer hot days of yesteryear. The heat collected under the house’s hot tin roof with no insulation barrier and, additionally, the heat from the woodstove on which daily meals were cooked to nourish the field laborers, created by bedtime more heated misery than one could bear. The only relief would be to take perch on the wooden floor of the front porch stripped bare to undershorts.

Having lived in experiences likened to “third world” environment (conditions, even poorer, still exist throughout much of the developing world), I and some others of an older generation share a common empathy. We have honestly earned resilient lessons of thriftiness, living by meager means. And, for most, our family’s rearing allowed no place for gluttony to raise it hideous head; happiness was not necessarily synonymous with materials wealth. (Even though rationing of WWII exposed some excessive self-indulgence.)

Simon Critchley, in reference to Diogenes: “In a world like ours, which is slowly trying to rouse itself from the dogmatic slumbers of boundless self-interest, corruption, lazy cronyism and greed, it is Diogenes’ lamp that we need to light our path. Diogenes credited his teacher Antisthenes with introducing him to a life of poverty and happiness — of poverty as happiness. The cynic’s every word and action was dedicated to the belief that the path to individual freedom required absolute honesty and complete material austerity.”

Maureen Dowd says that President Obama must nurse us through our affluenza (a social condition arising from being, or desiring to be, materially wealthy, or to "Keep up with the Joneses."), addressing both our visceral need to be big and our cerebral decision to be leaner — and much, much smarter. “How do we come to terms with the gluttony that exploded our economy and still retain our reptilian American desire for living large? How do we make the pursuit of the American dream a satisfying quest rather than a selfish one?”

For many it will require hard and fast decisions, drastically changing of life styles. It will be an extraordinary adjustment for many of a younger generation that may have become accustomed living beyond their means on easy credit: flamboyant life styles, driving luxury cars beyond means, excessive entertainment, extravagance at fine restaurants, or houses financed by unaffordable loans. Help for these? Certainly for those who through honest, hard work have always struggled to keep their heads above water ---- and others who have acted responsibly, now with “pink slips,” by no fault of their own no longer have the means to sustain what they have honorably and prudently acquired. For many there may be no recognizable depression, except in our financial portfolios. But for those experiencing tough times in the here and now, it is to them a “depression.” And, we are all in it together; society’s responsibility for this financial debacle is widespread. Therefore, responsibility for a compassionate recovery must be spread wide; what affects our neighbor, backdoor and beyond the shoreline, effects on each of us.

Can Diogenes’ life of individual freedom requiring absolute honesty and complete material austerity to a successive degree coincide with Dowd’s “living large?” If so, by necessary sacrifices, time-honored ethics (a code of ethics James B. Hunt began speaking to in his early years), the old-fashion way, by a just day’s pay for an honest day’s work, we will gradually claw our way out of a very severe economic recession. Unquestionable principles engrained in America’s moral character, not exclusive of financial institutional regulations and enforcements that guard against corruption and gluttony in corporate top echelon’s management, are indispensable to long-term economic recovery and sustainability. Whether one supports Keynesian economics, stimulus, integrity and trust of the markets’ capitalist system will be our mainstay-economics.

David Brooks in Greed and Stupidity list three different financial essays, including The Quiet Coup by Simon Johnson in The Atlantic. These essays give interesting perspectives on the banking perils. Johnson ends his 16 page essay with this comment: “The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump “cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.” This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression—because the world is now so much more interconnected and because the banking sector is now so big. We face a synchronized downturn in almost all countries, a weakening of confidence among individuals and firms, and major problems for government finances. If our leadership wakes up to the potential consequences, we may yet see dramatic action on the banking system and a breaking of the old elite. Let us hope it is not then too late.” Is that alarmist? Certainly discouraging! Thomas Friedman, interviewed this week says, the situation is very complicated, the larger banks will not reveal extent of their toxic assets for fear they’ll be left to failure; they’ll just keep coming back for a few more billion. Evidence is prevalent that U. S. and world banking resolution is probably most critical to economic recovery, and that we’re by no measurable means yet out of the woods. Krugman, the Nobel Prize Economist, referring to certain countries, China in particular, European, Japan and U. S.’s failure to face up to new realities, “is the main reason that, despite some glimmers of good news — the G-20 summit accomplished more than I thought it would — this crisis probably still has years to run.”

The recovery will not be easy; it will not be quick; there will be much more suffering. However, I do believe in the resilience of the American people and the entrepreneurial system. With compassion and a healthy measure of Diogenes’ life of individual freedom requiring absolute honesty and complete material austerity the recovery will come more gently to fruition.

In the meantime, many people, at home and abroad, will need a lift, a ride. Our practice of the “golden rule” may be tested as never before. It’s not likely we’ll see the governor thumbing a ride again, but if I see you in distress or need, I’ll stop and offer my assistance.