Ashland is a really interesting example because Ashland was founded in the 1850s when settlers came to this area. And the downtown of Ashland is made up of the Elks Lodge and the Oddfellows Lodge and the Grange and the Shakespeare Festival.
All of those were populist organizations made by the people for the people’s benefit. They were mutual insurance essentially. The Oddfellows helped with taking care of your widow if you passed away – they paid every month.
The Chautauqua was a local farmers’ education thing, basically what they would do – they would bring the Fine Arts, and they would bring Samuel Clemens and other people into town to speak. So we had culture out here on the frontier.
And the Grange is farmers getting together and negotiating with the railroads and the suppliers as one.
So this collective spirit of taking care of each other as Americans is deep in our history. And there are a lot of people who don’t make money when we do it that way. And so therefore they’ve tried to do some other things.
But this is one of the reasons I love living in this little town, or have loved living here because this is a living example of the spirit of community.
