FAMILY VALUES OR WHAT IS THE VALUE OF FAMILY?

We hear and read about family values these days. Nearly every day some newspaper, magazine or TV broadcast touches on the subject. Some readers and listeners ask, querulously, "What do you mean by family values?"

On TV, if someone tried to explain, he (meaning he or she) is interrupted before he gets to finish a sentence, sometimes not even a phrase. I think the heated quarreling on TV is setting such a bad example for intelligent conversations. On Crossfire and other panel discussions, the interruptions, talking at the same time, each one trying to be louder than the other and exchanging sophisticated insults and put-downs are getting to be ridiculous. Who is caught in the crossfire? The listeners, of course. Those longing for lucid information are the ones killed.

But, I stray from my subject, family values. I think everyone has some vague idea of what is meant, that idea being the family as the basic unit of society that tries to instill in its members, as William Faulkner would say, "I love, honor, pity, pride, compassion and sacrifice." Although Faulkner was speaking of why writers must try to project these things into their writing, I think it rather explains family values too "the old truths and verities of the heart," as, again, Faulkner would say.

Let's put it another way. What is the value of a family? Or, better still, what was the value of a family before the '60's? Those were the years that rendered the hammer blows to traditional families. There were good things to come out of the '60's, but the hammer blows that broke families and many families to come seem to cancel the good. It was the emphasis on "me," "I," "myself," "what's in it for me?" "If it feels good, do it," that broke the traditional family framework for society.

Some families made it through intact and instilled in a remnant of the children that a family is or can be just about the best thing a person can belong to. Encircled by a mother, a father, sisters and brothers, you move about in confidence that someone is going to be for you. Someone is going to say, "This is right. This is wrong. Choose right." Someone will say, "This is the correct way to do this. Do it." If you get sick you don't "go it alone" in a family. One of the most vivid memories of my life was when it seemed I lay dying from a poisonous snake bite and hovered around my bed were parents, grandparents, and sisters twelve eyes looking into mine, imploring me to live.

"I'm gonna tell Mama on you," Lou or I would say. We both recognized authority and a mediator.

"We're going to town to vote," Grandpa would announce and we went to town, those who could, voting.

"We must get the hay in before it rains," Daddy announced. We all dropped everything and went to the fields. We were an economic unit that knew our livestock had to be fed if we were to be fed.

There was only one occasion when Dad, unwittingly, explained the value of a family to us. He was really describing how to make a wheel and how it worked. Let me try to reconstruct the incident for you.

Dad was a blacksmith and wagon maker before we moved to the farm. When we did move he brought along his equipment wagon hubs, spokes, iron rims, etc.

One day, Lou, Mama and I were watching Dad make a wheel. (To watch and appreciate another's work is a family value).

"See this banded opening?" Dad asked. "That's where the axle goes through. Then this," he pointed to the next circular layer, "is usually called the hub, but the two bands together are really the hub, the center of things. Without the hub there can be no wheel."

"These holes," he pointed to the holes in the thick round wooden layer, "are where the spokes are put in."

We watched as he put in the red pained spokes. "I give them names," he said, hammering in one and saying, "That's Lou, and this one is Lillian and here's Jeanie."

Who could keep from thinking, at this point, that the inner hubs were Mom, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa and the spokes were the children?

Of course three spokes didn't make a wheel, so Dad began hammering in spokes with names of other kinfolks Huey, Luzena, Thurman, Minnie, etc.

He fitted the sectioned wooden rim around the spokes, making the spokes go into their proper holes. He rolled it around and about to see if it rolled smoothly.

"Whatcha gonna call that, Daddy?" Lou asked.

"You name it," he suggested.

"Roller," I suggested, tentatively.

"Yeah, Holey Roller," Lou said excitedly.

Mama shushed her.

We stayed to watch him heat the iron rim and hammer it on the anvil, plunge it into water until it fit the wooden encircling wheel.

"There she is," he pronounced, after a while.

"What we gonna call the iron rim, Daddy?" we asked.

"You name it," he replied.

We thought and thought. I don't think we ever came up with a name. But when Daddy put it onto the wagon that had had a broken wheel and we saw it rolling along smoothly with the other wheels, I think some fragments of the idea, family, must have flitted through our minds but we were not smart enough to come up with anything like coherence or solidification or even a phrase such as "wheels working in unison with others to provide a better ride."

REJOICE!