John Shuttleworth, Founder of Mother Earth News, Interview Part I
(Page 7 of 17)
January/February 1975
By John Shuttleworth
PLOWBOY: You set out to do something about preserving the family farm when you were only six years old!
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SHUTTLEWORTH: Well, I didn't expect to solve the problem overnight, but, yes, I began to prepare myself for that role in life when I was no more than six.
Thirty-one years ago, you know, we were all a lot less frivolous than we are now. Especially us Depression babies. We were few and far between and we grew up in families that counted — first, pennies, and second, as we plunged into World War II, ration stamps. This molded us into quite a practical generation at a very early age.
In my own case, I was doing useful work by the time I was three or four. As a matter of fact, Mom has photographs of me at that age sitting on the seat of our homemade tractor, steering it across a field while Dad forked manure off a wagon that was hooked on behind.
Now I hasten to add that my father had that tractor geared down so low that it was barely creeping when I did this, so there was absolutely no danger involved. I also want to point out that I was not being exploited in any way. Quite the contrary! I thought that steering the tractor around was a glorious way to spend the day. The fact remains, however, that I was doing useful work and I knew it was useful work, and I knew that the world placed a high value on such activity.
God! Now that I think of it, I realize just how incredibly lucky I was to grow up that way. I was being taught what life is really all about from the first day I drew a breath. There was very little to distract us from the straight-and-uncut back then, no trash compactors or "convenience foods" or corporations telling us how nuclear power would save the throwaway society. We didn't have a throwaway society. Every bit of string, every paper bag, every bread wrapper got saved and reused, sometimes five or six times.
Well, I digress. The point is that the kids I grew up with were pretty damn realistic by the time they could walk around. And, even in a crowd like that I used to stand out as a little more advanced and a little more reflective than most. I was reading when I was four and Mom has often said that I "was born a little old man." I was always trying to figure out what was on down the road.
This analytic tendency was strongly reinforced, by the way, when I had my right eye horned out by a cow when I was five years old. The eye's all right now, except that it "cries" when I'm tired or out in the wind. But that fact — the "crying" — and the fact that I had to wear an eye patch on and off for some time after the accident really set me apart from my peers at a critical age.
Children can be rather brutal about something like that, as I'm sure you realize, and for the most part — from the age of five on — I came to prefer my own company or the company of adults. I became even older for my age, and it seemed only natural to me to begin planning my life's work about the time I was entering the first grade.
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