During my recent bookshelf cleaning and reorganization, I happened on this bit of history -- dating from, I think, my junior year in high school -- and that would have been 1958-59. As far as I can recall, we were assigned a subject to write on and the "best" essays were chosen for inclusion in this modest little book.
There are essays from all the states and the titles include such winners as 'Honour,' 'Youth,' Courage or Cowardice,' 'Preparing for a Formal,' 'What Democracy Means to Me,' and 'Opportunities of the American Youth of Today.'
In Mrs. Opal Dudney's class, an earnest teenager named Vicki Lane chose to write about two things that were important to her. Her punctuation and expression are dreadful (she needed an editor very badly) but I find that, even after all these years, I pretty much agree with her sentiments.
Two Important Things
These two things I am about to write on, individuality and love of life, are perhaps not as important as some of the rights and freedoms we in a free country take for granted; but without them, I could not be happy.
Freedom to be an individual belongs to everyone, but relatively few people exercise it. Our society is one in which a person who does not conform, is an outcast. All people are not cast in the same mold, for which I am thankful. What a dull world it would be if each person were a replica of his fellow man! "Know thyself and be thyself!"
By love of life I mean the capacity to be able to look forward to each day, eager for what it may bring.
These abstract qualities are those most important to me. To another they may seem trivial but to me they are essential.
10 comments:
Your early efforts are far more respectable than mine. I won an essay contest sponsored by the local fire department by counting all the matches in a box of Fire Chief Matches and estimating how much havoc could be wrecked by them. The Sylva Fire Department printed my essay in the local paper and gave me a little trophy that eventually turned green.
Dang, Gary, I never got a trophy!
Well, my next literary success was six tickets to the first production of "Unto These Hills" (1952). I took my cousins (who all heartily despised me) and we all cried when the Cherokee martyr, T'sali, faced the firing squad and then sank in a cloud of dry ice. 50 white doves flew away into the Smokies as a biblical verse boomed from the intercom. I decided to be a writer.
I saw "Unto These Hills" two years later -- Just out of sixth grade, I was a camper at Camp Junaluska and we were bussed to the Qualla Boundary for a day of culture. I don't remember much about the whole thing except that I fell in love with the Cherokees forever.
"Unto These Hills" turned out to be an extremely inaccurate version of the history of the Cherokees, but
over the years, I have learned to
appreciate "pretty lies." I ended up working for the Cherokees for 15 years and learned that most of my preconceptions were wrong.
Haven't they recently revised "Unto" to present a more accurate picture of what really happened? I ought to go see it again . . .
The new "Unto These Hills" is getting "mixed reviews." Attendance is down and people leave at intermission. Many folks complain about missing the old show. The new version substitutesdance and spectacle for history..sort of a Cherokee "Riverdance." They are still revising.
That's too bad -- hope they can come up with something that is accurate AND as compelling as the old one was.
Today, September 22, 2010, I found a red cover "Young America Speaks" from 1962. My older sister's essay, "What is Hope?" is printed at the top of page 128. We were sure that the publication of this essay would mark the beginning of her literary career. Alas, it did not. I, however, who was not published in the anthology, had essays published in anthologies of the UCLA Writing Project while I was a high school English teacher.
Hello, Anonymous -- Well, I finally fulfilled that early promise -- almost fifty years later.
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