Ben Robertson Quotes
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They wanted me to have a point of view, to have my mind made up from the start on a number of things. I was to be tolerant but I was not to budge beyond a certain point, and if ever I was threatened at that point, I was to stand where I was and fight. My kinfolks thought more about character than about culture. The said culture could be acquired but character had to be formed. Character had to be hammered into shape like hot iron on an anvil. It had to be molded in the most exact and unrelenting form.
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Like most Southerners, I visit battlefields. Southerners will visit almost any battlefield anywhere, but we are especially fond of the Civil War scenes because we know who fought where and how they did their fighting.
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The past that Southerners are forever talking about is not a dead past--it is a chapter from the legend that our kinfolks have told us, it is a living past, living for a reason. The past is a part of the present, it is a comfort, a guide, a lesson.
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Time and again they have told us we are obligated, we have our duty, we must be willing to fight against whatever it is that threatens. We have been told to ask about everything: Will it leave us free?
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My parents did not care whether I saw an opera or understood a statue; all that could be considered in time, in the future, for operas and statues belonged to urban culture, and my kinfolks said any person with any kind of background could acquire a city civilization, but that few city people could ever learn the culture of a rural country.
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The South we belong to is a good country, a valiant country; it always has valor, and it has had industry and thrift. Our house is painted, our grass is green. For those of us who bend our backs and put our shoulders to to the wheel, the South is still Canaan land; it is milk and honey.
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It is defeat that lives on and takes the years to smother.
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By the grace of God, my kinfolks and I are Carolinians. Our Grandmother Bowen always told us we had the honor to be born in Carolina. She said we and all of our kissing kin were Carolinians, and after that we were Carolinians we were Southerners, and after we were Southerners, we were citizens of the United States. We were older than the Union in Carolina, and our grandmother told us never to forget that fact. Our kinfolks had given their personal consent to the forming of the Union, we had voted for it at the polls, and what we had voted to form we had had the right to vote to unform.
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My kinfolks thought more about character than about culture. They said culture could be acquired but character had to be formed. Character had to be hammered into shape like hot iron on an anvil. It had to be molded in the most exact and unrelenting form.
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We also planted trees - it became a hobby, for we had discovered what a satisfaction it can be to watch a tree grow and develop. Sometimes a tree will turn out better than any of a man's children, and a tree will endure - its life will outlast our life.
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It was not the goal that really concerned us, the journey was the thing. Who ever reaches any goal? From what journey can we return? We know of the poverty about us, of the work and worry, but we know of a degree of freedom, of a stunted beauty. We have warm open days and sunshine in Carolina. Much is denied us. But we have, we have. And an attitude is more powerful than any circumstance.
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It is a great comfort to a rambling people to know that somewhere there is a permanent home--perhaps it is the most final of the comforts they ever really know.
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We have been told to ask about everything: Will it leave us free?