The Curse of Seasons Changing

“Your word is all you have in this life” ~ Billy G. Black

Digging ditches and chopping trees is not a normal pathway into writing for a living. Blue collars are the only collars I knew growing up. Grandads and Uncles were all plant hands. Honest and working hard.  As a boy, I remember riding an Allis-Chalmers lawn mower with my granddad. We would drive around the yard picking up sticks and rake up piles of leaves and straw. It was hot and it was work for a five year old boy! Truth and hard work are all we knew. I would say it was a good and unorthodox foundation for truthfully communicating thoughts and ideas.

Over a decade ago, I started my first job in news. Being one of the first people to learn of a story before it breaks to the public was wild to me. It’s an unexplainable buzz to chase down a story. The night of the dog fights in Call, Texas, I didn’t go to sleep until 6am the next morning. It was like plugging into a 220 socket and then trying to “walk it off.”  When you are young in this industry, you cannot see the thirty-thousand-foot view. You can only see the tree in front of you. It’s the story and that gets all your focus. You are a soldier in a battle to get the truth out. A battle to get a clear understanding of the details of the story and the clarity of both sides of the argument. This was intriguing to me. This was art. The combination of structure, art and truth grabbed me.

Having worked in the rural media space for some time now, I see the power and poison of those who “control” narratives.  I can’t say I’m at 30K feet yet, but we are definitely off the ground. Power and poison become indistinguishable in the hands of those making the concoction. There is a sense of returning to the good ole days in the air. A need for a life like when we were children. Tell the story, do not twist or turn, do not call names and be respectful. It is shameful that journalism has turned to sensationalism. Scrutiny turned to bullying. Accountability turned to clickbait. Then again, when is the last time you saw someone get in a fight at the local Whataburger? Even the next day, the ground was still damp from the lack of discretion. Society is losing its mind and clickbait journalism is driving the boat. Industries do not fall apart over night, and boats do not miss the destination while on course. One Taco Bell fight gets ridiculed. Two get scoffed at while three becomes entertainment. Then it gets so rampant that we all go numb to physical violence at a fast-food joint. Could it be that our numbness is complacency brought about by years of excess from decades of innovation? Maybe innovation equals comfort, comfort equals pride, pride equals excess and excess equals numbness.

There was a company years ago called Allis-Chalmers. This was a notable tractor company that ran between 1901 and 1999. Early on, Allis-Chalmers was the first to implement rubber tires on their tractor line. Crazy to think of a tractor without rubber tires, but that is a direct result of Allis-Chalmers’ innovation. Before long, they started diversifying their catalog of products from tractors and implements to industrial construction equipment, lawn and garden as well as military equipment. Allis-Chalmers looked to diversify their products on behalf of the portfolios of investors. They may have closed the doors in 1999, but the global industry walked away from them in the late 1970s.

Could we be in the form of a modern Allis-Chalmers. Has our innovation turned to ego and ego to pride, only to watch the last glimpses of our own humanity washed down the drain of a Waffle House on TikTok. Have we lost all dignity for ourselves? Or have we gone the way of Allis-Chalmers… once innovative, fresh and new. Now, just empty buildings with vines and trees growing out of what used to be a powerhouse of innovation.

Can this course be corrected? Nature corrects itself with new faces, new names and new focus.  Allis-Chalmers got distracted and then bet the house… while John Deere kept focused and took over the global tractor market. Goliaths can be killed. The first stone is ego.