It was the early winter of 2004. I was 13 years old and in search of a Christmas gift for my dad. The Cass City Area Historical Society had recently completed its documentary on the history of the village, and I decided a copy of the film would be just the thing for my historophile father. Just before wrapping the DVD up, however, I asked my mom if it would be alright if I watched it first. After all, I reasoned, it would not be right to give Dad something I had not previewed. She gave me permission, and I watched the documentary. That’s all it took. From then on, I was hooked on local history. My parents likely thought it was another of my phases. Up to that point, I had gone through a myriad of them — everything from G.I. Joes to antique tractors. But this was no phase. This was a passion, one that I pursued with abandon. The late Katie Jackson was then president of the historical society, and she admitted me into membership of the group. I was the youngest member ever to have joined up to that point, or since, I think. Katie involved me in every project the society took on, and she gave me many opportunities to pitch ideas to the group. She was kind. The town was kind, too.
I must have been quite a sight back then: a 14-year-old riding his bike around Cass City, black leather briefcase bungee-strapped to the back, cassette recorder and blank tapes inside, ready to interview people for my research projects at any moment. Forever on the hunt for stories and photographs that would further tell the town’s story, I went wherever I could to get them. Long-time residents patiently allowed the portly Perry kid to come into their homes and businesses to ask questions and borrow treasures from their archives. One such couple was Jon and Cheryl Shores, owners of what was then the New Sheridan Health Mart/ Bookmart (formerly Old Wood Drugs). They graciously allowed me to tour the upstairs of their building, which originally was a hotel but housed countless businesses (and even the library) over the years. Jack and Ruth Esau, too, were great supporters of my interest in the town’s past. I spent many afternoons with them in their cozy living room, going through their seemingly bottomless trunk full of historical photographs of Cass City, many of which they gave to me and are now housed at Rawson Memorial District Library in Cass City. Those were times I cherish. When I think about the “why” behind my fascination with local history, I come to two conclusions. First, as famed historian David McCullough put it, “History is who we are and why we are the way we are.” Embedded in the human heart, I think, is a desire to understand our place in the world, including our physical place. World and national history are replete with the heroic and the scandalous, but they do not touch us in the same way that local history does. Second, is the term ‘anemoia.’ Coined by The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, anemoia is a term that refers to the feeling of “nostalgia for a time you’ve never known.” They further describe the term this way: “Imagine stepping through the frame into a sepia-tinted haze, where you could sit on the side of the road and watch the locals passing by, who lived and died before any of us arrived here, who sleep in some of the same houses we do, who look up at the same moon, who breathe the same air, feel the same blood in their veins—and live in a completely different world.” I live 2,000 miles from Cass City now. Katie Jackson, the Esaus, and many others whose lives I entered in search of the past are now gone. But thanks to their encouragement, my interest in the history of the Cass City area is alive and well, and I enjoy pointing out old photos and pieces of Cass City memorabilia when I have visitors to my home office. But why should we care about local history today, when the world around us seems to be crumbling? The crumbling is the reason. The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sachs, in discussing the decline of Western civilization, wrote, “Alzheimer’s is what happens when you lose your capacity to form memories. And the second you no longer have memories, you no longer have an identity. It seems to me the whole of the West is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. We’ve lost our memories. Europe, today, has lost its memory, and the result is it has lost its identity.” It’s not just nations that can lose their identity by losing their memories; communities, too, are susceptible. The preservation and study of local history is an antidote to such forgetfulness. And if there has ever been a time when our communities need to remember who they are and why they’re here, it’s now.
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AuthorTy Perry is a writer based in metro-Detroit. Archives
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