Small, wonderful Greenbrier, Ark. (pop. 5,627 not counting dogs, cats and the occasional hamster), has set an example for the rest of this small, wonderfully varied and waterlogged state. "Greenbrier rushes to aid flood victims/ Displaced elderly get deluge of help" announced a headline in the Arkansas section of this newspaper the other day. Greenbrier, it seems, is a town full of adults who know how to act like adults.
Folks there didn't have to be asked to help; there wasn't time for such formalities. Time was a-wastin; the water was rising and folks in the town's Gardens Apartments soon had to wade through their doorways as the alarm spread. Joan Brown, 62, was peacefully reading in her bed when she heard her young nephew in the next room yell to her: "Aunt Joan! The creek's in the house now!" And it was.
After her sister Joyce Johnson called 911, the local fire department sped to the scene of the flood to begin rescuing the complex's older residents. A cable was strung so the older folks could hold onto it as they pushed their way to safety above the deepening torrent. Help was coming, neighbors were rallying, and once again adults were acting like adults.
"When we were called out there, there was probably two feet of rushing water that we were up against," Greenbrier's fire chief Cody Fulmer noted. "We had to evacuate quite a few people." Twenty-two of them, according to the apartment's management. Many of them bedded down on cots in the apartment building office and under blankets provided by the dependable Red Cross. And when word of the problem spread Saturday night and Sunday, help poured in and, to quote Joan Brown again, "everything was good."
Who says social media is just good for spreading rumors? In Greenbrier it brought help and plenty of it. Churches, businesses, public officials answered the call. Even residents who weren't yet adults, like the high-school football team, were acting like adults.
Who says kids these days are all about their smartphones and sneaking beer (or worse)? And don't have respect for their elders? And don't pay attention to the world around them? The football team in Greenbrier provides some proof against all that.
Kids today? Some of them are outstanding. Around here there's a phrase for it: Good raising.
On the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, consider the cases of arrested development who are still living at home with with their parents and don't seem to have any interest in adulthood. To quote a U.S. senator from Nebraska, the Hon. Ben Sasse, who's just written a book about kids who want to stay kids forever. "Let me be clear . . ." he starts off. "This isn't an old man's harrumph about 'kids these days.' I still remember Doc Anderson standing in the street in 1988, yelling at me to slow down as I drove through his neighborhood in our small Nebraska town. I was 16 and couldn't stand that guy. Years later, when I had children of my own, I returned to thank him. Maturation." More important than having become a United States senator, he had become an adult--and learned how to act like one.
Call it a tale of two different worlds and two different lives, and the gulf between them isn't narrowing. Once again we are two different nations, this time not divided by lines on the map and a terrible civil war but divided in a deeply disturbing way nevertheless. It was a prescient observer, great leader and unifying force in his own right who once warned that a house divided cannot stand. His name was Abraham Lincoln, and he remains a voice to be hearkened to however different today's circumstance are from that of a different era, and how small they may appear next to the historic crises of the past. But if we are to respond to this slowly corroding crisis, once again we will need to call on the better angels of our nature.
Editorial on 05/09/2017