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He won many awards including the National Headliners Club award for writing the best local interest column in the country in 1962. In 1977 his fellow Tri-State Journalists honored him with with the first Distinguished Service Award. He is the author of five book: A Pig In The Gray Panel Truck, A Dandelion in Winter, Day of a President, Just a 100 Miles From Home, and The Journey in the Red Jalopy. He worked for newspapers in Santa Fe, N.M., Monett, MO, Beckley WV, and Memphis, TN. He began working for the Evansville Courier in 1957. Aaron was born in Cone, Texas and reared on a farm in Portales, NM. He attented the University of New Mexico where he graduated with honors with a degree in journalism.
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by Joe Aaron A woman called me on the telephone several days ago and asked would I write something pretty about National Family Week.
"Certainly," I replied, since I like to do things that will make people like me, and then as an after thought I asked, "What is National Family Week?"
Although it is not essential, is surely makes the going easier if you know what you are writing about.
National Family Week, she said, is a special time set aside each year to stress the joys of family living, and perhaps to encourage people to do things as a family, and not yell at one another, for a change.
"Oh," I replied.
After she had extracted my promise and hung up, I sat there at my desk for a long time thinking about National Family Week, and it made me kind of sad - that we have reached a point in our hectic, non-stop lives where we must reserve a week each year for singing songs of praise to the family.
We've come a long way, baby. But we haven't gained much ground.
And I couldn't help but remember, as I sat there, family life as it once was - and not so terribly long ago, either, - in the days before every 16-year old had his own car and every father his bowling team, and every mother felt she had to go forth each day on missions of community good to fulfill her role as a woman.
That may have been family life it its fullest flower, and those who were a part of it will never have to warm themselves when they are old with memories of tasteless TV dinners and fast-service eateries and meals, more times than not, wolfed on the run.
In those quaint days, before every kid on the block had a 10-spot to flash around, the home was the entertainment center of the universe, instead of the movie house or the discotheque or the organized arena that the school playground has become.
And members of the family got a chance to know one another without the formality of an appointment.
"Dad, I need to talk to you."
"Well, yes, my boy, I can give you 15 minutes between six-thirty and six-forty five this evening but, mind you, don't be late, because I have to leave at six-forty seven for my self-improvement lesson."
Life, in the days which I speak, was never like that, and if you wanted to talk to your Dad, you just walked over and sat on the arm of the chair and talked to him, because he wasn't going anywhere.
I know, I know, it's hard to believe, but that's the way it was, just the same. The term "baby-sitter" was not coined until much later.
That, of course, was in the days predating television. None of that mildly entertaining pap that has made of us all such hopeless zombies.
It was a time of home-grown entertainment - some of it crude and unimaginative, I suppose, and much of it not entertaining at all, by the yardstick that we use today.
I can't begin to count the number of times, for example, that my family - my ENTIRE family; Mom and Dad and everybody - sat around of a winter's evening playing riddly-riddly-ree, I see something you don't see and it starts with an M.
And then everybody, looking all around the room and out the windows, would try to guess what it was that started with an M - though if it was my older brother who claimed to see something that started with an M, we didn't put much stock in it because he was such a phenomenally lousy speller.
One time years he wrote me a letter telling me he had pneumonia, but started it with "N" and butchered it so badly that I thought he said he had a new harmonica.
So if he said something started with an M, we were fairly certain that it didn't.
Sometimes, when the summer sun has gone down and twilight was deepening, we'd all sit out on the back porch and talk - about the infrequent movies we's seen, or whether the tilt-a-whirl at the county fair was scarier than the ferris wheel, or whether you could read by the light of a bottle of fireflies.
And I truly wonder just how long it's been since a family just sat around in the evening, just talking, with no place to rush off to and no hurry to get there.
Well, it's been a long time, I know that much, for the splendid pastime of just talking has fallen on hard times - mostly, I believe, because the demands of televiewing has caused so many tongues to shrivel from the lack of use.
Even if you want to announce your forthcoming marriage nowadays, or the fact that you have a terminal illness, you must wait for the station break, because somebody will frantically wave you into silence if you don't
And now, sadly, we've come to the dreary point where we have to set aside one week a year to celebrate family living - and we'll scatter again, like startled quail, each going his own way, in his own car, writing little notes to each other on the kitchen bulletin board.
And instead of gaining ground, we've lost. If life were a football game instead of a rat race, we'd be wedged between our own goal posts.
