Uniformity is common

In the beginning of part three of Deeply Rooted Hamilton describes the landscape of LaMoure North Dakota. She describes how everyone grows the same three crops. corn, wheat, and soy beans. She describes how the landscape is "sectioned into countless individual  blocks but painted with a palette of only three colors" (Hamilton 215). The three colors are created by the different sections of crops. Corn was gray-brown, wheat was descirbed as a sandy tan, and a vibrant green created by soy beans. While reading this description of the uniform nature of the planting decisions made by farmers I drew a connection to my own neighborhood at home. First, I will give you a little background to where I got this information. I used to mow lawns for a few elderly couples when I was younger. I became very close with one couple, the Silvermans. Ruth and Lee Silverman were very nice to me and I loved helping them. A couple years after I started mowing their lawn Lee had a bad fall. After that his health went downhill and he passed away. When Lee died Ruth and I became much closer. I would take breaks while mowing and we would sit on her back porch and talk. Sometimes we would lose track of time. She had lived in my neighborhood since it was made and told me many interesting stories. She told me all about the histroy of my neighborhood. Appearently, our neighborhood was built for veterans of the Korean War. The whole block was built within the span of maybe six months. Every house was an identical small, three bedroom one bath ranch house with a one car garage. In addition, every house had at least one small tree planted in their front yard. The only real difference was the color of paint on the houses. Today the neighborhood looks a lot more diverse but that is only after fifty-plus years of changes made by the many different residents. Even though everyone has made their own additions and changes to their properties you can still see what they started as. There are a handful of houses that have not been changed since they were built. When you look at those hosues and then at one with additions you can see the house that it used to be. Also, half of the neighborhood I grew up in was appearently a farm. I can't quite recall what it was a farm for. I think she said it was a cotton farm but I am not sure. When Hamilton desribes the uniformity of the land in LaMoure I couldn't help but picture my neighborhood fifty years ago when it had a similar uniform nature to it. Hamilton also says that the uniformity is created by the same choices being made over and over. So much that it is almost not a choice anymore. In a way, I connected that to how the people coming out of the war to this neighborhood did not really have a choice in the look of their new houses. They had been displaced from their home for a few years and coming back they were just thrown in wherever they fit. Their choice for change came later. These connections may be a bit of a stretch but it is what I thought of while reading the beginning of our assigned reading.