A Broken Covenant

A material approach to understanding the transformation of autonomous, local places and their integration into the nation traces how the things and people of the countryside and the neighborhood got smoother, cleaner, softer, quieter, brighter, and more colorful over the past 150 years. With each generation the countryside has become more transparent, translucent, and transitory. Houses with large and full-glass windows are filled with light. Children and adults are dressed in an array of reds, blues, greens, and purples, and cars, tractors, tools, and other objects, especially those made of plastic, wear bolder and more solid colors. Rural residents, first in town and then on the farm, have seen their yards, streets, homes, schools, auditoriums, and even ball fields lit up by electricity. The faint and shadowy glimmer of fires, candles, and lanterns have been largely snuffed out, except when used purely for aesthetics. Photographs and movies have also gone from black and white to color. Optometry and ophthalmology have sharpened eyesight, and in most ways we traditionally dark, dusty, and grimy peasants now resemble our fast-stepping and colorful city cousins.

Rural hands now run over smoother surfaces and fingers are more likely to push electronic plastic buttons than grip the wood hand of shovels. The rural nose, to choose another sense, now gets an entirely different, and more pleasant, sniff of life. Refrigeration and packaging have removed much of the stench of food and food processing. The outhouse has vanished; underwear, now worn and frequently changed, has bid a fashionable adieu to body order; and the scents of soaps, toilet waters, and perfumes now soothe where nasal abominations once ruled. Musty basements belong to memories of other times, along with the neighbor's stinky feet and foul breath. Farmers just in from the field shower in their basements before entering the kitchen. Even dogs and cats are given regular baths. The fragrant has replaced the foul, except in the vicinity of large hog operations, which have expanded greatly since the 1990s, or downwind of sewage ponds, especially during the spring thaw.

Taste, which ties to a history of diet, gardens, recipes, and cooking regimes for home and church, offers another perspective for writing a local history of the senses. More than a cute account of church-dinner hot dishes and Scandinavian encounters with bright red tomatoes in World War II, a serious study of midwestern foodways would have to sample from the tables of diverse ethnic groups and trace rural families' trip from potatoes to pizza to tacos.

On the prairie, wind once dominated the outdoor auditory field. It blew through the dry grass and shook the trees of the river valleys, especially the cottonwoods. It hushed, rushed, and scrapped itself along plowed fields, turned the corners of villages built out of wood, and swirled up against one's ears. Advancing civilization has brought new and different sounds to rural inhabitants. Where wetlands have been drained, the sounds of singing birds, chirping and croaking frogs, and buzzing and crackling insects have vanished. The ducks, pelicans, and high-honking geese—all of the migrating birds—have shifted the main paths of their celestial flyways west. Now, the hum of electric machines, the rhythmic drone of rolling rubber tires on highways, and the pulsating beeps of construction trucks often form the background sounds that water, wind, and bird once did.

Farmyards themselves once held different concerts. The siding of shed, barn, and house flapped and clapped, metal against metal. Doors squeaked and slammed. Boards were hand sawed and hammered. Boots made great sucking sounds when pulled out of the mud, while sweeping was a snare drum, raising clouds of dust. Resisting horses neighed, and the pig soon to be slaughtered wailed miserably. All the while the clinking and sucking pump filled buckets with splashing and swirling water. Men, women, and children expressed emotions as they worked their way through dimly lit and muddy yards and got cuts and large splinters in their hands. They issued instructions appropriate to the family order of command. Their voices also implored, teased, shouted, harped, complained, cried, and flirted. There were myriad auditory horizons in the...