The icons I grew up with are disappearing along with the American middle class family. The amusements of Salisbury Beach are gone. The carouselle, the roller coaster and the bumper cars and the water slide are gone. I am left to wonder if we have forgotten how to enjoy ourselves, is it too expensive or has the typical American family changed too much.
My family has camped in the Maine woods for twenty seven years now. We swim in energizing mountain stream water, breathe air that doesn’t smell like a cesspool and get the benefit of returning to simple honest pleasures of photographing Maine wildlife and collecting wood for the evening campfire. I don’t care what time it is or even what day. It is just that relaxing.
This time though the second rest stop on the Maine pike featured a Starbucks instead of what we will always call the second Burger King. Starbucks is of course the epitomy of Satanism in my book. Coffee is after all coffee and all Starbucks does is paint lipstick on a pig in order to “offer” it at a highly inflated price. It is after all a marketing effort and lot’s of people market lots of things and we like chumps buy them. It even changes our language.
“Extraordinary rendition”
“Depleted uranium”
“Troop surge”.
The only good part? Moose, 24 sightings, deer 4, bear one. Plus we are learning how long our batteries last. Could we survive out here? We might have to someday.
Yes, coming back, I can definitely smell the cesspool like Massachusetts air already.