Digging in the Dirt

 Archeology was calling me, I was sure of it.  A junior in high school—it was time to make choices about the future.  And I was gonna choose archeology, because that was where the action was.

Dig in Israel

 

What action?  In James Michener’s The Source action abounded.  Each layer of civilization revealed new characters and new conflict.  New and old blended, with lots of action.  History was shown to me in the lives of the people who passed through that dig site through the years.  I had never thought of history in that way, where the actions of just one person could change the course of many lives. 

I wanted to be that person, the one in the middle of the action.  But, no, in my rural countryside, surrounded by cornfields and livestock, I saw no such action.  Life was a day-to-day routine of work-school-work-sleep with eating thrown in for the heck of it.  It was life at its most boring.

But those people in past, the ones about who whom history talks?!  They really lived. They made pots and traded with other cultures, they did stuff.  At least, that is what the 15 year old me thought.

When the local newspaper announced that the University of Illinois was establishing a dig site near Kampsville, Illinois, to document a huge Native American settlement, my heart leapt in my chest.  They even wanted summer interns, high school students to participate for free!  It would not cost me a penny to be part of this adventure!

 

Cahokia Mound near St. Louis, MO

 

When I pleaded my case to my parents to allow me to be part of this endeavor, they exchanged looks and said NO without listening to my argument.  They shut me down cold.

Instead of hunched over in a hardened mud pit under the sweltering sun brushing minute dust particles away from pottery shards, I would be hunched over a garden under a sweltering sun, picking strawberries/tomatoes/green beans. 

Life is not fair, certainly not free.

 

Archeology--What the heck should I do?

Which direction should I go?

My dream for archeological discoveries never died, for me.  

 I read The Source a third time, maybe even a fourth.  Every now and then my father would bring in some arrow heads or shaped rock tools from the field he had freshly plowed.  I would handle each piece with reverence, knowing that ancient hands used this to survive in a harsh time.

Why didn't I keep them when Dad found them?

A Plaque is all that is left.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, women were expected to be in the nurturing profession.  These included nursing and teaching, and maybe just maybe becoming a doctor.  Secretarial studies were also acceptable, even an office manager.  Very few CEOs were part of the female's world.

My father decided I would make a good teacher.  "No daughter of mine will ever be a nurse!"  So...

At Blackburn University (College), I prepared to become a teacher, with the hope that I could adapt my father's wishes to morph into another area (archeology, maybe?).  Taking the broad spectrum of education courses was exciting.  

 An artist—I wanted to study art.  

 No, Spanish!  I wanted to have a degree in Spanish.  

 Wait, anthropology and societal studies?  Man oh man.  I wanted it all. 

Finding one’s heart desire is nigh to impossible for one with a jumpy brain.  It all was fascinating, it all was inviting, but one has only a single lifetime.

One usually falls in love and mushy love brains follow where ever the beloved goes.

Archeology would have to wait.