Fast Forward To The Past: Junkin’ May Save Your Life
April 23rd, 2006 |
by Glynn Wilson
Rummaging through the authentic antiques and fake newer junk at thrift stores and flea markets is not only a cool way to find cheap stuff for the home in these strange political and economic times.
With a bit of imagination, the growing pastime called “junkin,’” which even has it’s own television show on the Turner South network where the stuff is sold on eBay, can even be more than a creative trip down memory lane.
It can be an education beyond the computer games that now train the neurons of today’s youth - and may save your life one day much sooner than you think.
Approaching the practice with an eye focused on the future might give you some ideas on how to survive when the inevitable big time apocalyptic shit goes down…
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| Photo by Glynn Wilson |
| An old fashioned wash stand and oil lamp… |
Whether you are a believer in a Biblical vision of Armageddon, a reader of Nostradamus on the Internet, or more like me a practical individual, it is not that hard to see the world cannot continue to commute indefinitely in gas guzzling SUVs to jobs that do not pay enough to survive.
That is, of course, if you are not a poor Mexican family who walked a hundred miles to get into the United States and know how to live with eight people in an apartment off of beans and tortillas on a minimum wage job picking fruit or cleaning the floors at Wal-mart. Most Americans who live in the suburbs would not walk two blocks down the street for a six pack of cheap beer.
Start first by imagining what the world would be like without cell phones, cable TV and SUVs.
That may not be so hard if you are over 40. You may actually remember when there were only three television networks and an antenna was required. You may remember when cars ran on leaded gas with no pollution controls.
But can you remember black and white TV? How many of you reading this Net only column today can remember when the chief source of information was the radio, or before that, a mass circulation daily newspaper?
I doubt there are many readers alive who can tell us what it was like to get around in a horse and buggy - but it might be a good idea to learn what it was like. You can still buy old saddles and bridles in some antique shops, although they come at a premium.
You can find old transistor radios in the junk shops and copies of old newspapers from days when the news was really big, like the day the stock market crashed in 1929 that set off the Great Depression, or the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
If you can remember these things you are a dying breed. But the world may one day in the not too distant future see similar times - by the time Bush is done creating havoc in Washington and heads back to the ranch.
Go ahead. Laugh and call me crazy. Then stop and think about it. We’ll see who gets the last laugh.
Go back and read some of the stories out of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, or for that matter, read what is was like to live in Bagdad after the U.S. attacked Iraq.
Cell phones were the first technology to fail. The Internet was useless. The power grid was not there to depend upon, and neither were the water or sewer systems. In New Orleans, all the roads were flooded. In Iraq, most of the roads were bombed.
For four days after Katrina, there was no newspaper to deliver in New Orleans, no way to deliver it and not many people left in the city to read it in any event.
The people who stayed behind in New Orleans know what it was like to live without power or modern communications for days. The people of Iraq know.
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| Photo by Kenny Walters |
| A grey squirrel, yuck… |
What would we need in America to prepare to live in that world again? Take a look around the flea market near you.
Is it possible that, rather than traveling in our own space ships in the future of America, we may one day soon be using outhouses and oil lamps again? Can you imagine using a handsaw rather than a power saw and be forced to straighten out old rusty nails to provide shelter for your family? Can you imagine having to carry water every day in from a creek and boil it on a wood stove?
What if Bush continues to piss off the folks in the Middle East to the point where Osama recruits enough suicide bombers to destroy 10 major American cities? Or more?
He released another video this morning, in case you missed the news.
In New Tape, Osama Bashes ‘Zionist Crusade’ Against Muslims
Does the Bush Homeland Security Department have enough bottled water and duct tape to fix things in the event of that kind of a disaster?
I’m wondering where the American militia movement stands on these issues, whether the survivalists are prepared to live in the pre-modern world? We haven’t heard a peep out of them since “their man” Bush got elected.
I’m well on the way in my own home makeover and will soon be pissing in a water closet, washing my hands from an old fashioned wash stand in a basin filled with water drawn from a pitcher, in an underground room lit by an oil lamp.
With any luck, there will still be a way to access the Internet even after the printing presses fail and you will still be able to read my Sunday columns. I’m told the people of South America are getting Net access even in remote jungle villages where newspapers are not delivered and gas guzzling SUVs are not sold.
Maybe that’s what the future will look like soon in Alabama. Instead of “Back to the Future,” this movie should be called “Fast Forward to the Past.”
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| Photo by Glynn Wilson |
| A morning dove, yum… |
Are you prepared to handle it? Are you ignoring the warning signs? Or are you counting on a mythical rapture or savior?
Stock up on beans and shotgun shells. You may need them sooner than you think.
Oh, and by the way, have you ever eaten possum? I’m thinking the idea may be more than a Hollywood joke from the Beverly Hillbilly’s in the America of the future. People in Appalachia used to hunt and cook them, along with squirrels and all kinds of forgotten protein from the woods.
The depression was so bad in Birmingham in the 1920s that, according to historians, the people survived on roots.
There are a couple of opossums making their home in the woods behind the house. That could be sustenance for a week or two
There are enough squirrels to make it for a month or longer.
And as much as I love those morning doves that fatten up on the backyard bird feeder, they would make fine eating…with some homegrown tomatoes, and a tub of homemade beer.
