“Shane” Stimulates Thoughts
On two occasions recently I expressed my fondness for the classical Western, “Shane” . By accident I happened to see it in progress last night. Curiosity compelled me to view for a while to test my more mature evaluation. Although I had something else planned, I could not stop watching until I heard Joey’s shrill and haunting “Come back Shane”. My viewing revealed that unlike other films which I identify with the hero, I identified with the child, Joey.
Accustomed to looking at the background during T.V. coverage of the Middle East, I found myself noticing the farmers going into the general store, while the adversarial main characters engaged in the foreground. They were carrying chickens, eggs and other farm products to barter for the necessities, like coffee, sugar, cloth, etc., they could not grow. Cha-ching, memories and thoughts of that scene inspired these thoughts.
Most people who know me, even in my own family, think of me as an urbane, even cosmopolitan, guy who lives in a city, visits, lectures and writes about far away exotic people and events. That concept is essentially true, understandable and one which I also hold about myself.
All of that happened in time, but I recalled taking eggs to the store for groceries and taking home-canned fruit and vegetables to school to pay fees and purchase school supplies. It is hard for me to realize that I am nearly seventy-two years old and that cinematic scene helped me realize my age and the changes that have occurred in my life.
I was born in a fairly remote part of Bland County Virginia in 1937. No one was wealthy, but my grandfather, Andrew Napoleon Bogle, was well off enough to start the local school and Methodist church. Interestingly, he was my age when his last child was born to his considerably younger wife. My father, Fred Crockett Bogle, dropped out of school after the eighth grade to tend the farm. He had four children by the time my grandfather died thirteen years after his last child. Shortly after his death his ambitious daughters convinced my grandmother to sell the farm and she and most of my father’s sisters and brothers moved to the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. to live well on proceeds from the farm and government and military jobs.
It was untenable for my uneducated father, with his brood of four that would double, to move and seek his fortune in the environs of the nation’s capital. He was destined to manage four farms for others most of the remainder of his life. The farms provided us plenty of food, fun and decent housing. My father farmed with horses and hand tools. We did not have modern conveniences until I was in the fifth grade. Although uneducated, my father was a reader, a mathematical whiz, who playfully ingrained into us knowledge of American geography, State capitals and Presidents. Mother, who had been the valedictorian of her class, almost literally worked her fingers to the bone and was always our spiritual and moral anchor.
Heavy, prolonged snows frequently kept us isolated. Lots of food, hot chocolate, popcorn, apples, homemade candies and other delicacies from our mother’s talented hands nurtured us as we played a lot of card and board games. We finally got a battery powered radio when I was about in the fourth grade. We used the huge and expensive battery sparingly and usually for boxing matches and the Grand Ole Opry. Actually, it was difficult to tune in a station except at night. The children, except my prissy older sister, did not wear shoes from the last day of school until it began again in September. We, of course, wore shoes to church. Going barefoot for such a prolonged period required frequent spells of sitting down to extract splinters and briars. All in all, it was a pleasant life in no small part because we knew little else.
We moved to a farm just outside of Roanoke when I was in the sixth grade. That put me into the American mainstream. The farm owner allowed me to work on the farm and paid me the going rate of fifty cent an hour. I got a ten mile after-school paper route, which I performed on a bicycle. In retrospect I can hardly believe I rode my bike up those hills, around those curves in all kinds of weather, which frequently resulted in my bike and me totally covered with ice. Little as I earned, my cash flow was great. In addition, I met all the wealthy people on my paper route, who loved for me to work on their properties. Caddying at the country club on weekends added to my fortune. I became financially self-sufficient. I bought my own bike, clothes, entertainment, sports equipment and anything else a teenager desired.
I was now a with-it kid, who did well academically, socially and athletically at Andrew Lewis High School. In the course of time I earned three college degrees and became a professor at an outstanding university. I wrote and published substantial academic books with distinguished publishers on a computer, drove cars, rode planes, visited far way places and communed with lofty people in lofty places. All came naturally, just as taking eggs to a small country store to buy sugar. Upon reflection, I think it was a blessing to have lived like people in the 17th, 18th, 19th , 20th and 21st centuries during my seventy-two years. (I forgot to mention that I was born in a log house.).
On two occasions recently I expressed my fondness for the classical Western, “Shane” . By accident I happened to see it in progress last night. Curiosity compelled me to view for a while to test my more mature evaluation. Although I had something else planned, I could not stop watching until I heard Joey’s shrill and haunting “Come back Shane”. My viewing revealed that unlike other films which I identify with the hero, I identified with the child, Joey.
Accustomed to looking at the background during T.V. coverage of the Middle East, I found myself noticing the farmers going into the general store, while the adversarial main characters engaged in the foreground. They were carrying chickens, eggs and other farm products to barter for the necessities, like coffee, sugar, cloth, etc., they could not grow. Cha-ching, memories and thoughts of that scene inspired these thoughts.
Most people who know me, even in my own family, think of me as an urbane, even cosmopolitan, guy who lives in a city, visits, lectures and writes about far away exotic people and events. That concept is essentially true, understandable and one which I also hold about myself.
All of that happened in time, but I recalled taking eggs to the store for groceries and taking home-canned fruit and vegetables to school to pay fees and purchase school supplies. It is hard for me to realize that I am nearly seventy-two years old and that cinematic scene helped me realize my age and the changes that have occurred in my life.
I was born in a fairly remote part of Bland County Virginia in 1937. No one was wealthy, but my grandfather, Andrew Napoleon Bogle, was well off enough to start the local school and Methodist church. Interestingly, he was my age when his last child was born to his considerably younger wife. My father, Fred Crockett Bogle, dropped out of school after the eighth grade to tend the farm. He had four children by the time my grandfather died thirteen years after his last child. Shortly after his death his ambitious daughters convinced my grandmother to sell the farm and she and most of my father’s sisters and brothers moved to the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. to live well on proceeds from the farm and government and military jobs.
It was untenable for my uneducated father, with his brood of four that would double, to move and seek his fortune in the environs of the nation’s capital. He was destined to manage four farms for others most of the remainder of his life. The farms provided us plenty of food, fun and decent housing. My father farmed with horses and hand tools. We did not have modern conveniences until I was in the fifth grade. Although uneducated, my father was a reader, a mathematical whiz, who playfully ingrained into us knowledge of American geography, State capitals and Presidents. Mother, who had been the valedictorian of her class, almost literally worked her fingers to the bone and was always our spiritual and moral anchor.
Heavy, prolonged snows frequently kept us isolated. Lots of food, hot chocolate, popcorn, apples, homemade candies and other delicacies from our mother’s talented hands nurtured us as we played a lot of card and board games. We finally got a battery powered radio when I was about in the fourth grade. We used the huge and expensive battery sparingly and usually for boxing matches and the Grand Ole Opry. Actually, it was difficult to tune in a station except at night. The children, except my prissy older sister, did not wear shoes from the last day of school until it began again in September. We, of course, wore shoes to church. Going barefoot for such a prolonged period required frequent spells of sitting down to extract splinters and briars. All in all, it was a pleasant life in no small part because we knew little else.
We moved to a farm just outside of Roanoke when I was in the sixth grade. That put me into the American mainstream. The farm owner allowed me to work on the farm and paid me the going rate of fifty cent an hour. I got a ten mile after-school paper route, which I performed on a bicycle. In retrospect I can hardly believe I rode my bike up those hills, around those curves in all kinds of weather, which frequently resulted in my bike and me totally covered with ice. Little as I earned, my cash flow was great. In addition, I met all the wealthy people on my paper route, who loved for me to work on their properties. Caddying at the country club on weekends added to my fortune. I became financially self-sufficient. I bought my own bike, clothes, entertainment, sports equipment and anything else a teenager desired.
I was now a with-it kid, who did well academically, socially and athletically at Andrew Lewis High School. In the course of time I earned three college degrees and became a professor at an outstanding university. I wrote and published substantial academic books with distinguished publishers on a computer, drove cars, rode planes, visited far way places and communed with lofty people in lofty places. All came naturally, just as taking eggs to a small country store to buy sugar. Upon reflection, I think it was a blessing to have lived like people in the 17th, 18th, 19th , 20th and 21st centuries during my seventy-two years. (I forgot to mention that I was born in a log house.).
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