11/27/11 SO SOON OLD AND SO LATE SMART

CATHEDRAL OF THE PINES

ONLY THREE MONTHS 'TILL  MAPLE SUGARIN'

Sunday, 6:00 PM.  Temperature at 8:00 AM was 30 degrees, it was overcast and quite windy a times, from the WNW. The much predicted snow did not arrive, although the temperatures have fallen ten degrees since  yesterday. The barometer is up. I did go out to the Larsen place in the afternoon until dark.  I didn’t see him, but there is definitely a buck out there, I saw a rub and a scrape and tracks and droppings. I probably should have hunted harder the last few days.  Oh well, he will be that much bigger next year.  As the old timers used to say in the Milwaukee patois of my youth, “Ja, Ja, Cholly (Charlie)…ve get so soon oldt und so late schmart!”
    There not being much else on TV last night and being too tired to read, I watched a long program called American Trucker, which more or less glorified the trucking industry and truck drivers, their contributions to the economy and society, etc. which was all very interesting and fairly truthful.
     It went into great detail about trucking history and vintage trucks, which I found quite interesting because I remember a lot of the old rigs.  The show concluded with a tour of a state-of-the-art Freight Liner truck manufacturing plant in South Carolina, a truly amazing facility. Our American over the road trucks are not made in China or Japan, but right here, at home.  Tons of steel go into a big rig truck tractor, and thousands of trucks come off the assembly line each year.  Freight Liner has three such factories, and tractor trailer trucks are also produced by GM, Mack and other companies.  The amount of steel used is enormous.  And yet if things go on the way they are, Wisconsin will refuse to mine the iron ore to make American steel to produce American big rig trucks. The thousands and thousands of these trucks constantly moving on American highways use diesel fuel, each truck hundreds of gallons each day.  And yet our President has shut down the construction of the pipeline from the Canadian oil sands for political purposes and as a sop to his environmental extremist constituents.
    We are fast deteriorating into an effete culture, without the will to provide for ourselves and our progeny.  The mindset that  goods and services will arrive magically at our doorstep without worry, work or the use of natural resources pervades many levels of our society, from the idle wealthy  to the idle welfare recipient.  Not to mention the idle politician.  When the drones outnumber the workers, the colony starves.   
    We cannot enjoy even the most basic elements of our existence without making hard choices and doing hard work, mental and physical.  I am at a loss as to where today’s fairy tale mentality comes from, but I am certain that if our state and our nation do not return rapidly to realism The American Dream will soon become The American  Nightmare.