Ben Logan Will Always Be Remembered

Across the Fence #515w (Special edition for the Westby Times)

Wisconsin author, Ben Logan, died September 19, 2014 at the age of 94. We’ve lost a great gentleman and a great writer. I wrote about him in my “Across the Fence” column this week. I was asked to write a story about Ben to commemorate his life and it’s an honor to do so, because he was one of my writing mentors.

Many of you are familiar with his book, The Land Remembers, published in 1975. It’s one of my all-time favorites. He also wrote a novel, The Empty Meadow, In 1991. I think his “Santa Claus is a Woman” from Christmas Remembered, published in 1997, should be read every year as a Christmas classic.

Those are his writings that most people are familiar with, but there was so much more. He was a wonderful person. I like to say he was a gentle man and a gentleman. He was full of curiosity, knowledge, and life experiences. He was a delight to visit with and I’ll always cherish the many visits we had across his kitchen table, sipping green tea, and talking about writing, life, his World War II experiences, and his many years working in New York City. 

Howard and Ben at his kitchen table.

I think if I tell you how we first met, it will tell you a lot about the real Ben Logan. It was the summer of 2004. My brother-in-law, Lon Bartling and I both love The Land Remembers. One day while we were talking we decided to go on a road trip and drive by the Logan “Seldom Seen” farm, located between Gays Mills and Seneca. But we wouldn’t know which farm it was without knowing the farm number. I decided to call Ben. I explained who I was and why I was calling. He gave me his farm number and said that as long as we were driving by, we should stop and say hello. The next weekend we headed for Seldom Seen. We each brought with a copy of The Land Remembers that we hoped he would sign. I also brought a print of a drawing I did of my father with his team of horses, to give him in appreciation for allowing us to stop. He invited us in. We expected to be there for just a few minutes to say hello and get the books signed. Over three hours later we left! He invited these two “pilgrim” strangers to have tea with him. We sat at the old kitchen table and talked for a long time. Then he showed us around the house, telling us about various things he had picked up in his travels around the world. He showed us where his father had come from in Loga, Norway. I told him it was only ten miles from where my Skjerpe ancestors came from. We sat in the living room, that was part of the old log house, and talked some more. Then he wanted to show us around outside. We ended up by the old maple tree stump, as he told us how it had finally blown down, across the house, but the branches had held the trunk off the roof and hadn’t damaged it. Anyone who has read The Land Remembers knows the story about that old maple tree.

The old stump and a new tree taking its place.

Two strangers who loved his writing were no longer strangers by the time we left. He invited us to come back so we could visit some more. What a gracious, caring man he was.

I visited with him many times after that. Linda was with on a couple of our visits. I learned much about the man during our talks and I learned much about writing and life from him. I’d like to share with you some bits and pieces of things he said. I think it will give you an even better appreciation of the man.

He often talked about the importance of curiosity in life and how important it is to a writer. After graduating from high school, where his principle discouraged him from being a writer, he attended college in Platteville for two years. 

“That city was a marvelous place,“ he said. “I was wandering around my first day at Platteville and discovered the library, and just stood there inside the door in awe! Rows and rows and rows of books. A young librarian came up to me and said, ‘What do you want to know?’  ‘Everything!’ I said.

She spent over an hour taking me around the library, showing me the card catalog and how it worked. Then, every time I came to the library she would ask me, ‘What do you want to know today?’ It was a wonderful learning experience.”

I asked who some of the important teachers were in his life.

“I never took a course in geology, but by accident, a geology professor became a private tutor. “He stopped me in the hall one day and wanted to talk to me about a story I’d written for the literary magazine. While I had his attention I started asking questions about what I’d been discovering on my walks around the countryside. I asked him about the fossils I’d discovered in limestone cliffs and how the complexity of the fossils increased as they went up the banks. That professor took an interest in my curiosity about things. It was the first time I realized how significant my curiosity was and how that instantly won all the teachers to me.”

Rachel Salisbury, an English professor at Platteville, was one of my most important teachers. She was also fascinated with my curiosity. She thought I had a special talent to touch people’s feelings. She dared me to be emotional in my writing, to put more substance in my stories. When people realize you have a hunger to learn, they open the world up to you. I spent two years at Platteville and it was a wonderful place!”

He then studied Ag Journalism at the UW-Madison Ag School. Professor Sumner, a very common sense person, was one of his teachers. “Professor Sumner told me, ‘The trouble is, most journalism students write pretty well, but they don’t have a damn thing to write about!’  He had me taking philosophy and other courses to learn a wide variety of subjects. This fit perfectly with my curiosity.”

The legendary Helen C. White and Aldo Leopold were also influencial in his learning process at the university.

After college, Ben was in World War II, but his family says he rarely talked about his war experiences. He talked extensively with me about them. I think he knew I would understand when he found out I was a veteran. 

Ben Logan in 1942

Ben wanted a college degree so he could go into the Navy as an officer. After graduating with a degree in Ag Journalism from the UW-Madison, he enlisted in 1942 and spent four months at Midshipman’s School in Chicago. He was there during Christmas of 1942. Even though he was away from home, there was something that made it Christmas. He said, “I went for a walk on Christmas Eve and it was snowing. When it snows… soft… no wind, it softens everything, even the sound is softened. It’s as if it put innocence back into the city.” 

In military life he found himself desperately needing aloneness. There was no place to be alone. He said much of that feeling came from his farm upbringing where he often did things alone. 

“I was the officer on a LCT, a Landing Craft Tank, or Little Crappy Tub as some people called it. It was 110 feet long and had a crew of 15-20 men. We’d go into the beach loaded with men or equipment. We’d stay at the beachhead ferrying men and equipment from ship to shore for weeks at a time.  We’d work 24 hours a day. We lived on the LCT and even slept on it.” 

“My first time in combat was the landing at Sicily. There were 2,000 ships along the shoreline. Lots of confusion.”

Christmas 1943, Palermo, Italy. “That was a bad time. I had lost a ship. It was another of those accidents of life. Life is basically accidental. I was one of 90,000 people who had been inoculated with infectious hepatitis, along with a yellow fever serum. I was starting to turn yellow from the hepatitis. I was the only officer aboard my landing craft at the time. There was no one to take my place. I finally went to an Army clinic. The doctor said, ‘I’m taking you off that ship and sending you to the hospital.’ Two of my best friends had an LCT that was broken down and they went aboard my LCT to take my place. Within six or seven hours everybody aboard was dead. They ran into what we called an enne-mene-mine-mo. It was a type of mine. Strangely enough, I heard the explosion from the hospital. It’s hard to figure out how I survived the war and other people didn’t.”

Ben Logan, standing 2nd from right, with his LCT crew.

All his crew members were killed.

We talked about that incident that made such an impact on his life. He decided he had to live for those friends too. He couldn’t waste any of the extra time he’d been given. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

Ben said, “The farm seemed impossibly far away when I was in the war. I could have swore that Christmas didn’t happen during my war years. I found back Christmas when I started writing. Writing is very therapeutic. Graham Green once said, ‘I can’t possibly understand how those who don’t write can deal with the anguish of life.’ I think that’s a good definition. It allows us to deal with things directly that are very personal.” 

“War is contagious. War is a life changing experience. War becomes memories. The title of my war memoirs is ‘An Irresistible Sorrow.’ I tried to find a publisher but they said it was too grim. You can tell those publishers had never been in a war.”

He said he wanted to read three poems to me that he’d written about the war. Poems that he didn’t remember writing until he found them among other papers a couple years earlier. They are powerful. After he finished, he laid the papers down and looked wistfully out the window. His eyes were moist. I could tell he was back in Italy, remembering those experiences.

Ben pauses, and looks wistfully out the window.

I asked if he could ever forget his war experiences. “No!” he said. “I tell people… they talk about coming home from the war, and I’ll say, ‘Nobody comes home from the war… you come partway home from the war.’”

After the war he wandered around for a while as a merchant seaman, doing a lot of traveling in Europe and South America. “I still had a lot of dead faces hanging in my head. Hell, I didn’t know what I was looking for.”

Ben eventually returned to the UW, where he studied with Aldo Leopold. He went to Mexico and studied anthropology and met his wife, Jacqueline, in Mexico City. They moved to New York, where they had three children, Suzanne, Roger, and Kristine. Ben became an editor, writer, and producer for radio, film, and did television documentaries. He produced the first radio call-in talk show, whose guests included Bill Cosby. “Interviewing ordinary people was one of the greatest parts of my media work. Of course, there are no ordinary people,” he said.

Once you have lived on the land, it’s always a part of you. In 1986, he and Jacqueline bought “Seldom Seen” farm and moved back to the hilltop in Wisconsin where he grew up. She died in 1990.

Rural life and the land have always been a part of Ben, no matter how far he wandered from the hilltop, and it pulled him back. He said, “I learn about nature from the woods and meadows, and look out my windows and observe. From observing nature, I learn about us humans. A writer has to be a good observer and listener. There’s incredible wisdom in plain language among rural people. The country way is not to say too much.

I asked, “What’s the most important thing to remember as a writer?” He replied, “Never lose your curiosity and try to make the story happen in the mind of the reader. They must become participants in your story.” He certainly mastered that in his writing.

Ben was so full of life, and had such curiosity about everything, that it was hard to see his health deteriorate the past few years. It broke my heart for him every time I visited. He was lucky to have such wonderful friends, and former neighbors, Paul and Kathy Fairchild, who took great care of him these past years.

We have lost a great gentleman and a great writer. I feel fortunate and blessed to have known him. His Spirit is now free to return to Seldom Seen Farm and once again roam the meadows and hills that he loved.

*

Ben Logan Remembered

Across the Fence #515

Once you have lived on the land, been a partner with its moods, secrets, and seasons, you cannot leave. The living land remembers, touching you in unguarded moments, saying, “I am here. You are part of me.”

Many of you know those are the opening lines from The Land Remembers by Wisconsin author, Ben Logan, who died September 19, 2014 at the age of 94. We’ve lost a great gentleman and a great writer. He was a friend who I was lucky to spend time with at his farm on Seldom Seen Ridge, where we talked about his life, his writing, his World War II experiences, and life in general.

Ben Logan at his kitchen table, drinking tea as we talked.

His book, The Land Remembers is one of my all-time favorites. I think his “Santa Claus is a Woman” from Christmas Remembered should be read every year as a Christmas classic.

Ben’s writing touched the hearts of so many people, because it’s not just the story of a farm and the land, but a story about the people who lived on the land.

The family life he wrote about was once the norm in this country, now it’s the exception as we move toward an urban society. People refer to this as a simpler time, but I prefer to use the phrase “a gentler time.” It certainly wasn’t an easier time. Life was hard and work was very physical for man, woman, and child, but it didn’t seem as hectic as the world we live in today.

The importance of family also comes through in Logan’s writing. It was a time when the entire family worked together and relaxed together. The big Maple tree in the front yard provided many days and evenings of sitting in the cool shade, enjoying each other’s company. It was the center of their hilltop world. It reminds me so much of my own upbringing and the Maple tree in the front yard on our Coon Prairie farm.

Can you relate to these scenes and events? Planting, harvesting, rainy days, wildflowers, ghosts, listening to the corn grow, killing frost, Christmas, blizzards, one-room school adventures, planting the garden, which came first–the chicken or the egg?, the two-headed rattlesnake, and much more. The words will pull at your heart, you’ll bring your own memories and experiences to his story, and The Land Remembers becomes YOUR story too! That was his key to writing. He brought us into the story and we were right there with him. If you haven’t read his story, put it on your to-do list.

In 2009, an event was held at the historic Hotel Boscobel to recognize and honor Ben Logan, one of Wisconsin’s most popular authors. I was honored when asked to be one of the writers who would read from his book, The Land Remembers.

At the time, Ben had moved from his farm on Seldom Seen Ridge between Gays Mills and Mount Sterling, Wisconsin to Maplewood, an assisted living facility in Viroqua. On the morning of the event, I picked Ben up and we drove to Boscobel. A storm that had gone through the area earlier in the morning was retreating ahead of us. The colors of the hills around us were brilliant. Ben remarked about the many shades of green with the dark storm clouds as a background. It was a perfect setting for writers. Ben related how when he was young, his mother would have him look up at the sky above him and then slowly bring his eyes down to the horizon. She wanted him to observe how the colors changed as he looked at the different areas of the sky.

Over the years, Ben and I have had many conversations about writing and life. The more we talked, the more parallels we found in our lives. As we drove along we both remarked about wanting to know the story behind every road name and every abandoned old barn. There were so many interesting ones. He said, “I’m always searching and looking for answers. Curiosity is essential to be a good writer.” Then he quoted Robert Frost’s poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, “I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.” I was surprised to hear that line and told him that’s always been one of my favorite lines too.

I asked Ben, in looking back, what one thing would he pull out of his life that he considered the most important thing?

His response was, “There’s so many. I suppose the sense of staying tuned into things, and reading my responses… and being willing to accept that I’m different one day to the next, almost to the point that exact days don’t repeat themselves. You’re always edging forward, somehow… and the most important thing is having curiosity. I still have a tremendous curiosity about things. I still have an irresistible urge to push open the door of an old deserted farmhouse to see if those who once lived there left fragments of their life story. We need to stay tuned into things, keep our minds open.”

I asked what he wanted his epitaph to be. He answered with little hesitation, “He walked through open doors!”

We know what a great writer he was, but he was an even greater person. He was a gentle man, who cared about people. I’ll miss him, but his words will be with us long after he walked through that door to the next chapter in his life.

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Elvis Has Left the Prairie

Across the Fence #514

Back when Elvis was alive and performing, people would give him standing ovations at the end of his performance, clap and shout for more after he had exited the stage. Soon the announcer would say, “Elvis has left the building!” He was gone, but people wanted more. They weren’t ready for the show to end. 

It’s like that with the end of summer. This week the orioles, hummingbirds, and many other birds left our back yard. The redwing blackbirds left a couple weeks ago. Just like the end of an Elvis performance, I’m not ready for them to exit the prairie. Hopefully, just like a bunch of Elvis impersonators, they’ll all reappear next spring.

The birds left just in time, before the cold, rainy weather moved in. Maybe they knew it was coming and the time had come to bid their summer home goodbye and head for warmer climates. I’ve seen many large flocks of birds this week, including flocks of geese snaking their way across the sky, constantly breaking and remaking their V formation as new geese take the lead. It’s mid-September and the temperature was 33 degrees at our place this morning. At least it was 33 above zero. We’ve seen it 30 below during the dark days of winter, here on the howling prairie. 

No shorts or t-shirt on my walk this morning. It was cold! In January this will feel like a heat wave, but not today. There should be a law against it being this cold, this early in September. Maybe we could petition our congress and senate to pass a law. But I fear hell would freeze over before they did anything about it. Seems to me all they do anymore is spend their time raising money for the next election. So, unless you plan to head south with the birds, I think you better start shopping for long underwear.

This morning the first thing I noticed on my walk, besides the cold, was how quiet it was. For the first time in a month the fields weren’t alive with the sound of crickets and grasshoppers. I was wondering if Elvis had left the fields too. Every day I had been serenaded by a continuous chorus as they hopped and flew in every direction as I walked through the fields, along fencelines, and even on the country roads. They were everywhere. Then overnight the fields had gone silent. I stopped and listened for their chirping. There was only silence. It hadn’t been cold enough to kill them so they must have all been hunkered down together, trying to keep warm, and it was too cold to chirp. I missed their sound. 

I even have a “cricket chirping” ring tone on my iPhone. The problem is, for the past month or more, I’ll hear a chirping sound that sounds just like my phone is ringing. I’ve been fooled several times. Before finishing my walk today, the sun came out and soon the fields around me came alive again. The chirping was back. Elvis had returned for an encore.

If you have never experienced the countryside being alive with sound, I’d encourage you to get out in the country, away from traffic noise. If you’re in a car, and able to walk around, park it, get out, and walk for a while. Let the grasshoppers and crickets serenade you. In the evening the crickets really come alive, and if you’re near water, the frog chorus joins in. If you’re not able to walk, find a safe place to park, roll down the windows, and sit and listen for a while. Do it before the first killing frost arrives when the fields will go silent and not come alive again until next summer. Don’t wait until Elvis has left the prairie for good.

Fall is like that, one departure after the other; birds, butterflies, crickets, grasshoppers, other insects, and eventually the human snow birds, until only those who are hardy enough to withstand the coming winter are left. 

Another large, black cloud of birds rose out of the corn field behind our house today. Hundreds of birds riding the air currents as one, rising and falling, changing directions, but always in unison and never colliding with each other. Unfortunately many of them will perish during their journey when they collide with guy wires from towers while flying at night.  

Soon the cornfields they departed from will disappear too as huge harvesting equipment will strip them clean in a fraction of the time it took our fathers to harvest the corn for silage, and later to strip the ears from the stalks and haul them to the corn crib. Now there are few silos left and corn cribs are as scarce as hen’s teeth. The harvest has definitely changed.

What would my parents and Elvis think if they could see all the changes that have taken place since they left the building for the last time? What further changes will we see before we take our final curtain call? The changing of the seasons is one thing I think we can count on; the heat and bugs of summer, the beauty of fall colors, the cold, white blanket of winter, and knowing new life will emerge again in the spring. Unlike Elvis, every season returns for an encore. 

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Harvest Supermoon Thoughts

Across the Fence 513

The moon is full tonight as I sit here writing this column. This is the Harvest Moon of September, because it falls closest to the fall equinox. It’s also a Supermoon this year. This occurs when the moon makes its closest approach to Earth in its elliptical orbit, and appears larger to us. I guess we can call it a Harvest Supermoon.

I haven’t seen any werewolves during this Supermoon, but it stirred up a lot of thoughts in my mind as we find ourselves in the transition from summer to fall. For those of us in the North Country, that means winter is just around the corner. According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac we’re in for a nasty winter with biting cold and lots of snow. Uff da, I was hoping for a mild winter after last year. But first we need to enjoy the fall.

The Harvest Moon that I’m looking at signals the arrival of fall and the harvest season. Before the advent of tractors and equipment with lights, farmers relied on the full moon of September to help get their crops in as they worked late into the night. Maybe that’s why it’s called the Harvest Moon.

Mid-September also heralds the arrival of the Vernon County Fair, the last fair of the year in Wisconsin. The weather this time of year is always a roll of the dice. Sometimes it’s shorts and t-shirts and other times long underwear and winter jackets. Since I’m now retired, I won’t be working long hours in the Co-op Building every day. This year I can go to the fair, stroll around, enjoy it, and not feel like I need to hurry back to our booth.

I’ve been attending the Vernon County Fair since I was a young boy in 4-H and showed cattle and hogs. Even then we had time to wander around the fairgrounds, play some carney games, go on rides, and of course, eat good, nutritious, fair food. One of the big attractions of any fair is the food. I’ll be the first to admit that eating a lot of it will get you a fast ticket to Cardiac City. I’ve been in training for months now, walking three miles a day, doing planks and sit-ups, and getting in shape. I’m trying to get my heart and lungs pumping at peak efficiency so they can flush out all that damaging cholesterol. Then I can eat my way across the fairgrounds without dropping over from the Big One. Just thinking about all the fair food makes my mouth water and my circulatory system shudder.

There are several food stops that are mandatory when I go to the fair. Hub’s Fries has become an institution and people had withdrawal symptoms last year when they weren’t at the fair at the base of the grandstand. This year I know for a fact that they’ll be back in their usual spot. Another must stop is Kjelland’s deep-fried cheese curds right beside the Co-op Building. It was much too handy when I spent long days in that building the last seven years. 

OK, that’s just two of the food hotspots, there are plenty more, and each person has their personal favorites. I’ve got to have at least one of the BBQ pork on a baked potato with all the trimmings. Then there’s funnel cakes, gyros, mini-donuts, or the 4-H stand for hamburgers, BBQ, and a piece of pie a-la-mode. I have to patronize my old alma mater, since I spent many years in 4-H. You can top everything off with a hand-squeezed lemonade and some more deep fried cheese curds from the guy who seems like he’s had that little stand at the fair since the beginning of time.

Foot-long hotdogs were one of my favorites back when I was a kid at the fair. They didn’t taste any different from ordinary hotdogs but I guess it was the novelty of it. If all those choices aren’t enough, there’s a variety of deep-fried food on a stick; deep-fried candy bars and deep-fried S’mores, to name a couple. That way, you can walk around the fairgrounds and get a little exercise while clogging your arteries. Thank goodness it only happens once a year. As you can see, that Harvest Supermoon really stirred up some memories for me. 

Another incident happened today while I was on my morning hike. I actually saw a Monarch butterfly. It landed in a tree and sat there, all by itself. There were no other monarchs around. Then about two miles into my walk, another monarch began flying ahead of me. Those are the only two I’ve seen in a long time. It continued flying a few feet in front of me for about half a mile, as if accompanying me. Then I heard a truck sound coming up behind me on the country road. “Get out of the way,” my mind shouted at the monarch, but it was too late. It became a hood ornament on the pickup. One less monarch will head south for the winter. 

Under the Harvest Supermoon, I think of my brief association with that monarch and remember how fleeting life is. Here one moment, gone the next. As the moon disappears behind the approaching storm clouds it reminds me that we need to cherish every moment we have, make the best use of the time we have, and don’t worry about eating fair food once in a while.

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Things Will Never Be the Same

Across the Fence #512

September 11, 2001 was a beautiful, early fall day. Linda had taken the day off from her job as receptionist at Attic Angel, a large retirement and assisted living facility in Madison. We had decided to drive to Westby to see my brother, Arden, and Jan’s new baby girl, Kassie, who was four days old. I was glad to be heading out of the city because I was in need of a quiet, rural countryside fix from my deadline-driven job, operating Sherpe Advertising Art in Madison. I also had some wood carvings with that I needed to deliver to Norskedalen near Coon Valley. 

We headed out of Madison in bumper to bumper, morning rush hour traffic on the Beltline and exited on Highway 14. We were soon out of the heavy traffic and into the countryside. Most traffic was headed into Madison. I began to relax and my blood pressure began to fall as we left the city in our rearview mirror. They could take this old boy out of the country, but they were never able to take the country out of me.

We had the car radio on and were listening to music when it was suddenly interrupted for a special news bulletin. At 8:46 a.m. an airplane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City. No other details were available at the time. The music resumed and we didn’t think much about it. We thought it must have been a small, private plane, but how could it accidentally hit a large building in the heart of the city. Maybe it was someone committing suicide. 

Soon the music was interrupted again. More reports from New York were coming in. An American Airlines commercial jet had hit the north tower and the building was now on fire. I wasn’t familiar with New York City and flight patterns, but if an airliner hit it, it couldn’t have been an accident. Then came the news that at 9:03 a.m. a second commercial jet had hit the south tower. It looked like both planes had been hijacked and flown deliberately into the towers. It was hard to imagine what panic and chaos was going on in those buildings as we drove peacefully through the Wisconsin countryside on our way to Westby.

We listened to continuous news coverage of the tragedy that was unfolding. Then came more shocking news, a third commercial jet had crashed into the Pentagon. It appeared that America was under attack by terrorists who were hijacking passenger planes. There were reports that another airliner had been taken over and was now headed toward Washington, D.C. What prominent landmark were they hoping to destroy? We heard later that jets had been scrambled with orders to shoot the plane down. We soon heard that the plane had crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. We learned later the heroic passengers had tried to subdue the hijackers and regain control of the plane.

As the news reports kept coming, we were anxious to get to Westby to see our new niece, and to see what kind of television coverage was available about the attacks. When we arrived at the farm, they had the TV on. There had been continual coverage since the first plane hit the tower. None of us could believe what was happening. I thought of Pearl Harbor, and how America had been attacked by the Japanese on December 7, 1941. I wondered who we were being attacked by this time, and if September 11, 2001 would be remembered like the Pearl Harbor attack is. At the time we had no idea how extensive this attack was. Were other planes being hijacked and on their way to other targets? Were we at war, right here on our own soil? I wondered what kind of sick people would target innocent civilians and kill them in cold blood? The only thing I was sure of at the moment was that we were safe in rural Westby, far from large metropolitan areas and possible targets. 

As we watched the replays of the second plane flying into the side of the tower, Linda said she couldn’t imagine the terror the passengers must have felt as that plane headed toward the towers, with smoke and fire already billowing from one of them, and realize they were going to crash into the other tower.

I imagine most people remember where they were and what they were doing that day, when they first heard the news. I remember watching as the towers disintegrated into a gray cloud of dust as they came tumbling down. I thought of all the people who were trapped in those buildings. There was no way anyone could have survived.

Most of us in this country were safe. It was just another terrible incident in a violent world we were getting all too used to. But life would never be the same. Terrorist attacks weren’t just happening in far off parts of the world. We were very vulnerable, right here in our back yards. The attacks led to wars that we’re still fighting thirteen years later. Boarding a plane or entering a government building has drastically changed and now entails tight security checks. 

It’s a different world than the one we woke up to that morning on September 11, 2001.

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When Children Leave the Nest

Across the Fence #511

The start of a new school year is both a beginning and an end. It’s the alpha and omega, the yin and yang, happiness and sadness, apprehension and anticipation.

We’ve all been there, either on the student side or the parent side. You know the multitude of feelings involved.

Things have changed a lot since I headed off to first grade at Smith School, thinking it was the end of the world. Smith was a one-room school with one teacher who taught all eight grades. I was six years old and had no concept of what school was. As far as I knew, my parents were sending me off to one of those concentration camps we’d heard about from World War II. My mother took a first day of school photo of me all decked out in my new bib overalls, with a large book bag over my shoulder, and carrying a lunch bucket. I have the most pitiful, sad look on my face. It was 1950 and they were sending me away, never to return to the safety of the farm.

I imagine seeing that forlorn look on my face, didn’t help my poor mother as my father hauled me down the road, most likely crying and screaming, to my first day of school. I must have felt a great sense of relief when I got to return home at the end of that first day.

In those days we didn’t have kindergarten, at least in country schools. First grade was the beginning of our education process. Now kids head off to day care and pre-school when they’re three or four months old. They know much more when they enter first grade than I knew by the time I started second or third grade. Our two-year-old grandson can already do apps and puzzles on an iPhone and iPad. I wonder if I could even tie my shoes by first grade? Our daughter reads books to Sean each evening before he goes to bed. He enjoys that and will probably be reading books to Amy by the time he enters first grade.

Back in 1950, I was learning to read with Dick and Jane. Remember those great stories? “Look, look. Oh, look. See Spot. Look Spot. Oh look. Look and see. See Spot run. Run, run, run. Oh, oh. Funny, funny Spot.” It wasn’t exactly great literature, but the colorful drawings of Dick, Jane, Sally, Spot, and Puff were great. I wish I had one of those old Dick and Jane readers now. I wonder what happened to all those books?

We can laugh about how simple they seem to us now, but for forty years, those Dick and Jane primers taught so many of us how to read. I suspect today’s children who’ve grown up with television and iPads, would think our Dick and Jane stories are simplistic and extremely boring. Times have changed way beyond anything we could have imagined in our wildest dreams when we were young.

One thing that doesn’t change is the emotion that’s felt as you send your child off to each new phase of their life: Leaving them at day care for the first time when you head back to work. Maybe first grade isn’t as big a change now as it once was, because kids have been in day care, pre-school, and kindergarten, but I bet there’s still some apprehension involved. The next big steps are entering middle school and high school. Those are tough transitions for many kids. Then comes the move that’s tough on most parents. I hear many people say how hard it was to leave their “baby” at college and drive home without them. That’s the moment in life when things will never be quite the same again. It’s when they flex their wings and leave the nest. You can only hope you’ve prepared them to fly on their own. It’s both a beginning and an end, and every parent feels an emptiness.

I wrote the following in 1993 after we moved our daughter, Amy, into her dorm room at UW-Whitewater and headed home to an empty nest. I used it several years ago, but think it bears repeating as children head off to college.    

When Did You Grow So Old?

I stand in the door leading to the empty room. The boom box is silent now, no music fills the air. When did you grow so old? Wasn’t it only yesterday I carried you, just minutes old from delivery to the nursery, so small and helpless, every need dependent on us. Crawling, sitting up, standing on wobbly legs, first steps, first words, first tooth… so many firsts. Soon all the new things you learned became routine. Before we knew it, there was nursery school, then kindergarten. The first big move, first grade, quickly became fifth. Middle School, a whole new adventure. Three quick years and the high school years began. Sweet sixteen and a license to drive. When did you grow so old? High School passed so quickly, and graduation was here. The road to a new adventure stretched out before you. And now you’ve begun the journey. That’s why I stand in the doorway leading to your empty room. You left for college today, and we went home without you. Things will never be the same. When did you grow so old?

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