{"id":4467,"date":"2012-08-21T17:07:43","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T22:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=4467"},"modified":"2012-08-21T17:07:43","modified_gmt":"2012-08-21T22:07:43","slug":"cultural-continuity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=4467","title":{"rendered":"Cultural continuity"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When I was a young’un in the 1950s, growing up in the farmland of the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina, one of my uncles operated a country store. Every day, local menfolk, especially farmers, would congregate there. If it was winter, they’d sit around the stove. If it was summer, they’d sit around the fan. Of an evening, they might move outside onto the benches under the store’s front awning.<\/p>\n

It was called “loafing,” and by some people it was frowned upon. I call it important cultural glue. Today, there are far fewer places where neighbors can congregate than there were in the 1950s.<\/p>\n

But this tradition persists in Stokes County today, and no doubt in rural areas all over America as well. Most of the country stores are gone now. Today the loafers hang out at fast-food places at the nearest town or highway stop. In this area, Hardee’s rules, but I’ve also seen congregations of elderly people hanging out at McDonald’s. In Madison-Mayodan, one of the Hardee’s actually has live music and square-dancing once a week (for old people). Or at least they did a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n

Even in the 1950s, though, loafing was nothing new. Its roots, I’m sure, are in the old countries.<\/p>\n

Most of the people in this area are descended from people who migrated here in the 18th and 19th centuries. Most of them came from the British Isles. Even today, rural pubs are common in the British Isles and Ireland. A couple of times I have visited a Welsh family I’d befriended. Of an evening the menfolk would go down to the pub for a couple of hours in the evening, while the womenfolk cooked dinner.<\/p>\n

In this country, Puritan, anti-alcohol values were strongly enforced, so country stores took the place of pubs. The same Puritan culture that demonizes alcohol used the pejorative term “loafing” for it. Now fast-food restaurants have taken the place of country stores. At least it’s cultural continuity, but it looks like thirsty work to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a young’un in the 1950s, growing up in the farmland of the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina, one of my uncles operated a country store. Every day, local menfolk, especially farmers, would congregate there. If it was winter, they’d sit around the stove. If it was summer, they’d sit around the fan. … Continue reading “Cultural continuity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}