Getting off the Prairie

As a kid, I was a big fan of Little House on the Prairie. A slow-moving ongoing tale of a time since replaced by big cities, sprawling suburban towns, mini-malls, and the rest of the modern conveniences that makes up the average American community - unless, of course, you are Amish - but then you would not be reading this. . =)

The Ingalls family lived on a farm in Walnut Grove, MN. Their closest neighbor, Mr. Edwards, was a cart ride away, over the hill. To get to the "metropolis" of Mankato, which today is still a hub of the area, but not larger than West Orange, NJ, you needed to take a day's trip to get there. There was a train station there to help you get "somewhere else".

Life for the Ingalls must have been quite solitary. That is probably why they had the three girls and adopted Albert. Back then, the family made up most of the human contact you had. No electricity - tv, radio, etc. You had no next-door neighbors, so you would have to make a real effort to get to know your community members.

I met a man yesterday at a soccer dinner. He is a neighbor of mine. He lives about a block away - maybe 13 houses separate our homes. He and the 13 other families, not to mention the people who live across the street from them all live closer to me than Mr. Edwards lived to the Ingalls. Funny enough, to this neighbor, until recently, I was the guy with the black Prius. I didn't have a name. To me, he didn't exist. I never saw him before, and there was nothing unique about his home (like having the first hybrid in the neighborhood). To me, that is an interesting observation of the modern community?

We go about our daily lives interacting with our families, and not much anyone else. We talk with our neighbors (sometimes) because they are attached to us either by property, or line of site (they live across the street). We have telephones, email, texting, iChatting, and the like. We have no apparent need for our neighbors. We seem to have secluded ourselves in a way that is not unlike the Ingalls; however, we have hundreds of neighbors taking up the farmland that separated them from Mr. Edwards. We, on the other hand, have the power of ignoring. A neighbor drives by, and you are suddenly busy looking at something; you are walking down the street and suddenly there is something very interesting in the trees that your gaze will be fixed on; or as you stroll through the park, you will see people having "important" conversations on their cells. All of this to avoid real human contact with a neighbor. God forbid we make eye-contact, drop out a smile, or say "hello."

As you know, we recently got a new puppy. The puppy will allow me the ticket to reconnect with others in my neighborhood in what the neighbor I met last night called "the butt-sniffing crowd". I allow my dog to sniff the butt of another dog, and my neighbor allows the same. In the meantime, pleasantries are exchanged. No avoidance of contact, looking at the trees, etc. The dogs act as moderators of human contact and interaction.

Maybe, in addition to the family bonding, and forced exercise that having a puppy inspires, it also will allow us an invitation to say hello to our neighbors. I am not suggesting the development of Fred Flinstone/Barney Rubble friendships, I am suggesting, however, the recognition of our neighbors beyond the cars they drive. Otherwise, we are no more connected than Charles and Caroline Ingalls were to the rest of Walnut Grove (probably less).