Riding down a freshly graded dirt road the other day, taking a shortcut because I was in a hurry, I had to slow it down when I realized I was looking at the past as the bumps underneath seemed to shake me into another time. I saw a silo, a few cows, an old small pig house thats been operational most of the time for years. Im not sure if the current owners are the same family, but I remembered the shock of learning that a stock market is a term that comes from New York, London, and Tokyo, not the corner of 59 and 104 in Robertsdale, Alabama where a family could bid on cows, bulls, chickens, and pigs. I laughed at my own early naivety. I took a quick trip through my memories and thought about those simple barefoot summers. Feeding a couple horses, sometimes working the neighbors livestock for a couple dollars here and there, pulling 6 foot coffee weeds that were every bit as rooted as my body was strong. I was a child in the fields the same as there always was. This is how we grew. We learned responsibility early and took on greater responsibilities as we gained knowledge and proved ourselves. We couldnt get a license to drive but figured that out by 13 or 14 anyway. I looked over the fields planted along that road and saw the rows planted straight and true and realized those beans have GMO written all over them. They dont even look the same. No signs anywhere needed to let us know that times and food have changed. We live in a world driven by money. Stock markets, not my version of them, drive the machine. Money drives the market. Everything bought at the best possible price and sold to the highest bidder. The end consumer of everything pays for it all. The bottom feeds the top, just like a food chain. The big boxes filled with shiny stuff suck away future security for the common man. Marketing makes Coach purses and Cadillac necessities instead of quality food, water, and medical care. Todays world is in need of a reality check. It needs to be taken back several decades. Thats when people knew how to earn a reputation and deliver on a promise. Everybody had all that mattered within themselves, families, and communities, yet materialism was still a relative oddity. People were valued for character, not the square footage of their home. As I returned to the pavement, I waited for a car to pass at the bent stop sign. He was driving at least 10 miles an hour below the speed limit in a 10 year old economy car. Windows were down, a mom, a dad, and a 7 year old child. They waved when they recognized me and saw my hand in the air. They were singing, to put it nicely, to a tune on the radio. It gave me hope. They are happy in themselves. They are not in a hurry to get anywhere to impress anybody. They pulled over to talk for a minute and I pulled up beside them. They have LIFE by the horns. In all of its simplicity. A boat mechanic and family have it all. They keep it simple. As we keep ignoring the forced changes on our lives because we confuse convenience and marketed must-haves, we are endangering our very existence. Wars are created for exploitation. Security is no longer a right given to individuals by and unto themselves, but a gift from government. Food is altered. Medicine is directed by computer derived guidance and sold to is to combat the ravages of modern civilization. Home is where we are allowed to exist. Its time to live again.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 20:00:59 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015