The Reject Army of Poetry

n 1994, when I was still a senior at Old Paiute High, Wilbur County experienced an initiative measure which would oblige the county government to become an advocate for appropriate technology and organic agriculture. Spearheaded by Harlan McCoy, and invoking the mythical words of little Germaine Van Bibber, the political campaign captured the imagination of many folks in the area.  Due to the success of Measure 49-16, and the financial largesse of Harlan McCoy, there has been a small renaissance in the Tamarack Valley which has had the effect of drawing a lot of new folk to the county, including an assortment of kooks, charlatans and environmental activists from the city. Many Germaine old-timers can see no difference among the lot of them. One group which has recently taken up residence calls itself EcoSurvival Village Ostensibly, it is a kind of retreat for environmental activists, but they have achieved a…

Bradley

Cornbread and beer,” I said, “the all-American meal.” It wasn’t the most original thing I’ve ever said. I followed Brad into his kitchen. His house is familiar to me. When I was very young, nine or ten, my parents used to play pinochle with Tom and Lucy Bradford, Brad’s parents. They brought me along during those years between being old enough to behave and too young to stay at home alone. I don’t remember ever seeing Brad or his sister Christine. Their 8×10 glossy graduation photos always hung over the piano, facing each other, but they were grown by then and Brad was living in Montana. I don’t know anything about Christine. She was never a topic of conversation during the card games.  Brad opened up a couple of beers. “Not much to see out that window.”  I was looking out over the back forty across the garbage steeped pits.…

Glass Harvest, part 2

t the entrance to Brad’s Pit is one of Donnie Wicker’s creations. There is nothing artistic about this gate. Just pipes welded together. The dump, excuse me, the Wilbur County Sanitation & Refuse Facility is open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. according to the sign hanging from the gate. The Wilbur County Commissioners might have high expectations about this “facility”, but it isn’t anything more than a garbage dump.  When I was a kid everybody had a burning barrel in the backyard to dispose of their garbage. Anything that wouldn’t burn had to be hauled to Prineville or Burns. We made that trip once a year and so did just about everyone else in Wilbur County except some of the farmers and ranchers who had their own personal dumpsites on what they referred to as “useless” property. Sometimes this was swamp, sometimes just rocky desert. A couple of years…

Glass Harvest, part 1

he Bradford homestead house is perched up on a rise of land too small to have a name, but higher enough than the flat around that you see the house for miles. Bradley sits up on that mound like an eagle in his aerie. He is surrounded by all the cast-offs of Germaine and Wilbur County. Except for the cast-offs of the Van Bibber Twins. Everyone else hauls their garbage up to Brad’s Pit. The Van Bibbers don’t trust Brad even with their garbage. Vanessa and Vernon burn everything though environmental regulations clearly prohibit it. As long as I can remember, they have burned the garbage in a stone-walled incinerator, which has a chimney as high as a two-story house. Sometimes the smoke from their incinerator can be seen from town four miles away as it rises, a black column of smoke thick with toxic residue that serves to remind…