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 From The President of
The Wilderness Road Of The Ozarks
James F. (Jim) Barrett
IS HISTORY WORTHWHILE?
What was it
old Tennessee Ernie Ford used to sing?
“Another day older and deeper in debt.” Well, I don’t know about the deeper in debt thing, but
“another day older” applies every evening (usually quite late at night)
when I plop my hoary old head on my pillow and try to get some sleep
before starting it all over again early the next morning. And, “deeper in debt?” Yes, each day I become deeper in debt
to my wife, who does her best to believe in me and the things I want to
do; to my friends and staff, who support me and try to help me get the
things I do – done; to my workload, which seems to become more vast in
scope each day; and finally to myself, for I constantly overestimate my
abilities and underestimate the time I have left on this earth to get all
the things I start – done!
Sometimes the total debt staggers my creaky old imagination!
I can almost hear hundreds of
you dear reader friends saying, “been there, done that!” For all of us older folk (and a ton of
younger folk), those who are not complete slackers or permanent
couch-potatoes, seem to build up these same work debts and find ourselves
feeling a serious “day older” at the end of each day. Unless we are doing all this to help
raise children or grandchildren into responsible adulthood – well – we
must many times certainly wonder if we really do know what we’re doing,
why we’re doing it – and where the heck we’re going? (I know that my good wife, Vicki, and
many of my overworked friends and supporters wonder the same things about
me!!)
Are the countless long,
tedious and tiresome hours spent endlessly researching history, events,
times and figures, meaningful?
Are there any worthwhile values in distilling all that research
and turning it into readable articles, or interest-catching storytelling
times? When all is said and done,
will anybody really care? Will
anybody appreciate the work and the results? Is the end product doing anybody any good? As Abe Lincoln said in his most famous
speech (a bit paraphrased), “Will the world little note nor long remember
what we say here?” Not only did
the world long remember (and will always remember) what Abe Lincoln said
on the fields of Gettysburg, but (again paraphrased) “The things they did
here will never be forgotten.”
And, true enough to his words, The American Civil War has become
the most studied, researched, re-enacted and portrayed in all media - of
all of the world’s historical events.
Yes, I and all the historical
researchers, writers, artists, re-enactors, students and teachers alike,
have to believe that what we do is not only worthwhile, but meaningful,
useful, valuable, and will be “noted and long remembered.” Where was it written, or who was it
who said it?, “If we do not study and learn of our past mistakes – we are
doomed to repeat them, over and over again.” And that, dear reader friends, is but one value found in
historical research – discovering the flaws, foibles and follies of our
past in order to help ourselves and our oncoming youth to avoid them in
the future. Nothing thrills an
old storyteller as much as seeing the gleam of interest and the
head-shakes of disbelief in an audience of young people when we tell them
that, sadly, we Americans managed to kill more of our fellow Americans in
our terrible Civil War – than the rest of the world has managed to kill
in all the wars since! Yes,
folks, that’s a fact – 600,000, more or less, and not a cheerful
statistic, but meaningful when properly presented.
They tell me that my newspaper
articles reach some 5,000 each alternate week that they are published
here in our local press. Editor
Ed, of this e-magazine, tells me that we reach some 18,000 of you reader
friends each month. The library
tells me that they no longer try to keep count of the people who check
out my historical books. And our new Historical Dinner Theater plays to a
full house each Thursday. So,
those amazing statistics and those wonderful encouragements sustain and
support me, for sure! That all
the research and endless hours of condensing seems to be reaching a lot
of receptive ears and eyes – oh my word!
That makes it far more than just rewarding to me and to my staff
of dedicated and long suffering Wilderness Road workers. Bringing the past meaningfully and
colorfully to the present is a good and worthwhile battle, a war that is
well worth fighting. And as
General George Patton said, when portrayed on the big screen in that
re-enactment of history, “God help me – I do love it!”
James F. (Jim) Barrett
President, The Wilderness Road of the
Ozarks Association, Inc.
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