WE KNEW EVERYTHING

    Jim Berg, an old friend of mine, now in his eighties, a local historian of Nooksack Valley in Washington State, who gave me my 1942 Elgin bicycle that he had bought from his sister who had bought it from my Dad, once asked an old-timer, Donald Swanson, how news was conducted in the valley around 1900. Mr. Swanson replied, "The world was one mile from the house. We knew everything. We didn't need to know anything beyond that."

    How nice that would be! I had a brief experience like that, the first time we came to the Ozarks around 1980. We were building a small, log cabin on the corner of a friend's farm, in the midst of a large Amish community. We had no radio, no newspaper, no TV. The only world we knew for two months went only as far as the horizon. I miss that.





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