Back to the Future

Dawn has come to Millwood, the city where Richard Anderson lives—a city neither small nor large, simply a normal community where people live together, work together, and do things for each other. This is the story of one day in Millwood—just any day.

The story begins at daybreak. All is quiet in the Anderson home; everybody is asleep. It is still some time before Richard has to get up for breakfast, but while most people are still asleep, many are at work doing things for others—things which mean a great deal to the community, including Richard himself. While Richard sleeps, men at the dairy are filling bottles with fresh milk, and long before daybreak, Richard’s milkman picks up the milk and delivers it to the Anderson home in time for breakfast. All night long, the bakers have been baking bread for the day—bread which the delivery man now takes to stores and homes. Long before stores and schools open, trucks are bringing food for Richard’s dinner into town from nearby farms and distant places. From a refrigerated truck, the butcher is already unloading meat—some of which will be on Richard’s table today or tomorrow.

Richard’s community is always at work. All night in the telephone building, operators have been busy at the switchboards, putting through calls—perhaps to a doctor or fire station. In the city’s water plant, pumps run day and night to keep Millwood’s reservoirs filled, and men check gauges so that Richard and others always have water. At the power plant, engineers keep watch so there is electricity whenever it’s needed. At the post office, workers sort mail throughout the night so Richard’s mailman will have the letters ready in the morning. Meanwhile, at the newspaper office, men and women work to meet the deadline for Millwood’s morning paper. As getting-up time approaches, the newsboy is already on his route, delivering the paper to Richard’s home.

For Richard, the day is just beginning. On his way to school, he sees people in his community at work—like the linemen who keep the electric lines in good repair. Richard has never really stopped to think about how much people in his city depend on one another. His mother shops at the grocery store, and he often buys things there too, but he hasn’t thought about what the city would be like without stores—no groceries, no shoe stores, no furniture stores. The people who work in these places do important jobs for their neighbors. A community needs many kinds of workers—ways for people to get from one part of town to another. Some go by taxi, some walk, others use their own cars, and many use buses. Buses are slower than taxis but cost less and are easy to use. Bigger buses take people to many parts of the country, stopping in Millwood too. Trains come and go from the railroad station, carrying people and goods. Trucks carry mail from the station or from the helicopter field, which brings mail from nearby suburbs and towns. Helicopters need little space to land on, unlike airplanes, which require large airports on the city’s outskirts. Many people come and go by airplane daily.

Though Richard may not realize it, he has an important job too—going to school to learn the things that will help him become a good citizen, ready to take his place in the community. No matter what someone does for a living, many people depend on them—and they, in turn, depend on others. People who work in factories make goods for stores to sell; people in offices write letters and keep records. Some are craftsmen, some professionals like doctors and lawyers, some are storekeepers, and many are housewives who manage homes and care for children. Whatever a person does, it helps—whether in big or small ways—to make the community a better place.

In City Hall, people work for the city itself. The mayor, elected by citizens, runs the government and oversees departments like the police, who make the city safe and direct traffic. They enforce laws made by the people for their own safety. The fire department is also part of the city government, ready day and night to respond to fires before they spread. The city hires workers to build and repair bridges, streets, and sidewalks, and to maintain streetlights for safety. It also helps protect public health by monitoring the water supply and inspecting food-handling places. Another department collects garbage and burns it, while a city dump holds non-burnable waste, keeping Millwood clean. The city provides playgrounds for children, ball fields, jungle gyms, and benches for adults to rest on. Recreation also includes tennis courts, a recreation center for parties and games, and a public library with books, records, and films for all ages. Richard and his family go to church, and there are other churches for those who worship differently.

Millwood has a radio and TV station, where programs are created by many people—from actors to technicians—ensuring Richard gets the right show at the right time. He enjoys watching television and sometimes learns a great deal from it. The family often goes to the neighborhood movie theater, and Richard’s father enjoys bowling once a week with friends. At night, when Richard goes to bed, he may not think much about what his community has done for him or what he has done for it—but the work of the community never stops. Bread is baked, milk is processed, newspapers are printed, electricity is generated, water is pumped and purified, and phone calls are connected—day and night. The work of the community goes on, with people helping and depending on one another, all partners in making Millwood a better place to live.

Before my time, but time-adjacent enough to recognize that the video is not exactly raging propaganda. No one is talking about running roughshod over the whole world or anything. Little Richard isn’t being brought up to be much of an ideologue, although a stretch in college in the 1960s should take care of that deficiency.

At any rate, a lot of America was just like that back in the day. The parts that weren’t, weren’t. They refused, or were unable to act the way the people in the video were acting. The suburbs and exurbs served the same purpose as the frontier once did. When cities became corrupted, people reassembled themselves out in the landscape and started over. A republic, if you can keep it, over and over. It has as many obligations as benefits, and anyplace with benefits eventually attracts people who want them without toting the knapsack of obligations that everyone else is carrying. Eventually the free riders get a quorum, and a new frontier is necessary. Lord knows where we’ll find one now. Perhaps the bombed out numerous remains of Free Rider City will be the new frontiers, after the locusts move on.

People like to point to traditionally minded people, with horrified looks on their nose-ringed faces, and screech that trads want to take us back to the 1950s. I can assure you that I’m fairly conversant in all sorts of history, and that the 1950s you fear and trads want isn’t reachable by putting the Caddy with the big fins in reverse. It was way, way more sophisticated, challenging, and complex than life is today, and it would take a lot of work to achieve it. Going to other planets would look easy compared to assembling the modern version of Millwood again, and making it at least common, because people being people, universal is not possible.

This sentence punched me in the face:

In City Hall, people work for the city itself.

Pull the other one. It has bells on.