 As I sit at my computer, gazing through the window, looking at the tomato plants which were put in the ground yesterday, and the firewood, stacked in crisscrossed patterns for better drying until the first fires of Autumn will be lit, I'm thankful to Almighty God for another day of life on the 13 acres on which my family and I live in southeast Mississippi.
I'm also wondering what the next few weeks or months will hold, because these are the strangest times I've experienced in my 61 years on this earth. This will be the third consecutive Sunday of 'live-streaming' church services for the church my family and I are members of. Seriously! 'Live-streaming' church. I expressed my disapproval to the pastor, but he responded, 'Well, you heard about the governor's guidelines, right?' Yes, I did, but they were just that – guidelines, not commands. Regardless, we have to fall in line with the rest of the sheep, or risk being ostracized in the community for being 'insensitive' to the spread of the Deadly Virus Known By Many Names. The Wayne County board of supervisors met on Monday, and declared a 9PM – 5AM curfew, unless one is going to work, or transporting someone in a medical emergency. So, I suppose if my boys and I want to drive 16 ½ miles to a 40-acre plot of land we own, (land my late father-in-law was raised on in the 1920s and 1930s), to do some wild hawg hunting between 9PM and 5AM, we risk being stopped by the local Barney Fife, who might ask 'where y'all goin? Don'tcha know there's a curfew in place? Y'all better get on back to the house!' O.k., deputy, whatever you say. I could give him a lecture about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but I'll save it for another day. Given the fact there is more than way to get to 'the ole place' as we refer to it, we'll just take an alternate route. I know there is a finite number of deputies on the clock in Wayne County at 9:30 at night. In other words, it's pretty much an unenforceable curfew. But it makes the supervisors sound as if they are 'taking charge' and 'doing something'! Makes them feel that they're earning the tax-payer dollars they live off. This reminds me of an article I must read at Mises.org, entitled 'Politicians Have Used This Crisis to Remind Us They're Mostly Wannabe Dictators.' Truer words have never been written. Lately I've been reading 'Salvos Against the New Deal', which is a collection of essays written by Garet Garrett, which were published in The Saturday Evening Post, and is edited by Bruce Ramsey. In an essay from January 29, 1938 titled 'The Sign Ascendant', Garrett, referring to governments all over the world wrote 'All alike, they are limiting the areas of human freedom, for no government can in any way extend its powers over people but to limit freedom' and the last paragraph of this particular essay, 'Such then is the sign that now is ascendant in the political heavens. Such is the movement that is taking place in the world. Neither the sign nor the movement is new in the world; they are new only in this country, where now, for the first time, it may be that Government will overwhelm freedom. Certainly it will if the extension of its power be not heroically resisted.' In just a couple of hours, my boys and I are going to the Chickasawhay River to set out a catfish trap. The game warden wouldn't be pleased. However, if Daniel Boone was still around, I believe he'd say 'catch a big mess of fish, boys!'
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