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Show I REA Created Rural Jobs. Roosts Economy Since 1961, REA borrowers have helped start and expand more than 20,500 new commercial, industrial and community facility projects, producing nearly a million new jobs in rural America. Cooperatives quickly became vehicles for getting electricity After REA was created and placed its agents in the field, it was soon discovered that an existing form of business enterprise in rural areas was going to dominate the way rural people would obtain the long-sought light and power. It was an idea and method that rural Americans understood well: cooperation and cooperatives. From barn raising, threshing bees to cooperatively owned and operated creameries and grain elevators, rural folks had organized in the nonprofit, co-op way to accomplish together a number of economic and social aims and to obtain goods and services previously unavailable. Working through and with REA and their neighbors, dedicated men and women in a few short years made the "REA Co-op" sign one of the best known and best-loved symbols in rural America. What that sign and the coming of electricity meant to rural families was captured in the recollections of a land buyer for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in the early 1940s. Traveling a country road at dusk, the land buyer came upon a farmer sitting on a little knoll overlooking his newly electrified farm. As the farmer gazed down at his house, barn and smokehouse ablaze with light, the TVA man noted the special look of wonder on the farmer's face. About a week later, the TVA man attended the church to which this farmer belonged. During the service, the farmer got up to give witness: "Brothers and sisters, I want to tell you this. The greatest thing on earth is to have the love of God in your heart, and the next greatest thing is to have electricity in your house.?' Thousands of rural Americans 'still understand the truth of those words. "The night the lights came on" is recorded as a high moment in their lives, an important date, ranking with marriages, birth and the burning of the farm mortgage. As the lights came on all over rural America, the first magic glow of the naked bulb was witnessed then and is recalled today with a sense of awe. A Kentucky farmer, remembering that experience from his boyhood, recalls: "I'll never forget that day it was late on a November afternoon, just before dark. All we had was wires hanging down from the ceiling in every room, with bare bulbs on the end. Dad turned on the one Iri the kitchen first , 'and he just 'stood there ii holding on to the pull-chain. He said to me, 'Carl, come here and hang onto this so I can turn on the light In the sitting room.' I knew he didn't have to do that and I told him to stop holding it, that it would stay on. He .Anally let go, and then looked kind of foolish." The story is told of the bachelor farmer in North Dakota who was finally convinced to "sign up" for electricity with the REA. If he hadn't, 14 of his neighbors up and down the road would have been denied "the electric." After the line was electrified, Pete's neighbor, Ole, felt guilty seeing Pete's house all dark every night. Pete was paying the minimum charge for the sake of his neighbors, but was getting nothing for it. Visiting his friend one day, Ole discovered that Pete was indeed getting a benefit from electricity, if only for a few moments each dark winter morning. Pete related that before electricity, "I darn near froze before I found the lantern and matches and got my clothes on." But now, he boasted, things were different. They walked into the bedroom and Pete pointed to a light bulb above the foot of the bed. There was a long string hanging down with a big harness ring tied to the end. "See that ring? Now when the alarm goes off I just stick one foot out of the bed, hook that ring with my big toe and turn on the light. Now I have no trouble finding my lantern and matches!" At a general store in Georgia, the storekeeper bragged on his new electric light for a month before discovering it was only the night light over his cash register. When a REA co-op employee showed him how to turn on the rest of the lights, he was speechless with amazement. No obstacle was too great in the quest to "get REA." One farmer, told his farm was "too far from the line," was undeterred. He returned to the co-op office a few days later, waving his $5 co-op membership fee. "I moved my house," he explained in triumph. |