A couple summers ago, I was on a road trip with my Dad to see where he grew up in western Pennsylvania. The leafy foothills of the Appalachians were punctured by farmers' fields heavy with potatoes, wheat, cows, and honey.
This was America's hinterland. There were no grand cities, no fancy universities, no literary circles, ports, or financial districts. It was a tangle of small towns, railway tracks, big families, and used machinery.
Wheat seeds popped their heads through the dirt in the spring, grew tall, got harvested, threshed, packed into train cars, and sent to the coast. Alfalfa and sweet clover were bundled into hay, and fed to cattle. The cattle were crops too—they were born, grew up, packed into train cars, slaughtered, and consumed by a hungry nation.
The towns were cute.
I went to pick up pizza from a shop that used to be a mechanic’s garage, but now housed a couple industrial ovens and a large family that worked in tandem to fill orders. The toddler on the floor was entertaining himself by tearing up discarded receipts while his barefoot brother hovered over him. Their mom was busy making change for me—she was probably no older than 21 or 22.
Something bothered me as we wound our way through these heartlands.
Rising above the stalks of wheat were lamp posts, each with a banner that had a picture of a young man in uniform. Some of the pictures were black and white, others were in full colour. The young men’s names were printed in bold font across their chests, followed by their birthdates, death dates, and the name of a conflict.
“THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE”
There were lots of banners, lots of wars, and lots of faces. The faces had the same features as the people milling around the local churches and diners, but the exact faces on the banners weren’t around anymore—they’d been turned under the earth.
Every few decades, when the geopolitical season was ripe, recruiters would pass through these lands and wrap young men in uniforms, bundle them together into regiments, pack them onto trains, and send them to the coasts.
This was the land where America grew wheat and cattle and corn for harvest, but it was also where the nation grew and harvested men.
Love it!!!!