A Bug that Changed the South and Changed Me
I remember dreading our move from Fort Benning, Georgia, to Fort Rucker, Alabama. Fort Benning had become a place of rich family time for us. We had just come off a 15-month long deployment while in Hawaii, and my husband had accepted an instructor job at Benning, which meant semi-normal hours and the big bonus of no deployments.
Music to my ears!
My children were toddler age and so were many of the other children in our particular housing loop on post. Evenings were filled with friends chatting, laughing, and watching children play on the shared patios. We did life together, and it was fabulous.
It was one of those duty stations where the community and friendships ran deep, and it all happened so naturally. So when our three years were up, and it was time for a PCS, I was digging in my heels. I did not want to leave, and I had serious doubts that any other place would be as amazing as the little world I had made for me and my family in South Georgia.
“Enterprise, Alabama. Really?” I asked my husband after he told me where we’d be moving to. It didn’t take me long to whip out my laptop and start the fast and furious research on this little town that would soon be our new home.
A few months before our PCS, we decided to take a weekend trip to do some reconnaissance, hoping there would be something—anything—to help me get excited. As we drove into downtown Enterprise, we came across a statue. The statue was a Greek woman whose white, marbled arms stretched high above her head. Sitting atop the woman’s hands was a bowl on which perched an enormous bug: a Boll Weevil to be exact.
What in the world? This solidified every reason why I would hate Enterprise.
“I knew I wasn’t going to like it here,” I quickly reminded my husband.
It didn’t take long for curiosity to get the best of me, so I did a little research to figure out why in the world Enterprise, Alabama, was idolizing a bug.
I discovered that the boll weevil was a destructive pest that decimated the south’s cotton industry in the early 1900’s—23 billion dollars worth of destruction! The havoc the boll weevil wrought on the southern economy was devastating, which forced the farmers to switch their crops to yield something the pesky insect would not destroy. One of the few crops that could thrive in the sandy, well-drained land that wouldn’t be eaten by boll weevils was peanuts. And growing peanuts proved to be a very good idea—an idea that actually saved the southern economy. Enterprise, Alabama, began to thrive even more than before, all thanks to a bug.
There was a reason I saw that statue and read that little bit of southern history. It gave me a glimpse into what I would soon experience with that move. We only lived in Enterprise, Alabama, for one year, but I will tell you, that quaint little town and the friendships we developed there made Fort Rucker one of our favorite duty stations.
Sometimes what may seem like a nuisance and less-than-desired circumstance may in turn become a rich, unexpected blessing in your life. And so often we can’t see that on the front end. But we can choose to focus on what’s been destroyed or taken away from us, or we can choose to step out, try something new and different, and see what new life grows in and around us.
Even after 16 years of this Army wife life, change is still hard for me. I still don’t embrace it! But, I have seen time and time again that so much of my experience in the midst of change is molded by my attitude and perspective. If you are in the midst of another change, whether it’s a PCS or deployment, or something else, I encourage you to consider facing your upcoming transition like those southern farmers did in the midst of their crisis. They planted something new.
Who knows….what you plant next may be the best and most beautiful yet!
