Cabin offers glimpse back in time
Years ago, when one of my favorite places in the wide world was 200 acres of overgrown hillside farm in Tennessee, I discovered in the lee of a ridge an old homestead. While hunting one vibrant, hickory-leafed yellow October afternoon, I found an ancient pecan orchard in which fox squirrels busily worked on the nuts in the tree crowns. I shot one red-furred squirrel, and it dropped near a tumbled dry-stacked rock wall. I followed the back bone of the wall into a plum tree thicket.The thicket, I learned, funneled into a much used deer trail. The trail led through the tangle of leaves and briars to the other side, where I beheld the remains on an old log house.
The roof sat on the ground, rotting and gradually being swallowed by the earth on one side. Part of the mud-chinked stone chimney still stood, but it leaned crazily outward from the corpse of the house. Still standing, however, were two walls, angled around the fallen rafters and split oak shingles. The walls formed a pocket of history.
By stooping and crawling through a jumble of stones, I could gain entry. Probably, it was a dangerous thing to do – squirming into the ruins of a derelict structure – but it was worth it. What I learned far balanced the risk.
Over the years, I visited there often while hunting, especially if the sky dripped rain or a cold north wind blew. The remains of the two rooms offered a refuge of sorts, a sanctuary for me to warm up, eat a sandwich, drink coffee from my thermos, and ponder life in an earlier, simpler time.
So simple, in fact, that for wallpaper in what was apparently a sitting room and a bedroom, 1920s and ‘30s era newspaper pages were used. I sat there for hours, reading the walls on which a snapshot history of the United States was written in Linotype print.
Perhaps the farm house had been remodeled in the latter days of the Great Depression. Most of the newspaper pages, from various Tennessee publications, bore datelines from the early 1930s.
The house itself had originally been built of mortared poplar logs, but those two rooms had horse hair plaster walls. I presumed a remodeling project had been completed, including the use of newsprint wallpaper.
I crouched in the shadows with my flashlight and read many front pages from 1932 and 1933. The main stories, many of which tantalizingly jumped to missing inside pages, told of the Japanese invasion of Shanghai, the Bonus Army march on Washington, D.C., Adolph Hitler’s election as chancellor of Germany, the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933, and the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Strangely, many articles of later historical significance were minor headlines compared to one event that apparently captured the interest and imagination of Depression-weary Americans. The 1932 Chicago World’s Fair received banners, elaborate artwork (difficult in the days of roto-engraved images), and exuberant editorial praise (not unusual for pre-WW II journalism).
Unfolding on a 427-acre site, south of the Navy Pier on Lake Michigan, was the “Century of Progress International Exhibition,” a magical mix of technology and international pride. Forty-eight million visitors were logged the first year… yes, the 1932 World’s Fair reopened in 1933 for another Spring-through-Autumn run. Newspapers even in depressed Tennessee Appalachia hill country touted the wonders of the present and future:
Like the photoelectric cells, arrayed to collect dim light from the star Arturus, that partially supplied power to displays and rides on opening day…
The two towers, 1,850 feet apart and rising over 600 feet tall, supporting a cableway for “rocket cars” in which fair patrons were treated to an astounding aerial view of Chicago…
Even the Great Havoline Oil Thermometer, 200 feet tall and illuminated by 10-foot tall numerals of neon tubing.
My father-in-law and his boyhood friend drove a Model-A Ford from a small town in Southern Appalachia to Chicago in the summer of 1932 to see the World’s Fair. For a 50-cent ticket, they were admitted to see the wonders of modern science, predictions of humankind’s imminent advancement, and promises of world peace and harmony. Many times, I heard his accounts about their shoe-string motor adventure.
Ten years later, they were both fighting for their nation against Axis powers in World War II. Technological advancements dreamed of in 1932 had been incorporated in the tanks, bombers, and warships with which a generation of young Americans waged war.
I always left the ruins of that old log house with something to think about. Mainly, I was struck with what captured the popular imagination of poor dirt farmers in 1932. Their newspapers catered to what they wanted to read: stories of hope, stories about better days just around the corner.
The bad news was buried or shifted to the inside pages. Today, we look back and wonder how our preceding generation didn’t see the threat forming, the dark clouds looming on the global horizon.
Those old newsprint pages, varnished yellow on the plaster walls, explained it for me. After so many years of despair, people grasped for any good news, any prophesy of redemption from their economic and spiritual travails.
Just like today, they cheered to see new plants sprouting in the garden of hope and didn’t notice the weeds growing in dim, out-of-the-way places.
I never took anything from the old house except a better understanding of how we perceive history as it is happening and, generations later, in hindsight. We can’t blame our forefathers for not seeing, and I hope our children don’t blame us.
