Flying farmers and Newton’s 3rd Law

My father could speak eloquently of Newton’s Third Law. He was neither a physicist nor a teacher. He was a farmer who attended eight years at a township school. His knowledge of this physical law came from direct experience.

In the winter of 1948-49, my father brought his PA11 Piper Cub out of a frozen sky above a farmstead that had been isolated by winter. All roads to it were closed. This was his first “air lift.” Since he saw no safe place to land, he maneuvered a large canvas bag full of supplies to the open door of the plane and with the farmhouse directly in his path, he let the bag fall. He learned later that as the supplies fell, they moved forward along his flight path (thus, Newton’s third law) and came to rest in the house’s living room, leaving a hole where the window used to be.

Historically, the winter of 1948 and some of those winters that followed had some of the worst weather for the Midwest and north central states. The saga of the flying farmer (and townspeople who flew as well) has not been as well documented as deserved. My father would fly from his farm to the nearest town and pick up requests posted at the service stations in the town. Where groceries or supplies were requested, townspeople would have gathered them for delivery and he would fly them to their destinations. In many cases, he would also be delivering or picking up passengers.

My father’s first airdrop was the butt of jokes for a long time; however, my father was not known to make the same mistake twice. Furthermore, the community’s institutional memory of his service — which was usually free — was a long memory.

People in Rural America at that time looked out for each other and pulled together. The airlifts to the snowbound farms was just one example of a culture of mutual aid. My mother had a lot of babies. When she would go to the hospital to deliver another, there would be other ladies around cooking, cleaning and telling us to brush our fingernails. If a farmer got too sick to work, neighbors would be plowing his fields and milking his cows. It is much the same now, although the small towns are fewer and farther apart.

On a summer day in 1966, my father and I drove around the farm. The entire crop had been wiped out by the previous night’s hailstorm. The grain fields looked like they had been plowed. My father, never a garrulous man, was even quieter than usual. He had a lot on his mind. He had bought a new combine (a machine for harvesting grain) the previous year and would be owing payments on it. Although the hay fields and the cattle were unaffected, probably half of our income was gone.

Soon, the phone began to ring — a lot. The word that my father had lost his crop had gotten around as fast as if it was posted in Facebook. My father’s reputation as a very competent man who would pitch in and help his neighbor was a part of the community’s institutional memory. Now, without his own harvest to work on, with a new self-propelled combine and the time to help neighbors to harvest; he was a very popular man. The groceries in the living room were long forgotten and longer forgiven.

My father was now the most sought-after custom combiner around. He even harvested for the farmer whose window he broke! Later, he told me that with the insurance that he had bought on the crop and the fees he got from combining for others, he had at least as good a year as if his crops had made it to market.

What I am describing here is a system of “what goes around comes around.” People in the area had a saying that was probably repeated in many other communities: “We have two welfare systems: FDR’s and ours; ours works.” There was an organic flow of social contract and mutual aid in those communities. Now mind you, the rural and small-town community was neither Mayberry nor Lake Woebegone. It was a real place with real humans and real problems. My father might not have gotten on well with all of his neighbors, and perhaps not all of his neighbors liked him. You helped out your neighbor because your neighbor could help out you if the need came up. It was not always love, but always a necessity.

I have read the writings of Ayn Rand, a writer and philosopher who is considered the founder of the Libertarian Party. Rand belittles the concept of altruism because she says that, “The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake.” I find this to be an anti-Christian attitude. The term “reciprocal altruism” is probably truer to real life. Perhaps the term “pragmatic altruism” could be used as well. Either term fits the underlying social contract that prevailed in the community of my childhood. I believe that many people then and now looked out for their neighbors because they are benefited themselves in the long run. After all, Mark 12:31 says to “‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” It doesn’t say, “love thy neighbor better than thyself”, and it doesn’t say, “love thy neighbor and hate thyself.”

Whatever we wish to call the mutual aid culture that I grew up in, I can think of Newton’s Third Law as a metaphor for that culture. As long as the social momentum continues, the system continues.

Tim Johnson is a computer programmer who lives in Palmer and is co-owner of AkWebsoft.