Essays From West of 98: Informed Nostalgia
Nostalgia is tricky, misleading, incomplete, and vital
Nostalgia: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.
Nostalgia is a tricky thing. It is an ideal of days gone by and the positive memories we have of that time. It evokes imagery of people, places, activities, and experiences that hold a special place in our hearts. This is all objectively good. Nostalgia connects us to our roots. Nostalgia informs our relationship with our ancestors. Nostalgia helps us shape the generations who come after us.
Nostalgia also has a downside. Our memory can distort our perception of the past. The passage of time smooths away the rough edges and it exaggerates the best aspects of days gone by. Hard times can be chalked up to “educational” even if they didn’t feel educational in the moment. Traumas might be repressed or outright purged from our memory. We also don’t have the whole picture in our mind. We might remember that our family had limited means and we are proud of how that shaped us. That is true but it does not account for the anxiety that our parents suffered trying to feed their children and keep the lights on. We enjoy the memories of our childhood, but through no fault of our own, childhood might not have been equally happy for other children in town, similarly made in God’s image but discriminated against through no fault of their own, but on the basis of their skin color. As I have said before, it is important to remember that the “good old days” weren’t always good for everyone.
Over the years, I have struggled with how to handle nostalgia within the context of improving our rural communities. Older generations remember our towns at their peak of population and prosperity. They are rightly wistful for that life and what it meant for jobs, friendships, quality of life, and other positive qualities in town. Even at my age, I am old enough to remember Stamford in the last vestiges of the pre-Amazon retail economy. This, too, was often not the whole picture. What seemed prosperous at the time was already in the early stages of decline before everyone realized it.
Yet, we should not dispense with nostalgia as a foolish waste of mental energy. If we are to ignore our past in the community and build a future without regard for any such nostalgia, then we erase local culture and all that comes with it. We erase the memory, purpose, and power within a community’s unique story. As suburbanization has swallowed up communities that surround larger cities, I see that very thing happening. A place may retain its name, its ZIP code, and its high school mascot, but it is no longer the same town. Sure, there are more people, more jobs, and more money flowing through the town, but what was the cost? Within a generation or two, the old folks in town are gone and so too are the memories of what made that place special. It becomes just another faceless town with the same chain restaurants, the same big box stores, and the same homogenous culture. It is functionally no different than thousands of other suburbs in America. A transplant can move from another suburb across the country and never know much difference.
I have been occasionally guilty of dispensing with the value of nostalgia. Warm memories do not repair streets, build new water lines, or provide jobs to struggling families. It is frustrating to see once-tiny hamlets outside of a major metro area that were once a fraction of Stamford’s size become booming suburbs with 5A football teams. Some of those communities were only incorporated a few decades ago and Stamford elected its first city government in 1900. Some places don’t even have a community history because the community did not even exist until a developer paved over a field and gave it a name. What sort of sense does that make? Nostalgia is overrated, we need prosperity first. The local culture can worry about itself. Those thoughts run through the mind of a local leader, if they are honest enough to admit it.
And then I read “Jayber Crow.”
Stay tuned next week.
📷: archive photo of downtown parade in Stamford, Texas
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.