Radio 4 is running some repeats of Christmas editions of Alistair Cooke’s “Letter From America”. What struck me in listening to one of the broadcasts was the breadth of subject matter he could draw on to write about. He was talking about people dying in the snow at Christmas time during the Klondike gold rush. They were buried anonymously in makeshift graves at the side of the road. Nobody knew who they were. It was dramatic.
Now Alistair Cooke was not alive during the Klondike gold rush but he certainly lived through some momentous times in history. The Second World War, the assassination of President Kennedy, etc, etc, etc.
Most of us don’t get exposed to these experiences. This isn’t to say that historic events aren’t going on around us and in my lifetime. Collapse of the USSR, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, the death of Princess Diana, 9-11, and so on and so forth. These days however our experience of these events is limited to what goes on on the television, which we typically see in real time.
My father recalls that during the Second World War he was in hospital in Swansea having his appendix removed. He was released from hospital early because they were clearing the decks for the D-Day landings. Swansea Bay was filled with warships as far as the eye could see. He was born in a wollen mill in South Wales. His own father died of a mining related respiratory disease in his early fifties. It was the fate of most miners in those days.
My mother grew up in a place called Mohil in Ireland. She used to take the milk from the family’s sole cow to the dairy, in a donkey and cart. She attended a convent school where the nuns were classic bitches, beating an education into the children. She was one of seven children who had to be farmed out to relatives because they didn’t fit into the two bedroom cottage.
These days peoples’ experiences are far more tame. They go to school, get a job, find a partner and have 2.3 kids, or whatever the latest number is. Often they lose their job. Over this they typically have no control. They will find something else, good or bad. The take their holidays, watch their inane television programmes and sink into a routine that slides deeper and inexorably into anonymity. Then they die.
Of course Alistair Cooke died. In that he is no different to the other anonymous people mentioned here. He did make a mark though and I’m sure enjoyed the process of doing so. How long the mark will last doesn’t really matter. What matters is that he made it in the first place.