Saturday, July 01, 2006

The Missing

Rusty's Hard Time Hollow, VA
Mile 828

Rusty's Hard Time Hollow is run by none other than a man named Rusty, who someow has direct private road access to the Blue Ridge Parkway. He had made noises about selling his land, as he is getting older and poorer, and is less able to maintain the place. It'd probably help if he didn't have a couple score of different livestock scattered around, or if he didn't insist on doing his own welding. God did not intend for molten metal to be used in toilet repair, for example.

Lately he's been trying to send out the message that he's looking for a protege. Young, responsible hard worker to work for room and board and eventual inheritance of an 18 acre estate on the Virginia Blue Ridge. There's no takers. Everyone is either already tied up in the larger world or is so feckless there's no hope in entrusting them with anything more than maintaining the pig trench. From my various employer friends I've talked to, it's a common failing in young men these days. They're not dumb or lazy, they just don't seem to care about what they are doing.

And really, who can blame them for not being interested in participating in this country's economy? With a third of the money supply owned by the Chinese, another quarter by the Sauds, and the American capital manufacturing capacity running at around the same level as the Vatican's, you're left with spending the rest of your life as a stockboy at Wal-Mart. Oh yay. Instead of looking back on a day's work and saying, "I helped build that automobile", or "that plane flew because of me", our young worker can say with pride, "I brought low, low prices to Backofnowheresville, Virginia". Gah.

Unsurprisingly, our young workers say, "No, thank you"- that is, the ones not already sucked into the global marketplace. Perhaps, someday, when the Arabs and the Chinese yank their support for our currency (making the US economy look like Weimar Germany on a bad day), and the shiny happy global capitalism movement is shown to be the farce it truly is (the Chinese don't 'globalize'- the Chinese 'sinofy'), there will be a whole crop of energized Americans, working for their country and other things that matter. As opposed to pumping oceans of money into the festering pieholes of the Saud regime.

I'm betting that on that day there will be some young Rustys in that crew, working the Hard Time Hollow, and slopping that damn pig outside the outhouse. We await our young men, the prodigal, the missing, and we will greet them when they return.

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