The first thing we noticed in Avis Carlson’s living room was the title of a book on her coffee table, “The Good Old Days–They Were Terrible”.
We asked her if she agreed with the title of the book.
“Of course I do. Things were terrible in what they call the good old days. There was no Workman’s Compensation, no Social Security. For most people, there was very little help if they had problems.
“We tend to think otherwise,” she said, “but I think today there is much deeper feeling of compassion, a much deeper feeling that we have to be decent to one another, than there ever has been before now.”
Avis began her life on a ranch in Kansas, “where I learned to ride a horse about the same time I learned to walk.
“We were three sisters and my mother and father, and I sometimes wonder if my attitudes would be different if I had had brothers. My father taught us to do what had to be done. He didn’t believe that just because we were girls we should ride to heaven on flowery beds of ease.
“Maybe that’s why I’ve never felt oppressed.”
Avis went to college in Kansas–“at a little school nobody has ever heard of”–and did graduate work in English literature at the University of Illinois while her husband was finishing his degree in law.
After she and her husband moved back to Kansas, Avis began to write and published her poetry and articles widely in the years before World War II.
“During the War, though, the goverment shipped us around the country on assignments just as if we were military– Harry was with the National Labor Relations Board–and I lost the sense of region that is so important to a writer. Even so I probably could have been a very good writer if I hadn’t spent my time dabbling in so many things.”
Avis’s “dabblings” since she and her family moved to St. Louis in 1946 have included the presidency of the League of Women Voters, service with the Council on Human Relations, the Board of the Division of Community Services, and the creation of the first literacy program of the Adult Education Council.
At present she is working on a book about the experience of aging. “After all, you can only write about your own experiences, and I feel that by now I’m ready to write about this one.”
“It can be a sad kind of time. If you haven’t worked to build a strong character, it would be easy to succumb to the attitudes you find around you. People think that simply because you’re old you’re not in complete control of your senses, you operate differently, you’re to be treated differently.
“Every once in a while, for instance, some smart-alec salesman will address me as ‘Young Lady’, and I want to spit in his eye. It’s as if the worst thing you could say about somebody is that they’re old.
“That’s why I thought this new film, “Harry and Tonto”, was so great. It showed so many older people handling their lives and getting along.”
We had to end the interview before we wanted to. Avis had another one of her many commitments to meet.
Originally published in The Paper, December 1974.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1974_12.pdf, printed page(s) 2; PDF page(s) 2.
