Essays from West of 98: Soil of Local Culture

What makes local culture, anyway?

In “The Work of Local Culture,” Wendell Berry tells the story of an old bucket hanging on a fencepost near his farm. Leaves fall into the bucket. Mice and squirrels come and go and drop acorns into it. Bird droppings and feathers find their way into the bucket. Insects root through the bucket and perhaps even die in it. Rain and snow collect and help rot the organic matter. After a period, these ingredients have formed several inches of rich black humus at the bottom of the bucket.

Berry called the bucket “irresistibly metaphorical.” It passively builds what a human community must “actively and thoughtfully” build. He wrote that a human community collects stories and builds the soil of a “memory of itself—in lore and story and song—which will be its culture.”

Berry, ever the farmer, saw local soil and local culture as inextricably intertwined. If neither soil nor culture are preserved, then a local community will decay and ultimately perish, replaced by the powerful, timeless march of nature. I have been thinking about what it means to preserve our local soil, both the literal and the metaphorical. We’ll save the literal discussion for another time. Just like that rich black humus at the bottom of the old bucket, a community’s lore, story, and song are extremely fertile and the avenue to pass culture through the generations.

My wife is equally amused and disturbed by my fascination with Findagrave.com. If you are not familiar, it is a worldwide database of cemeteries and the graves therein. Volunteer genealogists and historians collect and share pictures, obituaries, and family connections. I stumbled across it in my early days as a lawyer and found it invaluable in legal research, helping to establish missing connections in family heirships and chains of title. I have spent too many hours enthralled by the stories on this website—of Stamford, my own family, and beyond. These stories paint a picture of our communities through the generations. There are brave pioneers, enterprising businessmen, thee swift rise and falls of fortunes, untimely tragedy, and more.

These are stories of so-called “regular people,” but they are the stories around which our communities are built. In the old days of porch-sitting, regular people sat around after dinner and passed along family lore, traditions, and experiences. If they were not passed on, they died with the person who experienced them. It makes me sad to think how much local culture died with the storyteller. How many “regular people” did not value their own experiences and never shared them with a family member or archivist?

Here in Stamford, our Museum of the West Texas Frontier just unveiled a new exhibit for Black History Month called “100 Souls.” Stamford’s first U.S. Census was in 1910 and Census enumerators found 3,902 residents, of which 109 were identified as black. Museum staff and volunteers have compiled each name for the exhibit, some of which have surnames recognizable in our community 112 years later. This exhibit shares the important contributions of these early residents, including some incredible pictures of black tradesmen building Stamford’s famed red brick streets.

On February 19, 2022, from 10 am to 5 pm, the Museum will have a special event centered around this exhibit. Museum staff will digitize photographs and record stories from our citizens to expand the Museum’s archive of Stamford’s black heritage and history. This is the first step in a larger local effort to fully preserve and collect our local culture for generations to come.

Stamford has a rich cultural legacy that includes important, vital contributions from a wide variety of people who may have looked different, spoken different languages, or come from different countries. They may not have always been treated equally or fairly. But no matter what, they are Stamfordites just the same. Today, we are working to tell each of their stories.

Just like that old bucket collecting leaves, moisture, and organic matter, the soil of local culture is rich because of all its component parts, not despite them. Local culture tells why our community exists and why it is uniquely shaped, both good and bad. We can and should learn from all our local lore, story, and song, and pass it through the generations. By doing that, we preserve and build a deeper, richer, and more fertile soil of local culture. Otherwise, it will decay and perish.

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.