For the past 40 years, the Hart family from Southern Illinois and the Marple family from Troy, Pennsylvania have faithfully traded visits. We first met each other in 1966 in Washington State where, at the time, they were the new school teacher family and we were the new minister family. We had a lot in common; for one thing, we were both conservative.
So, I wasn't surprised by the picture of the little girl which hangs on the wall of their Illinois farmhouse. Carolyn (Mrs. Hart) could tell I was wondering about it, and said, "That's me in my red feed-sack dress, with my hair all curled for first grade." It was not a new thing for me. Gloria (Mrs. Marple) has often described those special days when she would accompany her father to Rockwell's Feed Mill in Canton, Pennsylvania to pick out a new dress for school. Once the feed was gone, her Mom would go to work sewing. Calico was on feed-sack-clad farm girls long before it was on Yuppies trying for the country look.
Mary Wilston was a true conservative. She used to say, "Wear it out, use it up, make it do, or do without." I expect that when she finished her life, she intended that there would be enough of Mother Earth left over to support the coming generations. She drove a VW beetle, lived in a small cottage, burned wood, and turned the lights off when she wasn't using them. Yet, forty years ago when we needed some money to put an addition on the Austinville Church, Mary had enough saved to lend us a generous amount. Two years later, when we went to pay it back, she refused to take any interest. But wait a minute, wouldn't that make her liberal?
Many of us conservatives grew up collecting peanut butter jar glasses, taking only what we planned to eat, using only what we needed, taking care of what we had, reusing whatever we could. We continue to grow gardens and drive cars that get good mileage. We are avid conservationists –we conserve. We even support a balanced budget. We want to leave our piece of the earth in better shape than when we found it.
But wait a minute, what is conservative? Today, a conservative is likely to drive a gas-guzzler, live in a gigantic house, wear the most expensive clothing, and want the right to own a military-style assault weapon. The new breed of conservative often makes a lot of money, while not wanting to raise the minimum wage for others. Today's conservative is less likely to support forest management, soil conservation, water and air quality protection, or energy and resource conservation. In fact, you need to be careful about conserving too much, or this new brand of conservative will label you as liberal. Has the word itself done a flip-flop? Could it be that conservatives are no longer conservative?
It's too bad when greed, wastefulness, carelessness, and pollution can be tooted as conservative values --they're not. It's more likely that many of the people who now like to call themselves conservative simply had conservative parents --yet they, themselves, are a long way from home.