Things my grandfather could do that I can’t do

Dear Readers,

My grandfather could…

Ride a horse

Grow a cherry orchard

Shoot a gun

Kill critters and big game

Chop wood with an ax

Make jewelry

Box

Keep an accounting book by hand

Fix up a house

Survive and thrive in the wild

Me, on the other hand…

I teach drama at a middle school in America, in the suburbs, in the year 2010. I live in a house that other men built and other men maintain. Sometimes I feel like I’m wasting my students’ lives… teaching them drama. What a namby-pamby subject. They should be learning useful trades, so they don’t end up like me.

Maybe public school curriculums should be patterned after Boy Scout Merit badges. I’d say learning how to identify poisonous berries is a heckuva lot more useful than learning the difference between stage right and stage left.

And how will that wimpy monologue you've got memorized save you when the government blows up your house?

Have you noticed that a lot of public schools these days don’t have auto or woodshop or anything really useful? What’s up with that?

Anyway most men these days are too far removed from nature, and a lot of men are turning into frail, frail, wards of the state. And that’s bad. Bad for our country. Bad for our souls.

Let’s go hunting, and then let’s cook the meat over a fire.

Let's go marry Indian maidens, and build a cabin out of logs.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa

P. S. Have you ever read Pioneers! O Pioneers! a poem by Walt Whitman? It captures the spirit of the nineteenth century American West that my grandfather had, and I wish I had.