Letter to the Editor: Take Pride

Dear Editor
We had the opportunity to experience a cross section of this nation’s very core over this beautiful past Saturday on the courthouse Square in Perryville, Missouri. 153 short and long haul truckers and their state of the art and/or wonderfully maintained antique equipment, designed to pump the agricultural and commercial lifeblood of this, the most efficient and successful economy ever seen on the face of this earth. Not hyperbole, just a fact!
Having stated this obvious fact, something else very much comes to mind. These men and their women compatriots are the closest thing we have today to the pioneers who settled this nation over the past two and a half centuries. They must figure any way they possibly can to keep moving forward and generating the income that they must have to feed their families and grow their businesses. And they obviously take enormous pride in the equipment which are the engines of their accomplishments and which represent their effort and success.

Just as we as as individual citizens, communities, states and a nation have justifiably taken pride in what we’ve built and what it stands for. Let’s pause to reflect on that similarity. Those beautiful machines they polish and preen over are not just to look at. They are carefully and scrupulously maintained, every day, lest they become merely monuments to a dead past. As our institutions must be carefully overseen and scrupulously maintained. We as citizens are the mechanics of our democracy. Let’s take pride in working every day to ensure we have beautifully operating systems of self governance.
Jim Martin
Perryville