I saw him on my most recent eastbound trip on Amtrak’s the Southwest Chief. The train was delayed because of commercial traffic – again – and we were waiting to take our turn. I’d just returned from the Club Car after chatting with the attendant. “You see that lake out there?” he asked, nodding to the view through the window behind him. “That WAS somebody’s corn field.”
Although I’m more of an urban dweller these days, I grew up in the country, around farms. I know what it means when farm equipment is tire deep in mud and water, and I have some idea of the cost. And because I spent some time as an adult in farm country – Carroll County, Illinois, right in the heart of the corn belt – I developed an understanding of what kind of bellwether the price of a bushel of corn is. Lousy seasons mean higher prices – which agribusiness types horde corn back for, by the way. It also means that anything that eat corn – cows and chickens, for example – will most likely increase in cost. And so will any products of said animals – milk and eggs, for example. And so will anything that corn goes into… which is anything that has corn syrup in it. Like ketchup. Interesting fact – and I heard this from the mouth of Rod Fritz, former Carroll County Board Chairman and patriarch of one of the handful of agribusiness families that collectively own most of unincorporated Carroll County – most corn grown in this country does NOT end up on a plate. It end up as corn syrup bound for distilleries.
So Kentucky bourbon aficionados, when that 5th of Maker’s Mark or Angel’s Envy bumps up in price, it’s not because of sin taxes. It’s because agribusiness waits for the price of a bushel to rise before they let anything go.
You’re welcome.
Anyway… so after I went back to the observation car to drink my coffee, I saw a man leaving for work. His house was completely surrounded by a moat of water that covered all but the small mound his house sat on. If he had a driveway, it was submerged. His truck was parked on the road, which was more or less dry and high enough not to be submerged, across the lake that had formed around his house. A small fishing boat was tied off next to his door. He left his house, lunch box in hand, and locked the door. Then he pushed off in the boat across the moat. When he reached the other side, he tied it off to the mail box post, stepped out with his lunch box, got into his Dodge Ram, and drove off.
The thing I like most about traveling in the manner I do – preferring over land rather than through the air – is that I have the opportunity to re-experience the vastness everything Out There. The continental United States is a massive land; but for all of the insistence that we are one people – united by the myths of Manifest Destiny and a juvenile George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, maybe – it gets more and more difficult for me to view us as a single nation simply because of some similarities in language and the federal system of government.
Part of what makes me say that is this: the news cycle gives us the impression that things are solved when they aren’t. Take the water crisis in Flint Michigan, for example. Or the Midwestern floods that are still impacting Kansas and Missouri, but since the water isn’t technically rising anymore and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe can roll through without any problem, then it’s fixed.
And yes, we’re a big country with a lot of problems and crises and how can we possibly care about Flint’s dirty water, fracking in Wayne National Forest, or Midwestern Floods that are leaving people to fend for themselves in what they tell us is the Great National in the World?
Because the scope of our vision is not as wide as the vastness of our abstract national boundaries, and all the myth of Manifest Destiny and that cherry tree is good for are bedtime stories for robber barons.
Thanks for listening to Episode 6 of A Record of Well Worn Travel Boots. Be sure to find me and subscribe on Podbean, Google Play, or Spotify. Also be sure to check out the Spotify playlist, Well Worn Boots, which are songs that I listened out on my most recent trip out to Los Angeles. Look me up on Twitter and Instagram, @dirtysacred. You can find me on Facebook as well.
Thanks again for listening. May the road forever rise to meet your feet.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/flint-water-crisis.html
https://www.sierraclub.org/ohio/blog/2017/04/breaking-earthquake-strikes-wayne-national-forest-near-fracking-operations
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-end-in-sight-for-record-midwest-flood-crisis/
Although I’m more of an urban dweller these days, I grew up in the country, around farms. I know what it means when farm equipment is tire deep in mud and water, and I have some idea of the cost. And because I spent some time as an adult in farm country – Carroll County, Illinois, right in the heart of the corn belt – I developed an understanding of what kind of bellwether the price of a bushel of corn is. Lousy seasons mean higher prices – which agribusiness types horde corn back for, by the way. It also means that anything that eat corn – cows and chickens, for example – will most likely increase in cost. And so will any products of said animals – milk and eggs, for example. And so will anything that corn goes into… which is anything that has corn syrup in it. Like ketchup. Interesting fact – and I heard this from the mouth of Rod Fritz, former Carroll County Board Chairman and patriarch of one of the handful of agribusiness families that collectively own most of unincorporated Carroll County – most corn grown in this country does NOT end up on a plate. It end up as corn syrup bound for distilleries.
So Kentucky bourbon aficionados, when that 5th of Maker’s Mark or Angel’s Envy bumps up in price, it’s not because of sin taxes. It’s because agribusiness waits for the price of a bushel to rise before they let anything go.
You’re welcome.
Anyway… so after I went back to the observation car to drink my coffee, I saw a man leaving for work. His house was completely surrounded by a moat of water that covered all but the small mound his house sat on. If he had a driveway, it was submerged. His truck was parked on the road, which was more or less dry and high enough not to be submerged, across the lake that had formed around his house. A small fishing boat was tied off next to his door. He left his house, lunch box in hand, and locked the door. Then he pushed off in the boat across the moat. When he reached the other side, he tied it off to the mail box post, stepped out with his lunch box, got into his Dodge Ram, and drove off.
The thing I like most about traveling in the manner I do – preferring over land rather than through the air – is that I have the opportunity to re-experience the vastness everything Out There. The continental United States is a massive land; but for all of the insistence that we are one people – united by the myths of Manifest Destiny and a juvenile George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, maybe – it gets more and more difficult for me to view us as a single nation simply because of some similarities in language and the federal system of government.
Part of what makes me say that is this: the news cycle gives us the impression that things are solved when they aren’t. Take the water crisis in Flint Michigan, for example. Or the Midwestern floods that are still impacting Kansas and Missouri, but since the water isn’t technically rising anymore and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe can roll through without any problem, then it’s fixed.
And yes, we’re a big country with a lot of problems and crises and how can we possibly care about Flint’s dirty water, fracking in Wayne National Forest, or Midwestern Floods that are leaving people to fend for themselves in what they tell us is the Great National in the World?
Because the scope of our vision is not as wide as the vastness of our abstract national boundaries, and all the myth of Manifest Destiny and that cherry tree is good for are bedtime stories for robber barons.
Thanks for listening to Episode 6 of A Record of Well Worn Travel Boots. Be sure to find me and subscribe on Podbean, Google Play, or Spotify. Also be sure to check out the Spotify playlist, Well Worn Boots, which are songs that I listened out on my most recent trip out to Los Angeles. Look me up on Twitter and Instagram, @dirtysacred. You can find me on Facebook as well.
Thanks again for listening. May the road forever rise to meet your feet.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/flint-water-crisis.html
https://www.sierraclub.org/ohio/blog/2017/04/breaking-earthquake-strikes-wayne-national-forest-near-fracking-operations
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-end-in-sight-for-record-midwest-flood-crisis/
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