By avoiding the beaten and asphalted paths, and by keeping my head on a swivel and looking into everyone's yards, I have made a number of judgments and come to a number of conclusions. The first of all these unbearably smug and better-than-though-art observations is that people living in close proximity to one another own items in such redundancy as to nearly boggle the mind. No matter how large or small a person's yard should be, it will be cut using a full-sized, gas-powered lawn mower. No matter how few obstructions and other solid objects that cannot simply be mowed over, they will be trimmed using a gasoline-powered weed-whip or edge-trimmer. Every yard – even the postage-stamp-sized ones – will have a shed of sorts for storing gardening tools; every home-owner – even the ones with more time than money on their hands – will rush outside and pay good money to have machines to do such work as they could easily do themselves at the cost of some sweat and a few minutes of precious television-watching time. Oh, if communities but had a central storage-and-loan shed for tools, a type of tool lending-library, a place where persons not interested in always buying such things as they might need to keep their property up to code could go and borrow a pair of hedge trimmers or a ladder. Imagine the volume of extra cash that would be floating around! Imagine the richness such a facility would bring to communities across America, people coming out of their homes and mingling with one another on a regular basis while queuing for tools, discussing methods of lawn-care and sharing freely of hard-won secrets, second-hand tips, and local advice.
The second observation I should like to make is that far too few people seem to be growing victory gardens, accepting rather the luxury of being able to buy their food at grocery-stores as some sort of Eternal Truth and wasting their time sitting around in air-conditioned houses eating cheesy-poofs and watching reruns on TV instead of mucking about in gardens where they might – oh cruel and terrible thought – stumble into conversation with a neighbor or passer-by. Square miles of good growing space sit wasted on grass; endless expanses of fertile soil stand planted with little more, perhaps, than a handful of ornamental flowers. Sew grain, not just grasses! Plant food, not just flowers!
Dear friends, I am coming to see the widespread use of television as the root-of-all-evil in America, that one main factor that has sent this once-fine land into a tailspin of societal and communal decline, that one primary thing without which ours would be a better, stronger, and more closely-knit nation. Without TV, people would not be constantly told to Buy More Shit, and without TV, they might get off their fat fucking asses and go outside for a nice, healthy walk now and again. Woe is unto us, sisters and brothers, fellow Lovers Of Liberty, we who reject the tenets of conspicuous consumerism, we who seek to be self-sufficient and self-reliant; our siblings have stumbled down the path of convenience and leisure, seduced into personal debt by the candy-sweet promise of touch-screen-equipped tablets and one-click-ordering, lost in a land of false and hollow hope, ensnared in the web of ubiquitous advertising, bled dry of honor and self-respect. Which way leads back out again, friends? To whom do we turn for salvation? The answer, in short, is that we must turn now to ourselves, setting such good and positive examples as might show our fellow Americans that there are other methods besides their ruinous ways. Mahalo, friends, and keep fighting.
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