The Red Dirt Web

Wes and Dad at Weirick Lakes in Corona in 1975

I was introduced to the term self-fulfilling prophecy in psychology and management courses in college.  I remember wondering how something so obvious could possibly be a subject of study.  Perhaps I believed everyone already recognized the obvious reality of self-fulfilling prophecy due to the fact that my wonderful dad regularly listened to the motivational records of Earl Nightingale, sometimes convincing me to listen with him, but not everyone seems to understand that thoughts have power.



Accepting that concept, it isn’t hard to understand how the optimistic GIs --- returning from winning World War II against what  at one time seemed to be an unbeatable foe --- dramatically transformed our country from the malaise of a Great Depression mentality into the most prosperous and happy of home lands in history.

According to a New York Times article today, "In 1952, 87 percent of Americans thought there was plenty of opportunity for progress; only 8 percent disagreed." With a mindset like that, is it any wonder that the United States bloomed when they returned home?

Self-fulfilling prophecy, however, can also work negatively.  According to the same New York Times article, a current survey found "41 percent said that there was not much opportunity in America, up from 17 percent in 1998."

Darlene & Cousin Reba by grandparent's farmhouse, 1963

If you read the entire article, you’ll see the theme is that the gap between rich and poor has widened to an unacceptable level, but what I intuit from the same statistics is the invisible hand of self-fulfilling prophecy.

On facebook, I frequently encounter people who support Occupy Wall Street and similar causes, believing the deck is stacked against them despite the fact that they are far more educated and, as evidenced by the fact that they are using laptops and smart phones to access their facebook pages, have far greater access to technology and essentially all knowledge of the world at their fingertips.  Why should the GIs at the end of WWII, most of whom had at most high school diplomas, have possibly been so much more optimistic?

At the risk of stating the obvious, those returning veterans had accomplished something major.  They had self-esteem based on their accomplishments, not because of some new theory of soccer games where no one has to lose so no one's feelings are hurt. Opportunity, however, still awaits those prepared to work for it, just as it did 100 years ago.

77 year-old Granddaddy loading cattle into his truck in 1976.

Long before Craig’s List, my grandfather was out wheeling and dealing on the backroads of Alabama.  That wasn’t his only job.  He was also the school bus driver and mailman in his small rural community.  On our recent trip to Alabama, my mother’s sister Ann told me that Granddaddy also worked for the movies, counting heads at any given showing for proper revenue distribution and accounting.  She said he would take her to see the movies on Saturday while he did his job.  Because she is nine years younger than Mom, she had a different experience of her parents, and my mother never mentioned this theater job, probably because by that time she was married to my dad and following her own path.   

Granddaddy was also a farmer.  As we drove through Notasulga, where his farm was located, Aunt Ann and her husband Roy told us a story we’d never heard about his first crop. 

Flashing back to my childhood, I’d go with Granddaddy to Carmack’s store, a virtual monopoly in Notasulga, to buy Blackburn’s Syrup and a few other niceties my grandparents hadn’t either grown or bartered for, and the man working the register was respectfully called Mr. Carmack by my Granddaddy, who was politely called Mr. Strickland in return.  I would never guess there had been any bad blood between Mr.Carmack’s father and my grandparents.

Mom and Aunt Ann in 1976

Getting back to Aunt Ann’s story, at the beginning of the last century, long before I was born, Mr. Carmack was a rich man, or at least he owned a lot of that rolling red dirt covered with trees in rural Alabama. Granddaddy went to Old Man Carmack and cut a deal to buy a piece of land, having decided to become a farmer rather than following in the professional footsteps of his father, Reverend J.H.T. Strickland, whose grave we saw near those of my grandparents on a hill by the church in Notasulga.

Mr. Carmack agreed to sell Granddaddy enough farmland to make a go of it, in exchange for being paid a fair purchase price when the crop came in.  There was an old house on that acreage where he and Grandmother could live.  In California, of course, we’re accustomed to spending thirty years paying for a house on a postage stamp lot, so it sounds like an incredible deal: one year of work for a house and acres of land.

I should say that the house was primitive.  It didn’t have running water, requiring the use of a hand pump to bring well water to a bucket that could then be sipped from a dipper, or heated on the wood burning stove to cook or fill a wash tub on the porch for bathing or washing clothes.  Yes, there was an outhouse instead of a bathroom.  Something Aunt Ann told me that I didn’t know was that they didn’t get electricity (and it was quite rudimentary electricity even when I would go in summer as a child) until 1937.  Believe it or not, my mother was born in that house (yes, in the actual house) without electricity or running water.  It’s kind of mind-boggling to consider how far we have come as a country in terms of how we define poverty when you consider that my mom never felt poor.

Anyway, back to the story, my grandparents worked hard, clearing the land, planting crops, working long hours that started before day break.  Back breaking work, every waking hour of every day but the Lord’s day of rest, went into preparing the soil and sowing the fields.  As harvest approached, word got out that they would have a bumper crop.  Not only would they be able to pay the mortgage, but they would have enough to carry them forward to the next crop.

Old Man Cormack called their note in before they could bring in the harvest.  Granddaddy couldn’t believe it.  They had a handshake deal for the payment to be made at harvest, but apparently the contract’s fine print stated something else.

Notasulga former bank or post office building

Granddaddy was a good man, and everyone knew it.  With hat in hand, he went to the Bank of Notasulga.  The bank president, Mr. A.B. Hope, weighed the young man’s character as he listened to his story.  He agreed to loan Granddaddy the money, and he added, “If you ever need a loan to make ends meet, come and see me again.”  They brought in the harvest and the rest, as they say, is history.

Granddaddy made a go of it, working several jobs at the same time to be sure he had enough to feed and clothe his family, and he also paid that financial favor forward. 

He made small loans to others, white or black, to help them through tough times, even though most of us today wouldn’t have felt we had enough of a security blanket in savings to take such risks were we in his shoes.

As I said earlier, he bought and sold goods, everything from guns to livestock, as he would drive down the backroads in his truck.  As a child, I remember black people coming up the red dirt driveway to either buy dolls Grandmother made or to talk to Granddaddy.  For someone raised in Westminster, California, where I never knew any black people, this was memorable, especially as contrasted with what I heard in school about race relations in the south.  It turns out Granddaddy was sort of Craig's List for a lot of African Americans, who knew he could get their goods to the broader market and give them a fair price. 

Cousin Steve and Wes in 1976

My Uncle Roy became a sort of protégé, as did his son Steve, who is out there in his Jeep Commander still wheeling and dealing.  Like Granddaddy, Steve wears many hats.  A cop who retired after 32 years of service, he now runs a detective agency with a partner, works part time as a federal agent and does some security work.  He’s too busy working to worry if Warren Buffet or Bill Gates are getting more than their fair share, and like other hard working people, his smiling disposition says he’s happy to be alive.  By the way, my trip to Alabama and subsequently down memory lane came on the fourth anniversary of my mother's transition to heaven, an event that was sad for us but happy for heaven.