Some years ago, about 1900, an old trapper from
North Dakota hitched up some horses to his Studebaker wagon, packed a few
possessions--especially his traps--and drove south.
Several weeks later he stopped in a small town
just north of the
Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.
It was a Saturday morning--a lazy day--when he
walked into the general store. Sitting around the pot-bellied stove were seven
or eight of the town's local citizens. The traveler spoke, "Gentlemen,
could you direct me to the Okefenokee Swamp?" Some of the oldtimers looked
at him like he was crazy.
"You must be a stranger in these
parts," they said.
"I am. I'm from North Dakota," said
the stranger.
"In the Okefenokee Swamp are thousands of
wild hogs," one old man explained. "A man who goes into the swamp by
himself asks to die!" He lifted up his leg. "I lost half my leg here,
to the pigs of the swamp."
Another old fellow said, "Look at the cuts
on me; look at my arm bit off!" "Those pigs have been free since the
Revolution, eating snakes and rooting out roots and fending for themselves for
over a hundred years. They're wild and they're dangerous. You can't trap them. No
man dare go into the swamp by himself."
Every man nodded his head in agreement.
The old trapper said, "Thank you so much
for the warning. Now could you direct me to the swamp?"
They said, "Well, yeah, its due
south--straight down the road."
But they begged the stranger not to go, because they knew he'd meet a terrible
fate.
He said, "Sell me ten sacks of corn, and
help me load them into the wagon."[This is where I figured out where this
story was going... Uncle Romulus]. And
they did.
Then the old trapper bid them farewell and drove
on down the road.
The townsfolk thought they'd never see him again.
Two weeks later the man came back. He pulled up
to the general store, got down off the wagon, walked in and bought ten more
sacks of corn. After loading it up he went back down the road toward the swamp.
Two weeks later he returned and, again, bought
ten sacks of corn.
This went on for a month. And then two months, and three.
Every week or two the old trapper would come
into town on a Saturday morning, load up ten sacks of corn and drive off south
into the swamp.
The stranger soon became a legend in the little
village and the
subject of much speculation. People wondered what kind of devil had possessed
this man that he could go into the Okefenokee by himself and not be consumed by
the wild and free hogs.
One morning the man came into town as usual.
Everyone thought he wanted more corn. He got off the wagon and went into the
store where the usual group of men were gathered around the stove. He
took off his gloves. "Gentlemen," he said, "I need to hire
about ten or fifteen wagons. I need twenty or thirty men. I have six thousand
hogs out in the swamp, penned up, and they're all hungry. I've got to get them
to market right away."
"You've WHAT in the swamp?" asked the
storekeeper, incredulously. "I have six thousand hogs penned up.
They haven't eaten for two or three days, and they'll starve if I don't
get back there to feed and take care of them."
One of the old timers said, "You mean
you've captured the wild hogs of the Okefenokee?"
"That's right."
"How did you do that? What did you
do?" the men urged, breathlessly.
One of them exclaimed, "But I lost my
arm!"
"I lost my brother!" cried another.
"I lost my leg to those wild boars!"
chimed a third.
The trapper said, "Well, the first week I
went in there they were
wild all right. They hid in the undergrowth and wouldn't come out.
I dared not get off the wagon. So I spread corn along behind the
wagon. Every day I'd spread a sack of corn.
"The old pigs would have nothing to do with
it. But the younger pigs decided that it was easier to eat free corn than it
was to root out roots and catch snakes. So the very young began to eat the corn
first.
"I did this every day. Pretty soon, even
the old pigs decided that
it was easier to eat free corn, after all, they were all free; they
were not penned up. They could run off in any direction they wanted at any
time.
"The next thing was to get them used to
eating in the same place all the time. So, I selected a clearing, and I started
putting the corn
in the clearing.
"At first they wouldn't come to the
clearing. It was too far. It was
too open. It was a nuisance to them.
"But the very young decided that it was
easier to take the corn in
the clearing than it was to root out roots and catch their own
snakes. And not long thereafter, the older pigs also decided that it
was easier to come to the clearing every day.
"And so the pigs learned to come to the
clearing every day to get
their free corn. They could still subsidize their diet with roots
and snakes and whatever else they wanted. After all, they were all
free. They could run in any direction at any time. There were no
bounds upon them.
"The next step was to get them used to
fence posts. So I put fence
posts all the way around the clearing. I put them in the underbrush
so that they wouldn't get suspicious or upset, after all, they were
just sticks sticking up out of the ground, like the trees and the
brush. The corn was there every day. It was easy to walk in between the posts,
get the corn, and walk back out.
"This went on for a week or two. Shortly
they became very used to walking into the clearing, getting the free corn, and
walking back out through the fence posts.
"The next step was to put one rail down at
the bottom. I also left
a few openings, so that the older, fatter pigs could walk through
the openings and the younger pigs could easily jump over just one
rail, after all, it was no real threat to their freedom or independence--they
could always jump over the rail and flee in
any direction at any time.
"Now I decided that I wouldn't feed them
every day. I began to feed them every other day. On the days I didn't feed
them, the pigs still gathered in the clearing. They squealed, and they grunted,
and they begged and pleaded with me to feed them--but I only fed them every
other day. Then I put a second rail around the posts.
"Now the pigs became more and more
desperate for food. Because now they were no longer used to going out and
digging their own roots and finding their own food, they now needed me. They
needed my corn every other day."
"So I trained them that I would feed them
every day if they came in through a gate and I put up a third rail around the
fence.
"But it was still no great threat to their
freedom, because there were several gates and they could run in and out at will.
"Finally I put up the fourth rail. Then I
closed all the gates but one, and I fed them very, very well."
"Yesterday I closed the last gate and today
I need you to help me take these pigs to market."
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The price of free corn
The parable of the pigs has a serious moral
lesson. This story is
about federal money being used to bait, trap and enslave a once free and
independent people.
Federal welfare, in its myriad forms, has
reduced not only
individuals to a state of dependency; state and local governments
are also on the fast track to elimination, due to their functions
being subverted by the command and control structures of federal
"revenue sharing" programs.
Please copy this parable and send it to all of
your state and
local elected leaders and other concerned citizens. Tell them:
"Just say NO to federal corn."
THE BACON YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN..
