TOWN WARS?

I read a novel by Wendel Berry, Jayber Crow lately. It is about a barber in a small town with rather amazing thoughts about almost everything. A good read and I’d recommend it.

The story is set in Kentucky and covers the era that includes our two world wars. Jaber’s thoughts on war led me to thinking about how war always seem to take place on a large level and not small ones. One could argue the interfamily disputes such as the Hatfields and the McCoys could be seen as wars but it would be stretching a point.

I thought what would happen if my hometown, New Sharon, Iowa had fought a war say with its neighboring town, Lacy. This is not a real stretch as they almost did.

There were three towns in my area that consolidated so as we young’uns could get better educations; something Jaber Crow would disagree with. The first two went together when I was in high school, Barnes City and New Sharon without much of a hiccup. But after I graduated it came time for Lacy to join the other two. I think a new schoolhouse had been built by that time. However, Lacy and New Sharon had been archrivals in sports over the years and it was not a welcome joining for many. Oh the students didn’t mind much, in fact, it meant a larger dating pool, a good thing. But the parents chaffed under co-habituating with their sports enemy.

The school year opened and students went to school in the new building, but the school board from Lacy refused to give up their books for the students to use in studying. The issue went to court and the court ruled they had to give up the books or the board would have to go to jail. The school board preferred going to jail; I don’t remember whether they actually did or not. Nevertheless, it was a hot time in three small communities. However in the war, if you want to call it that. Vast sums of money were not spent, nor were guns brought to bear and nobody died. Especially young people did not become “cannon fodder” it was the old folk who faced jail time in contrast to big wars between nations.

That was Jaber’s point in the novel as he said, “Port William, I thought, had not caused war. Port William makes quarrels, and now and again a fight; it does not make war. It takes power, leadership, great talent, perhaps genius, and much money to make a war….I still can’t connect Port Will and war except by death and suffer. No more can I think of Port William and the United States in the same thought. A nation is an idea, and Port Williams is not.” Nations fight wars is Crow’s opinion not towns.

Jaber Crow also believed that great organizations, such as nations, cannot love their enemies as Jesus instructed us to do.

What nations seem to lack, especially large nations in that sense of intimacy and relatedness that small town communities have. Someone in a town may go berserk from time to time and kill another. But they don’t raise money, train family members and get so psyched up that they are able to kill their neighbors (except the Hatfields and McCoys that is.)

Perhaps if the world was more intimate, wars would be more difficult. Or if we began to thing of others in this world as “us” in contrast to “them”, it might be more difficult to wage war. Or, as they said in the 60’s “what if they gave a war and nobody showed up?”