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Below is that final essay in Dr. Gordon Wilson's book, Fidelity Folks. Dr. Wilson, a distant cousin, was head of the English Department as Western Kentucky State University, and the Board of Regents named an academic building after him.
Fidelity was his sobriquet for his birthplace in New Concord, Calloway County, Kentucky. Calloway County is in far western Kentucky, only about 40 air miles or so from the Mississippi River, and even less from the Ohio, and is home to Murray State University (where, I always say, you can travel further, spend more, and get less).
The closing chapter in his book "Fidelity Folks", is
an introspective look at the past and the future, written in 1946, as
was the book. Things have changed since then even beyond Dr. Wilson's
thoughts. Here is the text of "Grigsby's Station":
~~~~~~~~
"One of the poems of James Whitcomb Riley that used to be very
popular told about a family that had lived in a small village named
'Grigby's Station'. The father made some sort of invention that
brought him wealth and renown. That in turn prompted the family to
move away from the village to the big city. But ties in the old place
brought them back to Grigby's Station - ...'back where we used to be
so happy and so pore.'
Without having paralleled the life of this Hoosier family, I have
been back to *my* Grigsby's Station, Fidelity. The occasion was the
annual graduation of students from the high school there. It was my
first sight of the new high school building, the third building in
descent from the little one-roomed schoolhouse over in the boundless
woods east of the village, my alma mater. In my commencement address,
I tried hard not to be the oldest citizen, or a fossilized remains of
some geological age, though I was strongly tempted to devote my
entire address to things that used to be.
Somehow, the occasion was so strange that I had to pinch myself to
belive that this was Fidelity, and that it was me, or whatever I
should say. I, who had attended the little school in the woods, who
had ridden bareback to the store and post office, who had spoken
pieces at the Fidelity Literary Society, who had spelled in the
Friday-afternoon events, who had spent several sleepless nights
worrying over things in the big world beyond our farthest hills --
the same I was speaking to old neighbors and their children and
grandchildren, and being listened to this time. It seemed as
fantastic as the dreams that came as I plowed my little red mule down
in the Beachy Fork bottoms and made speeches to the corn and the
bushes along the creek.
Fidelity has changed outwardly, for this new school building, with
all modern improvements -- gymnasium, electric lights, etc. -- is
symbolic of what has been happening in the nearly forty years since I
left the village. Our little schoolhouse had never known the smell of
paint and had never been warm in its life ten feet from the stove. We
had never heard of most of the things that I talked about that night
at commencement. I would be a queer person, indeed, who could
contemplate the changes without being profoundly impressed. Proud
parents with little formal schooling sat in the seats reserved for
the relatives of the graduates, as envious as I of the good things
that had come to their children. Instead of the tallow candle, the
electric light; instead of the acting pole between two tress, the
modern gymnasium; instead of the poor singing from dreary songbooks,
musical numbers that have taken more than local prizes; instead of
neighborhood differences, a whole-hearted loyalty to the new regime
in education and in life. The crowd came, to a man, in cars. except
the people who lived right in Fidelity. The village is just about the
same size it was when I was born; its lacks most of its former
importance locally, since it is so easy to drive to the county seat
over the state highway; but there is still in the little village, no
longer as self-sufficient as it used to be, that made me glad that it
was my village.
And in the homes where I visited, I was asked embarrassing questions
about world affairs that my old neighbors had learned about through
their radios and daily papers. Several times, I had to confess that I
did not know that some of these things were. though I had spent
eleven years, since I left Fidelity as a student, and all my life in
the schoolroom in some capacity. Poor hillside farms have
somehow given vigor of frame and of mind to the people of old
Fidelity, so that life, even the complex life that we now live, can
make little headway in taming their rugged spirits. And so my
'Grigby's Station' seems abundantly able to cope with changed
conditions and to rear other generations to meet the ever-varying
modern life. What the next generation of Fidelity and its brothers
will be 'doth not yet appear', but my Fidelity is adjusting itself to
contemporary history, spending no good time worrying over the passing
forever of times that used to be."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As always, Dr. Wilson embraced the future, while remembering fondly
the past that enabled the future to come.
Fidelity was his sobriquet for his birthplace in New Concord, Calloway County, Kentucky. Calloway County is in far western Kentucky, only about 40 air miles or so from the Mississippi River, and even less from the Ohio, and is home to Murray State University (where, I always say, you can travel further, spend more, and get less).
The closing chapter in his book "Fidelity Folks", is
an introspective look at the past and the future, written in 1946, as
was the book. Things have changed since then even beyond Dr. Wilson's
thoughts. Here is the text of "Grigsby's Station":
~~~~~~~~
"One of the poems of James Whitcomb Riley that used to be very
popular told about a family that had lived in a small village named
'Grigby's Station'. The father made some sort of invention that
brought him wealth and renown. That in turn prompted the family to
move away from the village to the big city. But ties in the old place
brought them back to Grigby's Station - ...'back where we used to be
so happy and so pore.'
Without having paralleled the life of this Hoosier family, I have
been back to *my* Grigsby's Station, Fidelity. The occasion was the
annual graduation of students from the high school there. It was my
first sight of the new high school building, the third building in
descent from the little one-roomed schoolhouse over in the boundless
woods east of the village, my alma mater. In my commencement address,
I tried hard not to be the oldest citizen, or a fossilized remains of
some geological age, though I was strongly tempted to devote my
entire address to things that used to be.
Somehow, the occasion was so strange that I had to pinch myself to
belive that this was Fidelity, and that it was me, or whatever I
should say. I, who had attended the little school in the woods, who
had ridden bareback to the store and post office, who had spoken
pieces at the Fidelity Literary Society, who had spelled in the
Friday-afternoon events, who had spent several sleepless nights
worrying over things in the big world beyond our farthest hills --
the same I was speaking to old neighbors and their children and
grandchildren, and being listened to this time. It seemed as
fantastic as the dreams that came as I plowed my little red mule down
in the Beachy Fork bottoms and made speeches to the corn and the
bushes along the creek.
Fidelity has changed outwardly, for this new school building, with
all modern improvements -- gymnasium, electric lights, etc. -- is
symbolic of what has been happening in the nearly forty years since I
left the village. Our little schoolhouse had never known the smell of
paint and had never been warm in its life ten feet from the stove. We
had never heard of most of the things that I talked about that night
at commencement. I would be a queer person, indeed, who could
contemplate the changes without being profoundly impressed. Proud
parents with little formal schooling sat in the seats reserved for
the relatives of the graduates, as envious as I of the good things
that had come to their children. Instead of the tallow candle, the
electric light; instead of the acting pole between two tress, the
modern gymnasium; instead of the poor singing from dreary songbooks,
musical numbers that have taken more than local prizes; instead of
neighborhood differences, a whole-hearted loyalty to the new regime
in education and in life. The crowd came, to a man, in cars. except
the people who lived right in Fidelity. The village is just about the
same size it was when I was born; its lacks most of its former
importance locally, since it is so easy to drive to the county seat
over the state highway; but there is still in the little village, no
longer as self-sufficient as it used to be, that made me glad that it
was my village.
And in the homes where I visited, I was asked embarrassing questions
about world affairs that my old neighbors had learned about through
their radios and daily papers. Several times, I had to confess that I
did not know that some of these things were. though I had spent
eleven years, since I left Fidelity as a student, and all my life in
the schoolroom in some capacity. Poor hillside farms have
somehow given vigor of frame and of mind to the people of old
Fidelity, so that life, even the complex life that we now live, can
make little headway in taming their rugged spirits. And so my
'Grigby's Station' seems abundantly able to cope with changed
conditions and to rear other generations to meet the ever-varying
modern life. What the next generation of Fidelity and its brothers
will be 'doth not yet appear', but my Fidelity is adjusting itself to
contemporary history, spending no good time worrying over the passing
forever of times that used to be."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As always, Dr. Wilson embraced the future, while remembering fondly
the past that enabled the future to come.
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