Where there's smoke...

It has been several days since I posted here, and I've read and commented on precious few others these last several days. I supposed I've just been busy and distracted. It's the season at work, I think, that has me feeling disconnected to the world outside my own windows. That will go on awhile, and then in May, after the majority of springtime changes outdoors in North Texas have come and gone, I'll have time to go outdoors to see what I missed.

Last Sunday, my wife and I took what has become a very rare drive into the countryside. We took the interstate north for a ways, far enough to get outside the mass of development that has snaked its way northward in recent years. Then, we took the bluest highways and backroads we could find, roads that see little traffice aside from tractors. I like that. It's hard to explain how I feel such an extraordinary sense of relief to get away from the constant driving pace of the city.

Well into our little drive, I let the wide open spaces knock me upside the head from time to time, testing my sense of humor and my story-telling powers. Here's an example of what those open spaces did for me.

As we were driving down a completely desolate backroad highway, I took note that the ever-present fences that line both sides of the roadway had disappeared. The land around us looked odd, with no barriers between the road and the miles and miles of fields the road pierced. At some point, I noticed what I suspect was a crop, newly planted, in the fields. I have no idea what it was...very, very green, a little like grass, but more of a yellow tint to it. I asked my wife if she had any idea what it was. She didn't. What followed was something like this.

ME:
"It may look like grass, but I think it's something far more sinister than that. I think it's a 'crop' planted by the snack food industry. They've been going through some really tight times of late. As you no doubt know, this county, and the surrounding counties, are among the most lucrative in the southwest for the snack food industry. But the fortunes of the local farming economies have been horrendouse of late. That has put enormous strain on the snack food industry. And the industry has put pressure on local governments.

What we think is 'grass' in these fields is actually an enormous planting of marijuana! And the snack food industry has planted it for one simple reason: they need sales of snack foods in these counties to take a sharp turn! They have a plan! They're going to let these plants grow to a height of 2-3 feet, then they'll hire a bunch of people to sneak into the fields in the dark of night, severing the roots of these young plants. They will quickly wilt and die and dry out. Then, one evening soon, the snack food tycoons will send their minions into the fields to set them alight! Vast fields of dried young marijuana plants will be set ablaze and the choking sweet smoke from those plants will fill the towns and villages in every county for fifty miles! The unsuspecting residents will awaken in the morning, coughing from a night of breathing air heavy with pot smoke, to ravenous appetites. The snack trucks will have converged on every store in the area overnight, laden with all manner of snacks to asuage the hunger pangs of thousands and thousands of people who have become unintentionally stoned and very, very hungry. The snack food economy will have been saved, but the poor people of these parts will have been victimized, nonetheless, by rich snack food barons who have no compunction about forced inhalation of toxic weed."

It was funnier in person. Much funnier.