The Pioneering Spirit

I originally found this article on the online version of the Pantagraph, but they seem to have left it up for a grand total of an hour or so. After a little digging I found the story posted at the Rocky Mountain News. File this under, "another reason I love the Midwest." It's an AP story and it's headlined with the quote, "We're resilient as hell." It's part of a statement from the mayor of a small town in MO that has been hit hard by the flooding Mississippi.

"There's one thing about Midwesterners," said Don Giltner, mayor of Louisiana, Mo., a picturesque river town north of St. Louis where 40 square blocks were under water Wednesday, three days before the Mississippi's expected crest. "We're resilient as hell. We're all worn out. We've put in a lot of long days."

As I read this article I could not help but contrast the attitudes and actions of the folks in Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri with the attitudes and actions we saw in New Orleans during Katrina. I want to be careful to point out here that I don't want to characterize ALL people from LA as one way and ALL people from the Midwest as another, but there are some generalizations that are glaringly plain to see.

When Barack Obama or George Bush (maybe McCain has come by, but I hadn't read about it) or 'ol Rod Blagovitch show up to these little towns they are met with... irritation. Not because they haven't done enough or haven't handed out enough money or were too slow to get there. No, it's because they're in the way. Their very presence suggests that maybe we can't handle our own problems and we need a politician's help. A quick perusal of the article suggests that perhaps these people are willing to fight on their own, not only for their homes, but for those of their neighbors. They didn't ask for permission from the federal government to do so.

As the rivers rise, these modest towns survive because neighbors look after each other, and the people reinforcing the levees are business owners, farmers and fellow church members who have lived there for years.

"My house is past help. So we're trying to save everybody else's," said Bethany Frank as she helped fill sandbags in a church parking lot in Oakville. Her home on the outskirts of town was flooded up to the roof.

These people aren't waiting for "some else" to come and shore up the levees. They aren't sitting on the roof hoping for a helicopter, they aren't complaining that the government hasn't done enough. They're not looking for a FEMA trailer or a cruise ship. They're looking around, seeing what needs to be done, and doing it. People like the Gabeline's:

Oakville sits at the bottom of a hairpin turn the Iowa River makes on its course to the Mississippi. When it became clear the levee would fail, trucking company owners Trina and Ward Gabeline scrambled to help friends save whatever they could.

They gathered about three dozen truck trailers and dropped them off at houses so families could load them with furniture and heirlooms. Then the company retrieved them and carried the cargo to higher ground.

"We didn't do it expecting to get paid," Trina Gabeline said, her eyes bloodshot from crying. "We did it to help the people.

It is people and attitudes like this that built this country. The American dream of self sufficiency tempered with compassion on display in the midst of adversity. Living free of the government in bad times as well as good is an American ideal. It is one we have slowly lost track of over the years.
I believe we saw the results of the abandonment of this principle in New Orleans. The response of the people and government of that city will be forever associated with the picture of the school buses underwater. We will always remember many of the people of New Orleans a year and more after the hurricane complaining that the free ride from FEMA was going to end. We remember the whining and blame shifting and accusing coming from local and state officials.
I believe the response of the midwestern communities to the current flooding can give us hope and encouragement that this idea of helping yourself and helping your neighbor sans government still exists. We've seen it recently in this community when a local farmer tragically lost his life last year and his neighbors brought in his crops at harvest time, making sure his widow was cared for. We've seen it thoughout the history of this area as settlers spread out to make their own way, but came together to fight prarie fires, to clean up after tornados, to play, and to worship. It's been called the "pioneering spirit," "Yankee ingenuity," "rugged individualism;" or, in the words of Don Guiltner, "we're resiliant as hell." It's who we are, it's who we all used to be.

~ Gabriel