I like to think I am a tough old bird. Probably more old than tough, really.
But when compared to those who have gone before us, I am not even fit to stand in their shade. Elva Ferguson comes to mind first. A young mother who arrived in a wagon, a baby clutched in her arms and a toddler on the seat beside her as she drove a team, what a backbone of steel she must have had. She would later bury her husband and defy the standards of the day that told her she should sell the newspaper he had started, because women couldn’t run a newspaper. The edition that carries his obituary also has a boxed notice on the front page that she would continue as editor and publisher; after all she had been a partner and contributor for more than 30 years. That steel backbone served her well when she buried her children as well. The two little girls died very young, her younger son of the Spanish Flu in 1919 or thereabouts and her older son as an adult.
Memorial Day can’t come upon us without me thinking of the youngsters who went off to war from little towns like Watonga, tiny dots on state roadmaps across the country. The ones who went to WWII are known as the greatest generation, but what they lived through we can’t fathom. True, the enemy hit first, and that couldn’t be allowed to stand. But there were already pilots volunteering in England, over paid, oversexed, and over there.
As a nation, the people understood the gravity of the situation. Once my husband asked my mother, who was part of that generation, if she though the Nazis would have attacked America had they not been stopped in Europe. She never hesitated before saying “Absolutely.”
It was that serious. Sewing machine factories began turning out weapons. Jar companies instead prepared and packaged ammunition. Men and women who for some reason could not go to the front instead ramped up production in the U.S. and did without so that those on the front were well supplied.
Then there were farm boys like Coot Nelson, who seemed to have laughed his way through a very serious job – bombing Japanese supply lines. He was one tough old Coot, pardon the pun. He survived two plane crashes, being shot at by the Japanese, two very serious car crashes and twins. The entire lot of that generation knew what they had to do and they did it, which is why we are here today to complain when our cell signal is weak.
I wonder if, God forbid, we are faced with a similar situation somewhere down the road, how we will pass muster. Not very well, I’m afraid. I don’t know if America today has the same steel backbone and gravitas to fight off the wolves that could come after us. I don’t know if those of us left behind could be strong enough to rebuild. I like to think we could. I like to think we could be like Elva and Coot, fight the good fight and live to laugh about it.