History can't repeat itself

"I wish foresight were 10...no 5% as good as hindsight." That's what C said to me on the way to class this morning. We were driving by Linden on Highway 125 and I was craning my neck around trying to find evidence of the old Lindenlure Hotel that used to stand on the shore of the Finley River there. Despite having graduated not five miles from the location, I never knew there used to be anything of importance at Linden. As far as I knew, it was merely a great swimming place and that, for some inexplicable reason, someone had created a small waterfall. Old photos from the late 19th and early 20th centuries show a very different Linden than the one I have driven past every day for at least a decade. Linden today is simply that: Linden. A swimming hole, a waterfall, and a lot of houses dotting the north eastern banks. Kids swimming, teenagers drinking, a typical rural waterin' hole. But when Linden was first settled (and don't think its a town now...noooo, it's a place on a map; there is no zip code), there was a mill and the Lindenlure Hotel to welcome people on their way to to Springfield or Rogersville from Sparta and Ozark. Today, not even a foundation remains to tell you where the main building or even one of the cabins of the hotel stood a century ago. A handmade rock foundation slowly crumbling into the river with every passing year and rainstorm is the only thing remaining of the mill that once shared this wide stretch of river with the inn.

Yesterday, at a new bookstore in Ozark, I found a great book called "A History of Christian County: the First One Hundred Years." In it, I found an upsetting picture. There in black and white on a glossy inner page, stood a two-story hotel in Sparta, my hometown. "The Sparta Hotel" the caption proclaimed, "1899." I grew up in Sparta, I was a "13-year senior" at Sparta Schools. I have never heard of a Sparta Hotel. I have never heard of the Lindenlure Hotel. Why was my education lacking in the most basic of information, that of my environment? Why must we learn Missouri History but not that of our home? Why must we take it upon ourselves?

This sort of disregard for history and past generations bothers me more than any other single issue in Western culture. Certainly, one can argue that looking toward the past constantly can cause you to trip over the present, but staring into the dark and uncertain future is certain to cause vision problems. Perhaps we need to look over our shoulder every once in a while, even sit and stare at the past briefly.