After my yard was mowed, my weeds pulled and my tiny garden hoed, I sat on our back step listening to the birds, staring off into the woods and soaking in the sun. It’s not that I didn’t have other chores to do; instead, I chose to do nothing. There’s a difference between the two.
A month ago I watched a movie late into the night. It was about the life of Woody Guthrie, the folk-singer activist who rode the rails of the Great Depression from coast to coast, occasionally getting his head busted for trying to help unionize itinerant farmhands. In an early scene, Guthrie, who tried to eke out a living during the Dust Bowl days as a sign painter before doing much as a musician, was shown working on a grocer’s sidewalk sale board.
Around him, ragged, dirty, wide-eyed children watched as if his paint brushes were magic wands, spellbound by a man painstakingly working to make a dime.
I’m not going to preach a sermon here about how kids nowadays can’t sit still without their video games or televisions supplying instant entertainment; I’m sure that if I were still a kid, I’d probably be as hooked on my cell phone and shopping at the mall as any young, red-blooded American consumer is. But it seems to me that in our affluence, we have allowed our imaginations, our amazement at common, everyday wonders to atrophy. I think adults are as equally guilty of the same sin.
Doing nothing is indeed an art. Years ago, I read a poem by Walt Whitman called “Sparkles From the Wheel”; it has become a favorite of mine. In it, Whitman describes how he stops along a boisterous city street to watch a man sharpen knives on a whirring stone. Along with a group of young children, he is captivated by the sparkles coming off the stone as the “sharp-chinned” old man pressed the blade across it.
I remember doing much of that same kind of thing as a boy, myself. I was raised in a family that had pretty well banished the word “boredom” from its vocabulary. To tell my parents or grandparents that I was bored was an incredibly stupid thing to do; there was always yard work, or garden work, or house work to be done. So, as often as I could, I practiced the art of doing nothing, of tying knots in rope and wading the creek and getting my clothes filthy. Poet Robert Frost may have wished as an adult he could go back to his boyhood and once again be a “swinger of birches,” but before I ever knew Frost’s words, I had been a swinger of wild grapevines in my cousin Renee’s woods, performing stunts inspired by grainy black- and-white Tarzan movies from The Early Show.
I wouldn’t expect too many kids who are a fifth my age to run outside to try all I did as a reasonably fearless, often scabbed and bruised outdoors adventurer. I wouldn’t suggest they fall out of their tree house, pole vault onto an old mattress with a sassafras limb, or wander a leech-filled branch. But I do have some suggestions for getting something out of doing nothing.
For instance, I’d like to see more kids read by flashlight under the covers at night when everyone else has gone to sleep. I’d like to see them build forts using kitchen chairs and old blankets. I’d like to know that they are lying in their back yards on cool nights watching the stars and wondering where people are going on those blinking lights they strain to see before they disappear into the blackness. I would hope more kids fish for bluegill with their grandpas and bake cookies with their grandmas.
I know that youngsters have standardized tests and braces and practices of some kind or another to get to, but more of them should be able to fry bacon and eggs on a fire they built after a near-sleepless night listening to the sounds of the woods. I’d like to see them explore more sandbars in shallow creeks and learn how to skip rocks. They should feel the mud squeeze between their toes, too.
Kids should still catch crawdads with strings; they should eat sun-warmed raspberries and blackberries just after they pick them themselves, even before they are washed. They should learn how to carefully open and close a pocket knife, and they should whittle. They should look for Indian beads, and they should hold a grasshopper in their hands.
Don’t get me wrong; learning how to work is important, too. But most of us learn how to do that early enough. Once we start earning a paycheck, doing nothing gets tougher, and it’s obvious that if the government has anything to do with it, we will work until we are very old or die at our desks or factory production lines. So I think we need to keep doing nothing at least some of the time before we forget how.
I hope that while kids are still kids, they look at spider webs in the morning light, that they watch the sun both come up and go down in the same day, and that they get to keep a box turtle for part of a summer. I hope they get to fly a kite, watch waves crash onto a shore, and hum. I hope somebody teaches them how to whistle.
I’d like to know that some of them are watching little garden plots where they have planted seeds, that they are getting to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and they’re still making ink out of the black juice of roadside walnuts. I want them to look very carefully at a bird’s nest. I want them to play in the dirt, and I hope they have a place where they can simply sit in the quiet and listen. They should look at the moon through a telescope and pond water through a microscope at least one time.
Since I am done writing this story, I think I will go back to doing nothing. I’m still pretty good at it.
Mike Lunsford can be contacted at hickory913@aol.com or through regular mail c/o the Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN. 47808.
News Columns
The Off Season: The difference between having nothing to do and doing nothing
- News Columns
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STATE OF THE STATEHOUSE: Sentencing law could benefit juveniles
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I can read a book on the beach. Until I start sweating. Then it feels like exercise, minus the fitness perks. My brain shifts into neutral as the waves roll in, blissfully washing away footprints in the sand and my inclination to think. Better put, I enjoy starting a book on the beach, and finishing it later, elsewhere.
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STATE OF THE STATEHOUSE: Requiring photo IDs for food-stamp users has already been tried
Voters in Indiana are required to show their photo IDs before they can cast their ballots. Should food stamp recipients in Indiana have to do the same when they go to the grocery store?
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering Mom a day after Mother’s Day
I don’t think there has been a day in the last eight years that I haven’t thought of my mom. Being all grown up with wrinkles to call my own doesn’t make me miss my parents any less.
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MARK BENNETT: Glitches show limitations of high-stakes testing concept
The dog ate my homework. That age-old excuse — based on a shockingly unforeseen complication — rarely works for a kid who didn’t finish yesterday’s math assignment. Yet, in a role reversal, Indiana school children, along with their teachers and administrators, are left to accept an explanation for a disruption best described as the mother of all ironies.
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MARK BENNETT: One step at a time to save lives
Joan Brown.
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MARK BENNETT: Sometimes, the mere posing of questions is significant
The era seems quaint now, almost like a fable. When people left their house doors unlocked. When the sight of a police officer in a school meant it was Career Day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MARK BENNETT: New reality steers Nashville singer to Crossroads for Historical Society concert
People pass through the Crossroads of America for lots of reasons.
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Or maybe a career change and a twist of fate.
Ty Brown makes his first stop in downtown Terre Haute as the headliner of a multi-band Sweet Sensations Country Jam concert May 4 in the Ohio Building — a fundraiser for the Vigo County Historical Society. -
HAYDEN: 9-year-old lobbyist weighs in on school safety
Senate Bill 1 shot to the forefront last week, after it was amended by the House education committee with a provision that mandates every public school in Indiana would be required to have someone on staff armed with a loaded gun during school hours.
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HAYDEN: Republican shift proving to be real
When a federal judge struck down key provisions of the state’s immigration law last week, it seemed anticlimactic.
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LUNSFORD: A different kind of resurrection story, no foolin’
If you’ve had pets in your family long enough, it’s likely that you’ll see a miracle or two — a dog that couldn’t possibly have lived, but did; a cat that grew to 20 pounds after being born the runt of the litter; a goldfish that had been belly-up too many times to believe it could have survived another day.
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STATE OF THE STATEHOUSE: Americans of Hispanic heritage becoming active in Republican party
When Republicans in the Indiana General Assembly decided earlier this year to put off a vote on locking the state’s same-sex marriage ban into the state constitution, it sent a signal that GOP leaders were evolving on the issue of marriage equality.
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MARK BENNETT: Terre Haute barber ‘sharpens up’ customers for 50 years
People streamed through this section of downtown Terre Haute in those days.
“You could hardly walk by here,” John Hochhalter said, pointing toward the sidewalk outside the window.
The bustle has faded since the early 1960s. Hochhalter remains. He’s still barbering in the same shop he and late business partner Kenny Thomas opened a half-century ago this week. -
MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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Americans for Prosperity aim to browbeat GOP lawmakers
If you're outside the Indianapolis TV market, you may not have seen yet the Americans for Prosperity ad that demonizes the House Republicans for resisting Republican Gov. Mike Pence's tax cut plan.
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MAUREEN HAYDEN: Pence may find himself in a mess if he gets what he wants
Here’s a story to consider: A Republican governor with ties to the tea party and possible presidential ambitions decides he wants to slash the state’s income tax rate, but meets with massive resistance from legislative leaders from his own party.
Sounds like the scenario playing out in the Indiana Statehouse, right? -
MARK BENNETT: Reflections of grid success stir with Brent Anderson’s passing
A few hundred miles away, and nearly 40 years gone by, a special game ball still occupies a fond place in Rudy Bohinc’s memories.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: If handwriting is a window to my soul, I’m glad this is typewritten…
Somewhere in the mess I call my “archives,” I have most of my grade school report cards hidden away. I have kept them under wraps, because I want to be long gone when my children — or grandchildren — unearth them and discover that their self-righteous teacher of a dad was, in fact, a terrible student in his formative years.
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MAUREEN HAYDEN: Are legislators gambling with the future of gaming?
Indiana lawmakers have been debating whether to give the state’s casinos more financial incentives to compete with the shiny new gambling palaces popping up in Ohio.
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MARK BENNETT: Never truer: Knowledge vital to narrowing ‘skills gap’
The pillar at the gates of Faber College in the movie “Animal House” bore a wise motto, despite its tongue-in-cheek intent …
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STATE OF THE STATEHOUSE: Pot decriminalization bill dead, but reduced-punishment aspect still alive
In the flurry of activity at the Statehouse in recent weeks, I missed reporting some sad news for stoners: The legislation to decriminalize marijuana is dead.
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MARK BENNETT: Great-niece to re-enact Paul Dresser’s musical legacy in Terre Haute show
People can be forgotten. Their lives end, time passes and memories fade.
Often, the only keepers of their legacies are family and friends, who tell and retell their stories, generation to generation.
For Paul Dresser, his fame burned strong enough as a turn-of-the-century, million-seller songwriter to preserve bits of his public notoriety. -
MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘lovely gift’ of a beech tree …
This is not the season that I usually write of trees, for besides a few pin oaks that hang on to the most stubborn of leaves, my woods stand bare and dormant and cold right now. My trees are patiently awaiting the green of spring that I feel, for some reason, is to arrive a little earlier this year than is usual.
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STATE OF THE STATEHOUSE: What to do with that $2 billion sitting around
We Hoosiers like to think of ourselves as special, but when it comes to the current debate in the Indiana Statehouse over the budget, we’re a lot like other states: Grappling with some post-recession questions about how to balance spending and taxes.
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MARK BENNETT: An Olympic takedown
Imagine an iconic image of American sports history erased.
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STATE OF THE STATEHOUSE: Pence sticks to his ‘Roadmap’
As a U.S. congressman, Mike Pence made it perfectly clear how he felt about the need for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
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MARK BENNETT: Indiana’s ‘skills gap’
A problem lasting decades ceases to be a “problem.” By then, the situation becomes “part of the culture.”
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