• Common Ground •

Have you ever considered your neighbor? Not the one you know, the one you rarely see. The one who had lived quietly next door and finally conceded to moving to a nursing home. This morning at 4:45am one of our neighbors died. Marqueen was 99 and three quarters; almost 100 years old. From time to time I had stopped in and chatted with her when she still lived in her trailer. It was a vintage trailer, from the early seventies I think, that she had lived in for years. How life changed for Marqueen. In 1907, when she was born, there were few households with radios, television had not been invented, telephone was a relatively new invention and was becoming a convenience, and the wild west was still wild. Oklahoma had just become a state and New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states. I remember chatting with her about how life and living had changed for her. The conveniences of technology had done much to ease the work of living yet there were those that she found unnecessarily complicating for her needs. Walking was the primary mode of transportation, trains were still the freight movers, horse and buggy or horseback were more common almost than cars although that changed rather early. There were still farms adjacent to the people who ate the food, and people next door went hungry; No refrigerators, just ice boxes. Now of course that was early on. World War One, Influenza, prohibition, the Great Depression, World War Two, the "Green Revolution", prosperity and a huge surge in manufacturing productivity, men in space, a man on the moon, the cold war, the Korean Conflict, the Viet Nam War, etc. what marvels she must have seen! What terrors must have demanded nerve and persistence and faith. Who knows what our lives will amount to? I have a richer appreciation for the comforts and luxuries we have today in part, because of spending time with Marqueen. She was part friend, part mentor, and real. To say hello, to spend the energy to actually get to know and visit a neighbor. That all takes effort. When her pipes froze, she called on me to help get them thawed. Anya, my wife, gave up some of her day off to help clean house for Marqueen. Yes, there may be inconvenient requests for help. But, how do you measure the value of an individual to your community? I am dismayed consistently when there is a 'news item' about some poor unfortunate individual across the world who is in need and people make great efforts to send money and aid in sympathy to a distant need yet cant' be bothered to look in on the needy person next door. We can all make a greater effort to know the folks in our community and in part accept a little obligation to help them in some way. It may be we who need the help some day.

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