Kaitlyn Sisk
When one remembers how America began, the first thoughts are probably of Christopher Columbus gallantly discovering a great new land. People usually do not think of an already inhabited land being stolen and its people being driven out and slaughtered- but that is what happened. Americans try to cover this up in various ways, but the important part about this, is the question, what have we done with this land we fought so hard to take over? The postcard called “Silhouette of History” is describing the historical events of the start of the town and the importance of the “Treaty Rock,” but all we see is a Dairy Queen. The town is named Waukosha after the Indians who once inhabited the area. The rock is from when the townspeople subdued the Indians who “came from nowhere” with “no regard to society” who were “unruly invaders”(168). Basically, the town’s history is based on a lie made up to make the townspeople feel better about cruelly taking over land that rightfully belonged to the Indians. It is a false history, but no one seems to care about history anymore anyway, considering the “Treaty Rock” is not even in the picture. So was it worth taking over the land from the Indians? In this picture, we see nothing worth the deaths of so many Native Americans has been done with the land that was taken. The Indians were slaughtered and had their land stolen, forests were cut down, and for what? Was it worth all the trouble if all that we end up with is a Dairy Queen that no one really even cares about? It was definitely not worth it. The early settlers thought the Native Americans were primitive and tried to civilize them. But I believe they could have learned a lot from them. The Native Americans took great care of the land we took from them and used it to plant their own food. They lived off the land and had an attachment with it that Americans have now made it almost impossible to have.
We see there was a loss in the care for our country’s history, which may have contributed to the loss of care for the land. Ware states the land pictured in the postcard titled “Vista” has “rich heritage”. What he really means by this is that the land can now never have any sort of heritage or personal meaning to it and the only history being left behind is the trash people throw out their window. All the land has become is asphalt, power lines, and a gas station. It is not possible for anyone to find any personal meaning in any of these settings. Another postcard this comes up in is “Sun’s Farwell Kiss.” It pictures a restaurant, like any other restaurant. The darkened “space between the ceiling tiles and the concrete above… which no one ever thinks or cares about” is like the restaurant and the whole town itself. The restaurant is so impersonal it is just a space. People stick their gum under the table because no one cares about it. There is litter all over Waukosha because it feels so impersonal that people just don’t care about it. People believe that progression and commerce is for the best, so they just let it go. But it affects them- it makes their lives feel more meaningless. America has become many little towns just like Waukosha and now people cannot find any personal attachment to this land of asphalt, power lines and chain stores.
Wendell Berry addresses this litter problem in our country in his essay “Waste,” in which he accounts the problem to labor saving technologies, wrong social ideals, and the centralization of the food industry among other things. Berry’s main beliefs are to have a connection with the land and agriculture. There is such an abundance of food and an ease of access to it- Ware has made the availability of it very clear in the postcards. Berry states, “We have made a social ideal of minimal involvement in the growing and cooking of food. This is one of our dearest ‘liberations’ of our affluence” (Berry 128). If the growing and cooking of food was done more by individuals, I believe this would cause a personal connection with the land, and anyone you eat the food with which would also be beneficial because the theme of Ware’s book is isolation. Therefore, a decrease in the production of food and more individuals making their own could also cause a decrease in the meaningless feeling of life.
A reason why the land feels so impersonal is its unoriginality and ugliness. The main thing that stands out when you look at these postcards is their ugliness. Ware describes the landscapes in “Vista” saying “the broad sweep of power lines, the delicate articulation of poles, signs, and warning lights, and the deep forest of advertisements all conspire to occasion countless views of complicated beauty, conceiving wonder in the curious onlooker at man’s great achievement, however ductile” (Ware 168). This is what has become of the land in America. Ware sarcastically calls this scene “complicated beauty,” but how could a landscape so colorless and full of metal poles sticking out of the land be beautiful? It is bland, sad, and predictable, but not beautiful. Ware also uses the word forest when talking about the advertisements. Really, there are no forests in any of these postcards. One postcard’s title is “Murmuring Pines,” but all we see is a shopping facility. Ware still talks about the trees even though they aren’t there to show that they were once abundant, but now they have been all cut down for unnecessary shopping centers. It seems the trees have been cut down only because of the inner drive to build and progress and build more. People look at what the country has accomplished as achievements, but Ware illustrates that these are not achievements; they are just the results of meaningless progression.
Ware talks about “commercial beauty” in the postcard “A Declaration of Glory.” This postcard is about the store Bargain Showcase, a bargain store just like every other that is now closed down. Ware sarcastically says the store was “continuously playing popular ballads” and then contradicts that by saying that the store has a mystery. This also demonstrates the loss of personal meaning in the land. When there are so many franchises, there is the loss of being able to feel connected with not only the land and the store itself, but there is also the feeling of detachment with all the things that occur inside these identical places. For example, the elderly man in the postcard “Sun’s Farewell Kiss” “who for sixteen years was kept alive by a salad and a cup of coffee served in more or less the same spot” may have an attachment to the restaurant Pam’s Wagon Wheel, but it cannot be a positive one. Surely there are people who have attachments to some restaurants, but who would want to merely be “kept alive” by the meal served to him every day? It shows that this man does not go to the restaurant because he likes it, but only because he needs to eat and out of habit and routine, ends up at the pathetic Pam’s Wagon Wheel. Because of the standards of society, he assumes this may be his only option of eating, but he would feel more useful if he did not go to the same place every day and order the same thing while someone he didn’t know made it for him.
Ware also says “many of the younger residents of Waukosha also enjoyed gainful employment at this fine outlet.” Actually, Ware means the opposite- this younger generation probably never gained anything from their employment at the Bargain Showcase, and they probably felt like their job meant nothing. With these stores offering such availability for anything you could need, people are left doing jobs that mean nothing to them. Wendell Berry states that the centralization of our economy has led to this problem, and if this weren’t so, people “would have work to do that would be useful to themselves and others” (Berry 128).
A negative effect of progression is the disintegration of the traditional family, which could be the result of many changes in society. One may be the way people have become more and more individualistic through the advancements in technology. Ware makes a point to demonstrate the abundance of parking lots and suggests that cars may be a cause of the isolation of people. By the end of the 20th century, more than 90 percent of American households had at least one automobile (Caplow 100). Ware says the interstates “provide an unconscious waste receptacle for items dropped overboard in haste to return to the comfort of the personal vehicle or land rover.” This shows that not only cars cause isolation, but so does the impersonal feeling of the land. They litter because they have no care for their land around them, and then hastily revert to their hiding place- their car. In the postcard “Grand Port of Entry,” we see that at the Travel Bureau, all modes of transportation such as train and airplane have been stopped and all that is available is a more “flexible, personal mode of transportation,” the bus. As time goes on, it seems the transportation is more flexible, but we loose something in the process- the interaction between people that could be happening on the train or on the airplane. Instead people are hidden in their cars, alone.
Another reason family structure is changing may be the 24-hour availability of commerce. This would be considered advancement in business, but Ware shows another side of these commercial opportunities when people “visit restaurants in their bedclothes when things get too emotionally stressful at home. Greatly expanding the possibilities for one’s enjoyment of life, the ‘City of Perpetual Moonlight’ was a bold step forward for the modest burgh of Waukosha, a path soon to be followed by cities all over this great land.” These stores have provided a place for people to run away from their problems instead of working them out at home. These advancements in commerce are providing opportunities for people to hide and become isolated from each other. Has anyone ever questioned what the reason for this 24-hour commerce? In “Murmuring Pines,” the shopping facility pictured that is called Buyalot has signs that say, “open 24 hours, liquor town, and club mega.” Many people just assume these are conveniences, but they actually hinder our society. They give us a place to run away from our problems and just cover them up, for example by drinking alcohol or overeating, instead of fixing them. Ware says the shopping facility offers “surreptitious favors” but he is again being sarcastic and means instead, it offers hidden disadvantages. Because they have been covered up for so long, most people do not even realize that there is a problem.
We have progressed forward so far that it is beginning to cycle backwards. Things have become too easy that people are becoming careless. Take for example, in the postcard called “A Sharp Truth,” in 1893, the building pictured was once called the “Saint Mary Mother of God Sanitorium and Foundlings Infirmary or Beneficent Society” with a “neoclassical edifice interlaced with touches of “chinoiserie” and the motifs of ancient Egypt.” Then it became the College of Saint Mary in 1928, but in 1943, the college lost its accreditation and later the unique neoclassical architecture of the building was razed and the parking lot was expanded. Lastly, the name was changed to Saint Mary: The Care Center, probably because it could not be qualified as a hospital anymore. This one passage demonstrates the downward-sloping changes of this building and it is a symbol for our society in general. In the beginning the building had interesting cultural architecture and a purpose, and as time went on the building was added on to and the unique architecture was torn down leaving just mismatching, ugly exterior. The purpose of the building also disintegrated, losing its accreditation and its title as a hospital. But the building was expanded, so it must be better, right? This symbolizes our society in that we have built and built many things, but the purpose for building them and the buildings themselves have begun to lose their purpose, meaning, and uniqueness. We blindly look at these changes as positive progress and get rid of a good thing without thinking twice. The building needs to stop and creation should start. Bigger is not always better and quality over quantity are such popular phrases in our country and we should really abide by them.
One postcard pictures an “apothecary clinic.” It is not for any injuries really, just basically for the selling of drugs. Advancements in medicine have created places like this clinic for unnecessary drugs that people use to get through the days and sort of hide from their problems through self-medication. When life has become so easy, people just go through the motions, taking drugs first for only the major illnesses, and then needing them for every little minor injury and this is an unnecessary dependence.
All these changes that have made our lives easier and more efficient are sometimes ignored and taken for granted. Ware is illustrating in these postcards that our country has been mindlessly progressing and therefore, actually declining because of it. We are going too far in technological advances and life is starting to lose its meaning. Ware shows that this is already happening by using a symbol for progression in “Serene Panorama.” It shows that life now is becoming more and more meaningless. It talks about how “intoxicated teenagers have fallen to their deaths” from the water tower. The idea of drunken teenagers recklessly and accidentally killing themselves strongly shows how much more meaningless life has become. The water tower itself represents progress, but what do people do with it? They are not grateful; they cover it with graffiti and litter all around it. It is covered with “many discarded liquor bottles and crusted prophylactics.” It is a sad, disgusting thing that “dominates the horizon” of the town. It is sad and pathetic that Ware says the water tower has dignity. We need to realize another result of progression is that we are losing our dignity.
Therefore, the progression we value so highly has not brought about anything necessary. It has brought about more negative effects than positive such as a false sense of accomplishment, loss of heritage and culture, isolation, and the loss of meaning in life. We are just pushing blindly forward, but we need to think that maybe another Dairy Queen isn’t a good idea. We need to stop this meaningless progression because it is making people’s lives more and more meaningless. We have progressed so far that now our society is just declining. Instead of admitting that some changes may have been a mistake, we just keep pushing forward and covering things up. Ware calls vinyl siding a “metaphor for our time on Earth.” As long as it looks well on the outside, that is all that matters. The buildings are covered up by vinyl siding instead of being fixed, but they are crumbling on the inside.
When I went home to New Jersey, I was in the mall parking lot looking at the landscape. The landscape I was looking at was eerily like a postcard of Ware’s. The sight included leafless trees, an abundance of power lines, a Burger King sign, a Taco Bell, an Arby’s, and a water tower in the background. I realized that the Waukosha Ware describes is really like towns all over America and life has become less meaningful in our country. People are looking for purpose in the wrong places. People are settling for the few options handed to them. To get back our purpose, we need to bring back the culture to our land and connect with it and each other. The isolation and meaninglessness can be greatly lessened if we make ourselves useful. Respecting the land we live on is a step to living more meaningful lives. Because our country values efficiency so much, it has led to all the labor saving technological advancements, which has led to an abundance of free time to do meaningless things. We need to take a step back and realize we do not need to save ourselves from these labors; it could actually be what saves us.
Works Cited
Berry, Wendell. What Are People For? : essays/by Wendell Berry. Berkley, California: North Point Press, 1990.
Theodore Caplow, et al., The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to the Trends in America (Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 2001) 100.
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