I\u2019ve been out here in the wilds of the Arkansas backcountry, tromping hills and woods, creekbeds and pastures, scaring up turkeys and deer, even the occasional armadillo and roadrunner. Vultures patrol everywhere, gleaning the dead. The woods are littered with washed carcasses, bleached skulls, scattered bones.<\/p>\n
You might think this is a slice of Americana glimpsed through a lens from 1850. Hard men and tough women. And they are. Plenty of bad dentistry hereabouts. Lots of suspicious, distrustful looks. Life is lived closer to the dirt here and the dirt isn\u2019t so much soil as it is chipped rock without much nutrient. Not many gardens to be seen. Not many orchards either. Homes here are small, patched and made to serve the purpose. Rusty sheet metal siding, rotted clapboard, plywood never painted. Some are nice enough, but you won\u2019t find a large home or one on the Architectural Digest reject list. There\u2019s no money here. Towns have 350, 402, 569 people, man, woman and child. The grocery store calls itself a \u2018trading post\u2019, more aptly, I guess. Churches outnumber bars a thousand to one. Actually, a thousand to none. You want a drink here, you drive to Oklahoma for 3.2 beer. That, or you make it yourself. I\u2019m not here long enough to get Set-Up.<\/p>\n
Religion and poverty usually go hand in hand. You got to believe in something and these folks aren\u2019t playing Lotto. A sign on the highway read: I\u2019M NOT RICH ENOUGH TO BE A REPUBLICAN. I doubt it meant he was a Democrat either.<\/p>\n
Today I walked past a half dozen deer stands, structures up on stilts or in trees, near a field or a pond ten to twenty feet up, a small room with a view to kill. Salt blocks have been laid out all year so the deer come there. Opening day of season, free salt will carry a high price. These boys aren\u2019t hunting for sport, I assume. I sure hope not. There\u2019s nothing sporting about it. One I climbed had an office chair, swiveled and padded. I don\u2019t have to wait a couple weeks to know they\u2019ll have a scope on their rifle. Jesus provides.<\/p>\n
Some of us forget that America isn\u2019t mostly a suburb, that folks are living hand to mouth, that poverty exists and the living is hard. Some of us scream bloody murder that the middle class is under assault, that union jobs are suspect, that government jobs should all be eliminated, that our 401-K\u2019s have been raided and lost.<\/p>\n
But \u2026 it\u2019s worth remembering that there are a lot of us who don\u2019t get pensions, who don\u2019t get to \u2018retire\u2019, who don\u2019t have health care, who don\u2019t live in fine houses with huge mortgages, who don\u2019t drive new cars, who don\u2019t use credit cards or cellphones or own computers. They live in Arkansas, in Louisiana, in Detroit, in upper Michigan or Maine or the South End or backwash anywhere. They don\u2019t ask for much, but they don\u2019t give a good goddamn about folks who overspent or didn\u2019t save or never appreciated the Good Life when they had it. They\u2019re fellow citizens and life is a lot harder for them in this Land of Plenty. It\u2019s worth remembering next time we\u2019re whining is all I\u2019m saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve been out here in the wilds of the Arkansas backcountry, tromping hills and woods, creekbeds and pastures, scaring up turkeys and deer, even the occasional armadillo and roadrunner. Vultures patrol everywhere, gleaning the dead. The woods are littered with washed carcasses, bleached skulls, scattered bones. You might think this is a slice of Americana […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4395,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394\/revisions\/4395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}