Wasters of the Wonderland by Frank Shortt
Imagine America as a once fertile, wonderful paradise, inhabited only by tribes who were displaced from Asia? The Middle East? (By continental drift), or who walked across the tundras of an early Siberia. Streams, Rivers and natural lakes knew no pollution before the advent of European civilizations.
Vast prairies seemed as oceans of grass where shaggy beasts roamed. Antelope, deer, moose, and elk kept the so-called Native American fed. Wolves, coyotes, and vultures cleaned up the remains of carcasses left by natural demise or what was left by the inhabitants, which was not much, as they used almost all the parts of whatever they killed.
Huge chestnut trees produced enough food for the inhabitants as well as wild boar and whatever else feasted on nature’s bounty. Each tree produced of its own kind, flowering, fruiting, and reproducing the next season. Multitudinous wildflowers colored the landscape rejoicing to grow in the naturally-produced compost . Layer upon layer compacted as ages rolled by.
What began the rape of America?
After explorers from Scandinavia, Portugal, Spain, and England took stories of a vast land of plenty to their homeland, men began to dream of gold. The first settlers, supposedly to be Christian, had their share of rotten apples among them. Wherever mankind has ventured, some or all of them have become more savage than the inhabitants who were there before them.
The majority of these men, blinded by greed, neither respected the land, or each other. Houses were built by the clear streams and the streams used as dung recipients. Lakes, where beaver dams once thrived, became polluted from boats and ships plying their shores. Rivers ran red with pollution from pit, as well as, strip mines never thinking of tomorrow. Man’s selfish desire for minerals far exceeded his desire to plan ahead.
Only stubs remain where stalwart oaks stood. Wood, for the markets of American cities as well as foreign destinations, slowly became depleted. Dried streams, baking and cracking in the sun, await the acid rains from avaricious industrial giants who cared not for future generations. “Just get the product produced” was their motto.
Rivers, which once teemed with fish, produce only minimal healthy specimens. The ones produced are laden with quicksilver, lead and whatever else man has manufactured. Warnings along the rivers of America keep many young men from plying the trade of Piscator. “Beware! Fish not fit for human consumption.”
Oil slicks along our coasts also help to deplete the dwindling fish population. The huge demand for petroleum worldwide has led to speeding tankers, causing collisions along all coastal cities. Captains of ships have been castigated for negligence.
The bison population, once covering the plains, has been decimated to just a few left in captivity. The gigantic beasts were slaughtered, without compunction, only for their hides. The carcasses were left to rot on the prairies, food for buzzards, coyotes, wolves and any other carnivorous mammal. An ashtray, made from the hoof of one of these magnificent beasts, once showed up at an antique show. It ended up on the mantle of an antique collector filled to overflow with cigarette stubs. The only memories of America’s inhabitants, before the white man, are a few small museums with artifacts of their culture.
The forces of destruction still gnaw at America like grub worms. These forces are determined to see her downfall, unless, stalwart young men and women rise up and cry, “enough! Let us be up and doing! Let’s rebuild America again!”
The Waster’s wages can only be a future, bleak with doom, facing the Finer’s fire, purifying the man-made gloom. What will be the outcome? This is up to the individual who will step to the forefront and become the standard bearer. As for my generation, we’re just about used up.