Wonder Valley: June 2012
Page 5: And It Came To Pass...
...that a people was lured to this place with false words and promises of free land.
A deed was granted therefore if a dwelling of 12 feet by 16 feet was caused to be built and lived therein for the time prescribed, and so it was done, beneath the hellish glare of a sun gone mad, amidst a stark wilderness.
Water for their drinking was rendered by windmills and pumps from deep underground and for year upon year they knew not of the arsenic which was borne upon that water.
And there they did try and were tried. Tried raising their children. Raising them on arsenic-befouled water. Raising them in the middle of a wasteland. Raising them without sensible means of supporting themselves. Raising them there in that fell wasteland.
And it came to pass that these people did not there survive. And in the end, they were blown away upon the desert wind as everything else in this twice-burnt land is blown away upon the desert wind.
And lo, while it lasted, the politicians, the civic leaders, and the dwellers of oak-paneled offices feasted upon an increased tax revenue like bloated ticks, caring not for the dying children, nor their parents, nor anyone save for themselves.
And out upon the twice-burnt desert floor, innocent children scrawled their names in concrete moist, and perhaps considered the motives inscrutable, of a personal rational and loving creator, who, for no sensible reason at all, placed them out there in a furnace of dust and creosote to die slowly of arsenic poisoning, of hunger, and of thirst.
A deed was granted therefore if a dwelling of 12 feet by 16 feet was caused to be built and lived therein for the time prescribed, and so it was done, beneath the hellish glare of a sun gone mad, amidst a stark wilderness.
Water for their drinking was rendered by windmills and pumps from deep underground and for year upon year they knew not of the arsenic which was borne upon that water.
And there they did try and were tried. Tried raising their children. Raising them on arsenic-befouled water. Raising them in the middle of a wasteland. Raising them without sensible means of supporting themselves. Raising them there in that fell wasteland.
And it came to pass that these people did not there survive. And in the end, they were blown away upon the desert wind as everything else in this twice-burnt land is blown away upon the desert wind.
And lo, while it lasted, the politicians, the civic leaders, and the dwellers of oak-paneled offices feasted upon an increased tax revenue like bloated ticks, caring not for the dying children, nor their parents, nor anyone save for themselves.
And out upon the twice-burnt desert floor, innocent children scrawled their names in concrete moist, and perhaps considered the motives inscrutable, of a personal rational and loving creator, who, for no sensible reason at all, placed them out there in a furnace of dust and creosote to die slowly of arsenic poisoning, of hunger, and of thirst.
People once lived here.
Children once played here.
Tarpaper, coat hangers, broken glass and nails are all that remains of a life once lived in Wonder Valley, California.
Names scrawled by the hand of a child.
