Diary: Petrophobia

"God has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows." Hebrews

There's a retired "farmer" lives down the road from our subdivision. I like to take my kiddies by there in the Escalade to show them what "extinct" means.

The dude thinks he can "wean" himself from his "oil addiction." It's a fascinating spectacle, like dropping a mouse into a jar, screwing the lid on, and watching it suffocate.

He agrees with me on one thing: America has a mighty, mighty appetite, and ain't no more oil coming out of Texas, or California, or Alaska. Our future hinges on our appropriating God's gifts in Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. But whereas I think America is God-blessed, the farmer seems to think America is God-damned.

In February, while me and the wife and kids are celebrating the superior firepower of the US with grilled steaks, asparagus, and strawberry shortcake, our neighbor the farmer is eating beans and squash, with a shriveled, "organic" apple thrown in for good measure.

Last spring, we saw the dude out in his field, behind a horse, with a plow attached, and a line thrown back over his shoulder. He was stumbling over rocks and roots, while the horse yanked him forward.

The wife gasped: "My God! What's he doing to that animal?"

Then in the summer we drove by his place on a trip in to town in the Escalade to pick up some candles for a birthday cake. There he was, out on his front porch, sawing away on a fiddle. His lawn hadn't been mown all year, and there were cats and chickens poking through weeds everywhere. The kids pointed and smiled, but the wife was livid.

"People like that bring the value of the whole neighborhood down."

It was a shock seeing him there, for usually he has no free time. He plows and plants all spring. He spends the summers dragging logs into his yard with his team of horses, sawing them up with a bucksaw, and splitting them with just an axe, a sledgehammer, and wedges. He spends the fall picking squash, loading firewood, and spreading manure in his fields.

You never see him in the winter, just a manure pile outside the barn that grows and grows, or a column of smoke rising from some brush pile he's burning out behind the barn.

But just the other day I happened to whiz by in the snow while he was hand-shoveling his driveway. He suddenly tossed his shovel aside and sat down in a pile of snow. I thought he'd just croaked, so I turned the Escalade around and drove back to the spot where he lay. I eased down the window.

"You all right?"

"Just smellin' the roses."

"In February?"

He just laid there, panting awhile. It was getting cold in my vehicle, so I came right to the point:

"What are you going to do when we win, and the oil starts flowing like milk and honey?"

He stared at the sky. "They're dying in droves over there, you know."

Like he should care. I happen to know the guy's an atheist. One of life's little ironies.

"God Bless every one of them," I said. "You going to sit here and suffer your whole life, while the rest of us are enjoying God's gifts?"

He had no answer, of course. He just looked up at me like an animal caught in a trap, wondering whether I had decided to shoot it or not.

Brought to mind a story I had to read for a class during my semester in college, about some psycho that put himself in a cage just so other people could watch him starve. "I've always wanted you to admire my fasting," he says. Now you know why I quit school.

Problem with people like the farmer who think they have to live without oil is they have little faith. Let them eat squash and die.