Long before cell phones and GPS trackers, before TV news live shots and satellite weather imagery, in the days when news traveled house to house and children were taught to read the clouds for coming rain, folks did a lot of "checking."

The grand tradition of checking seems to have faded with the other community-centered ways of the plantation era. These days, we assume that somebody, some government agency or university professor, is looking out for danger via satellite or digital readout. If we don't find it online or in an official news report, we don't need to worry. They'll tell us if something is going on.

But back then, we checked on our own. It was part of taking care of our families and our communities. It was part of good citizenship.

Fathers and grandfathers who worked in the fields rode out in Jeeps or on horses to look at water levels, irrigation gates and rain gauges, even on days off.

Retirees went back to the fields they worked for 40 years, large squares of land they called by field number and knew by soil composition and annual rainfall, acres they understood as well as their wives' moods or their children's' dreams. The old-timers checked on ditches and bridges. They looked over the shoulders of the younger workers. They knew by heart the history of the place and all the complicated equations, like if this ditch gets high and the rain keeps coming in from that direction and the high tide blocks the river mouth, then guarantee going get flood.

Plantation families even taught their dogs to keep an eye on things. Along with commands like "fetch" and "shake hands," plantation dogs were taught, "go check!" and they would dutifully make a perimeter sweep of the yard and report back any anomalies.

These days, the only checking we do is to Google a former or potential romantic interest. Who is watching storm drains and stream beds in your neighborhood? Who is driving around the fallow fields looking at soil erosion and water levels? Do we really expect government to be responsible for all of that? What kind of electronic sensor can possibly tell us what a veteran pair of eyes can't?

It is human nature to want to tame the elements, mitigate the threats, control the weather, particularly after the tragic loss of life at Kaloko last week.

One of the saddest lessons is that not everything is under our control. Older generations knew that, and so they checked. They checked often.

We have cultivated the dangerous belief that there are ways to guarantee safety and the faulty assumption that someone else is looking out for us. The role of government is to keep the roads paved, the garbage picked up and the bad guys in jail. But still, it is our job to check around ourselves. Not obsessively, not hysterically, but in the old way: with knowledge, with care and with regularity.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.