A simple lesson

The harvest.

It was a chilly morning in New York one day this week, and a truly integrated cluster of homeless persons slept on a grate as it noisily vented warm air from Penn Station below. Rolled in roiling, tangled blankets, black and white and brown limbs intermingled, seeking warmth from the roaring vertical wind. Passersby rush on, each busily on a mission, with disapproving glances. 

Later, lunching at a well-known chain restaurant across the river in Hoboken, a small, hunched man with a wild white beard and simple knit hat and rumpled, soiled clothing, eats standing up. Looking like a creature from “The Hobbit,” he performs quick, obsessive, ritualistic manipulation of his food and drink, finally eviscerating the sandwich and devouring the filling. He is closely watched but outwardly ignored by other diners, cautiously watchful nearby. 

It is a matter of great, learned, debate, whether God exists, and if so, which one.

But it matters not. These people, the least among us, are equally imbued with human rights. Whether God-given or inherited from the Universe, these are fully human creatures, not less than any of us.

At the other end of the privilege spectrum are the highly educated, the trained, the cultured, the deep thinkers. And they care, deeply. And know that they can improve the lives of us all, if only we’d listen, and obey.

These are they who prescribe, command, compel. The new Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not live on the street. Thou shall not consume large sugary drinks. Thou shalt wear seat belts, and not smoke, and a thousand other things. 

Because they are educated and enlightened. Because the are concerned. And because they think themselves our betters.

But they are not.

This country was a grand experiment, splintered from the regencies and monarchies and religious shackles of mother Europe. It was founded on the principle that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." Sound familiar?

So let us consider one early example of the power of individual freedom. It resonates yet today, though greatly muted.

In November of 1620, a group of Separatists left England on the Mayflower seeking religious freedom and economic opportunity. The first several years were extremely difficult, near famine, with poor crop yields and perilous scarcity.  Nathaniel Philbrick, author of “Mayflower,” takes up the tale:

“The fall of 1623 marked the end of Plymouth’s debilitating food shortages. For the last two planting seasons, the Pilgrims had grown crops communally – the approach first used at Jamestown and other English settlements. But as the disastrous harvest of the previous fall had shown, something drastic needed to be done.”

“In April, [William] Bradford had decided that each household should be assigned its own plot to cultivate, with the understanding that each family kept whatever it grew. The change in attitude was stunning. Families were now willing to work much harder than they had ever worked before. In previous years, the men had tended the fields while the women tended the children at home. ‘The women now went willingly into the field,’ Bradford wrote, ‘and took their little ones with them to set the corn.’ The Pilgrims had stumbled on the power of capitalism. Although the fortunes of the colony still teetered precariously in the years ahead, the inhabitants never again starved.”

A mystery. Or perhaps not – simply human nature. When treated as free persons, owners of their own labor and the fruits thereof, the Pilgrims prospered. And as they prospered individually, so did the colony.

A small, hoary example, perhaps, but timeless.

The lesson is simple. Our "betters" are so only in their imaginations and inflated egos. Let each choose their own path. Offer your advice if you must, but restrain the impulse to impose. As an equal, you do not have that right.

Pilgrim's Progress

Johnny cakes on a wood-fired griddle.

After landing at Plymouth in 1620 and surviving that first terrible winter, the Pilgrims set about repaying their debts.  While the voyage to the New World was undertaken to escape religious persecution, it was an expensive venture and required backing.  The congregation obtained funding from the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London, a for-profit group of overseas trading merchants. They fully expected a return on their investment.

Due to the hardships of the colony’s early years and some mismanagement, the rate of repayment was slow and the Merchant Adventurers pressed for redoubled efforts.  By 1625, the Pilgrims concluded that the fur trade would offer the most viable means to retire their debt.  They were able to obtain a charter from the King granting them rights on the Kennebec River in what is today the state of Maine.

So the Pilgrims built a shallop, a sailing vessel designed for coastal navigation, and set out for Merrymeeting Bay, 200 miles to the north, then up into the Kennebec River.  Twenty five miles upriver, at the head of the tide where current and tides mark the extreme of navigable water, they established a trading post at Cushnoc, the site of modern-day Augusta.

The indigenous tribe, the Abenaki, were anxious to trade.  They had abundant furs to offer in exchange for corn, of which the Pilgrims were producing a surplus, and other goods. As Governor Bradford put it, “not only with corn, but also with such other commodities as the fishermen had traded with them, as coats, shirts, rugs and blankets, biscuit, pease [sic], prunes, etc.”  In exchange for a shallop-load of corn sailed up the river, 700 pounds of beaver pelts came back down.  With beaver fur in great demand in London, the Pilgrims were able to satisfy their debts by 1636.

What industry, skill, and self-reliance.  Within several years of carving the Plymouth colony out of the wilderness, the Pilgrims were producing a surplus of corn in large quantities.  They downed timber, hewed planks, and built a sturdy coastal sailing vessel without power tools.  They sailed over 200 miles and established a mutually beneficial trading relationship with the Abenakis. They paid off their debts.

Today in Augusta, at the site of the Cushnoc trading post on the banks of the Kennebec, stands Old Fort Western.  The fort was built in 1754 to provide security and encourage settlement of the area.  It has been restored and operates as a living museum, with docents dressed in period clothing demonstrating daily activities such as cooking, gardening, soap making, quilting, and blacksmithy. 

One spunky, 80 year-old docent, dressed in a heavy ankle-length woolen dress, showed us how to make Johnny cakes on a wood fired griddle.  She explained that early cooks toasted bread over the coals using tongs, and how pleased they were to get the new-fangled toaster which held two slices of bread upright, facing the coals to be toasted.  And how the whole contraption could be flipped around to toast the other side… modern miracles!

She told us of a bright, inquisitive 8 year-old who she asked to participate by placing bread into the toaster.  He indicated that he didn’t know how.  “Just like your toaster at home,” she explained.  “I’m not allowed to touch the toaster at home,” he replied, embarrassed.  “It’s electric,” his mother clarified.

Our docent contrasted this to another young man who she asked to hang a pot of water from a hook over the coals.  He did so, handily, and she didn’t notice till later that he had a withered arm.  He had compensated with no fuss by using his forearm.

“Just which of these boys is truly handicapped?” she mused.

I think we know what the Pilgrims would say.