Social Capital

The diary I kept intermittently in 1955 states on May 9, “We are getting a new car (truly). We are trying to pick out the color. It is a stationwagon.” At the time my parents had six kids. Mother and Dad ordered a beautiful new Studebaker Conestoga, grey and maroon around the windows, with a hinged back door on which the top flipped up and the tailgate flipped down. My Dad honked the horn for the last half mile he drove it home! And we used it, thoroughly. My parents had partly bought it to drive across country to San Francisco, to a Luther League convention, carrying several teenagers. (Not us. We kids were stashed with my aunt and grandmother.)

As a kid I never knew the economics of our family, but I suspect that there must have been some social capital involved in the purchase of that first new car. Either the churches he served helped Dad purchase it, or the car dealer was related to one of our parishioners, or both. This was a good thing. In North Dakota, people stuck together, helping each other through blizzards, illness, and tough times. Times were good in post-war America and we all thrived.

Robert Putnam, in his book “Bowling Alone”, dates the decline of ‘social capital’ in America, that is the decline of civic, social and fraternal organizations, from a high point in the mid 1950’s. The premise of his work is that social networks have value, and that “inclinations arise from these networks to do things for each other.” I do find that my protagonists in the 1950’s were deeply embedded in their church, in school, in organizations such as Young Citizens League, choir, band and much group play which cut across all social divisions. Of course, family, a deeply social network, both immediate and extended, trumped everything.

I recall one year in which we spent our Halloween trick or treating for UNICEF, the United Nations organization which tries to help the world’s children. Instead of candy, we asked people for dimes for UNICEF. At the end of the evening, we all gathered at the church for a wonderful party, with games and bobbing for apples, and treats of all kinds. I was about 10, and it certainly seemed to me at the time more wonderful than going home with your loot to enjoy it by yourself.