The newspaper headline, Fertile Woman Dies in Climax, raised no eyebrows back home in Minnesota when I was a boy. That’s because everyone knew that Fertile and Climax were towns a short distance from one another in Polk County – up near the North Dakota border – and all it meant was that some poor woman had a car crash.
How did we know that? Back in the day, every kid in school had to memorize the names of all 87 of the state’s counties, and know something about each. Polk County, for example, was named after President Polk, and is comprised of 1,970 square miles. And yes, I know what you’re thinking what a fascinating dinner guest I must be, right?
I’m sure that such a learning task seems like a waste of time these days, but the purpose was to instill in students some “pride of place” and a sense of belonging to that place. Even as little kids we knew where we lived and, if you lived in Minnesota too, we knew something about each other and somehow felt “related” to each other. We shared a culture and context.
That sharing of culture and context also occurred on the national level. Teenagers listened to the same Top 40 tunes, everyone had seen The Wizard of Oz, and we all knew who said, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Along those lines, every healthy adult male in our circles had served in the armed forces and had fought a war for democracy. We were all in it together.
It wasn’t all roses and moonbeams, and what follows is not a lamentation. Things change. We change. Always. The biggest change is how mass media – the Internet, social media, cable television – has allowed us to find even the tiniest cohort of like-minded people (hot glue gun vandals, sidewalk lickers, Michele Bachmann supporters), and consequently feel legitimized by association. No matter how odd, profane, deviant, malformed, or eccentric you may be, you can find a BFF on Facebook.
In this brave new world everyone is a rock star, and the only place that matters is the hand in which you hold your phone.