Marriage and Family Values

The Lunch

The Harvest

The paintings “The Lunch” and “The Harvest”, by French painter Julien Dupre, capture the essence of marriage and family life in the mid nineteenth century. Most of the people at that time lived a life of simple means with the bare necessities. The husband and father provided for the family by farming or through a trade requiring strength and hard physical labor. There was no indoor plumbing in their homes, no electricity, no air conditioning, or even a refrigerator. The wife and mother cooked over a fireplace, or on a wood or coal fired stove, and the laundry was done in a tub and hand scrubbed on a washboard. And usually, since there were no birth control options except for abstinence, there were several children “hanging on to her apron strings” while she was multitasking. All members of the family would work together to get the necessary things done. During the fall harvest as the days were getting shorter, the work day would last from daylight to dark in the fields, and the Harvest Moon would light the night to continue working if necessary. The wife would bring the lunch meal to the field to save time, and the women folk would even help in the fields at this critical time. This was the life of my great grandfather and grandmother who were born around the same time as Julien in 1851. This way of life, the family values, and the expectations of an individual in the working class society had been passed down for generations so that their grandparents wisdom and knowledge was relevant for them in their lives.

My grandfather was born in 1885, and he was brought up at the start of the machine age. During his life, he saw the transition from hand tools and crude horse drawn tools, to the first gasoline and steam powered machinery for farm use. He witnessed the sinking of the Titanic, the first automobiles, the first airplanes, the first radios, the first flicker silent movies, the first TVs, WWI, and WWII. But he brought up his children, including my father, with the same family values that he was brought up with. That is, it's not necessarily how wealthy you are, or how much surplus amenities over the necessities you provide that counts, it is more about how hard you work, and how much you are willing to give of yourself for your family.

Elaine and I were brought up in an environment where the husband and wife roles in a marriage and family were predefined as in the old ways. The husband and father was the sole provider and protector for the physical needs of his family, and his love for them was measured mostly by his success in achieving that. The wife and mother was the full time nurturer and homemaker, the “cradle rocker” whose loving hands wiped away tears, changed diapers, washed clothes, cooked meals, and kept a clean house. These things were understood and were the culmination of a tradition that had developed over many centuries in order for our ancestors to survive frontier life, political and religious oppression, wars, floods, famine, diseases, and the like. It was what had worked for our survival in Western society for thousands of years. When I was growing up in the fifties, our mothers and fathers lived these roles and instilled these values in us. Early in the fifties when national TV became available, shows like “Lassie”, “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” idealized the roles and reenforced them in my generation. This is the way it was “supposed to be” as portrayed in my preteen childhood, and we didn't question it.

My dad was primarily a sustenance farmer, and being the oldest son, I helped a great deal in the farming operation as was expected at that time. Our house was hand built before the Civil War by a traveling carpenter who went out into the woods and cut trees down, split rails, hand hewed 12”x12”x20' Chestnut sills, and gathered sandstones to make the foundation. There was no sawmill wood in the house. He made the windows and doors and all of it with hand tools from the trees he cut in the forest. It took the carpenter a year to build the house and he lived with the family during the construction. Dad bricked up the fireplace and grates and installed coal stoves for heat. It was my job to keep the coal and kindling stocked for them. We also had a coal fired cook stove in the kitchen that I would have to tend to in the summer. It was my job to milk the cow every morning before I left for school and every night after I got home. And I spent a lot of time in the tobacco patch, hay fields, picking corn for the cows, and tending gardens. Didn't really have much free time, and I relished any that I got.

Maybe it was because my only friend in my isolated preschool rural upbringing was my eleven months younger sister, but I always preferred the girls as friends over the boys, even though I was extremely shy around them. I had a crush on Janet Lennon of Lawrence Welk's Lennon sisters act, and once, even wrote her a letter that she responded to. I did not have a driver's license until after I graduated from high school, and so I could never ask a girl out for a date while in school. I was able to go to the high school dances and dance with some of my classmates though. And I would sit with some of my girl friends on the school bus on the way to school. I always believed and hoped that someday I would meet my Damsel Soul Mate, and we would live “happily ever after”.

Elaine is the middle child daughter of a sustenance farmer family of eight. She worked in the garden and the tobacco patch with all the rest of them, learned how to cook and can vegetables, and do all of the things that farm girls were “supposed” to do. She loved animals of all kinds, had a Siamese cat named “Sid” when I met her. She loved to ride horses, and would ride with her friend Debbie in the summer. She loved spending time alone, gardening and tending to her flowers, and loved to read paperback fiction novels. She was not extremely interested in boys, but did have quite a few chasing after her during her high school years (she is pretty and has a very pleasing and cheerful personality). She did go out on some dates, but never got very serious with any of them. She was pretty much content doing the things she liked, but like most of the young ladies of the time, she was waiting for her “Prince Charming” to ride in on his white horse and rescue her from the farm life drudgery, and they would live “happily ever after” with each other in a world of horses, cats & dogs, flowers, and maybe even Unicorns.

Even though we lived a mile apart (neighbors by rural country standards), we only saw each other once during our school years. This was because she lived in a different county than me, and went to different schools. Also, she was Baptist and I was Catholic, and we went to different churches. So, I really didn't take notice of her until after I returned from Army service in March of 1968 (I was drafted at the age of 19). I was working in my dad's grocery store in our little community of Gatewood right after I got out. Elaine and her friend Debbie came into the store while I was in the back slicing cheese one Sunday morning. She came back to see me, and she took my breath away! I was falling all over myself and I dropped the brick of cheese on the floor … made a complete fool of myself. It was love at first sight!

I had saved enough money while in the service to make a down payment on a new 1968 Camaro, and the first thing I did was to ask Elaine out. Well my Camaro was not a white horse, but it was close enough for her. We dated all summer and fall in a turbocharged romance, and we got married on December 28, 1968 after eight months of dating. I had found my Damsel Soul Mate and she had found her Prince Charming, or so we had thought.

But the 70's were changing times, and our “happily ever after” part was not what we had expected or was led to believe when growing up. With the post war infrastructure developments in transportation and interstate highway systems in the fifties, the explosion in communication technology, and the mechanization of manufacturing and agriculture, it became necessary to learn new skills to survive. The traditional husband and wife roles in a marriage were changing. In the early adulthood years, my generation saw that the old ways weren't going to be sufficient for the changing times. The skills and trades that my father learned from his father and grandfather, and had served them well, was not going to work for my generation. And so I chose a vocation in the “new” technology of electronics and computers. I was fascinated by radios and TV, mechanical calculators (before electronic ones became practical), and all types of electromechanical devices. I thought that if I could master the workings of these devices, I would be “set for life” in a job that I liked, and one that would provide very well for me and my family. I didn't envision that the developments would continue exponentially. I didn't know that I would spend my life in a perpetual education mode just to keep up with the technology in order to maintain a job. And so I went to all kinds of technical schools to learn the “newest” equipment and software in order to maintain them. At first, these devices were expensive and required a lot of technical support to keep them running, and this kept me in a job. But as the devices advanced technologically, they became cheaper and the “disposable” philosophy became prevalent, leaving me out of a job. The equipment outlasted the changing software and features, and my education and job became archaic.

All the while I was struggling to provide for our family and find a lasting profession, Elaine was quietly and patiently minding the “home business” with our six children. She never complained, although I know her dreams of “Prince Charming” and “happily ever after” were destroyed after our first child was born. She must have felt enslaved and longed to be free from all of the motherly responsibilities for a while. I was going to a paid full-time school in Dayton OH for months at a time, and only coming home on the weekends. We would try to have some “quality time” together with the kids as a family, but there is only so much you can do on a weekend. The coup de grace was when my neighbor had to take Elaine to the hospital to deliver our fourth son late one Friday evening. I was on my way back from Dayton OH, it was in January, and it was snowing when I came home to find my sister-in-law watching the other three children. She broke the news to me. I vowed then to find another job so that I could be with them every day, and never leave them vulnerable again. At this point I went to work for GE and started to college taking night classes to get degrees in Engineering and Applied Mathematics so that I could become an engineer. I was still gone from home a lot, but at least I came home every night, and was there if they needed me.

And so, with the help of my employer, I was successful in graduating from college with degrees that allowed me to become an engineer. I was almost forty years old, and my oldest son was a junior in high school. I couldn't have done this if Elaine hadn't been such a strong mother and wasn't supporting me through all of this. In the old tradition, she sacrificed much of her life for the sake of our family. It wasn't until our youngest child started to school that she began to have some freedom to do the things she wanted. She obtained a part time job at the school cafeteria, and we got her a new car. We started to go on vacation trips and have fun together. We never had a honeymoon vacation, or was able to have any “fun time” as a family until then. Mostly it was just a struggle to “keep the wheels on the wagon” before that.

Now, forty eight years after our vows were taken, sixteen years into the twenty first century, and eight years after my retirement, I sit here at my desk and wonder where the time went. Memories of my life seem like a dream at times. I ask myself, would I have made the same decisions in life if I had known what I know now about my future? What advice can I give young folks that would help them in their future life in these changing times?

Well, as a grandpa trying to give advice to my grandchildren and Millennials, I must say that even though the technology has allowed us to advance in communication, transportation, and the like, we have lost sight of the really important things in our society. There is too much greed, materialism, and selfishness now, and not enough real love. Even though we have an iphone with access to world information, and can communicate practically with anyone, family members don't work together as a team anymore and they feel isolated.

Elaine and I didn't have an inkling of what was ahead when we made our marriage vows. We were naive and believed in “happily ever after” then. But when the children came along and the times got hard, reality struck and the romantic fantasy vaporized. It is then that you are tried with the test of real love. Because if you really love your spouse and your children, you will be more concerned for them than you are for yourself. You won't be happy unless they are happy. If you love them, you will do the things you must do, even if you don't like to do them. And this has to be a team effort as it was in the old tradition, or the marriage won't work. There has to be willingness on both parts, and some give and take. Nothing worthwhile is ever obtained or appreciated without work. The traditional roles might have to be tailored to suit your marriage and situation in these changing times.

In the old tradition divorce was not really considered an option. Your marriage vows were “until death do you part, through good and bad ... ” . When you took the plunge, it was permanent and a life time commitment, regardless of how your spouse turned out. There was no “trying it out” beforehand either. To share intimacy and live together without being married was considered an abomination socially. The no divorce idea is not all bad because it does force the two to put in an effort to make the marriage work. But in other ways it forced dysfunctional families to stay together, ones in which abuse and neglect were prevalent. These situations were destructive for everyone involved, and it would have been better if they were divorced.

These days just about anything goes in our 21^st century society. It is now acceptable to have children out of wedlock, to live together and share intimacy with another person without being married, to get married and divorced multiple times … This is the new tradition we are developing for our time now. This is how we have adapted to the changing life styles we have experienced in the last seventy five years. Times are still changing and we will go through more social changes. Our religious philosophies may even change in light of new knowledge about our existence. Ultimately though, we will have to trust our hearts, not our minds, to know love and to find happiness. The main thing is we have to love … it is crucial to our survival … it is our purpose for being.