When I was a kid in the fifties and sixties I lived in what was just beginning to be called The Rust Belt. I was born and raised in northwestern Ohio among dirty and failing manufacturing plants; heavy industry, piece-work factories, tire and appliance builders. I was just a child and not until later did I realize that the stench of the rubber plants was not natural and probably damaging our health. I felt – but didn’t understand – that the land had been severely abused. The fact that the beaches of Lake Erie were posted with skull and crossed bone signs raised a few of our parent’s eyebrows but was mostly met with shrugs of resignation. My dad was disheartened when he showed me a slough along a Lake Erie estuary where he had hunted ducks and geese as young man. The slough was eerie indeed: silent, still, polluted, and dead. I remember him shaking his head at the news that the world renown peach and walleye fishery was closed because the fish were found to be poisonous. When, in 1969, the Cuyahoga River actually caught on fire and burned, most of us laughed that sad laugh people resort to when they are sick and afraid inside. But my father was angry. “What in the hell,” he asked, “are we doing?”
I had almost forgotten about that horrible, sinking-gut feeling of fifty years ago. But it erupted again last week as I drove up through the southern Great Plains. Jill and I began near Lubbock, Texas and drove the pickup north for two days. For most of that time the corporate and industrial abuse of the land and communities was visible on both sides of the highway. What we saw might have been the spacious version of the same junk machinery and abandoned buildings of my youth. The vegetation was stunted. The smell of burning rubber had been replaced with the stench of tens of thousands of cattle standing in filthy feedlots. By the time I reached the relative sanctuary of Nebraska’s sand hills, my father’s question of half century before echoed in my head. “What in the hell are we doing?”
In the late nineteen fifties I didn’t have a pickup. I drove a bicycle. We grew up in a time and place that afforded kids a lot of freedom. Everyone knew us and watched us, so there was little chance of getting away with anything truly bad. But, if you kept your nose clean and made it home for dinner, you could do about anything. I spent a lot of time on that bicycle cruising the alleys of our little town. Even then I knew something was missing from my life. My buddies and I would weave in and out of the cloud as we followed the DDT fogger down those allies. According to same industry types that ran our rust belt factories, the fog was harmless to everything but mosquitoes. The city truck would fog the alleys and seemingly abandoned lots behind the homes and businesses. I thought of those back lots as our play ground, but now I know that they were really little more than unregulated, private landfills.
Snapshot of a feed lot on the way home
I used to haunt the industrial back lots because they were home to neat things like snakes, and rabbits, and rats. Occasionally I would carry a single shot twenty-two rifle on my bicycle. I was a kid who wanted a connection to wild things. I had a curiosity akin to that of a scientists and a latent need to be a hunter. But I had to settle for shooting a few rats and bringing garter snakes home to my mother. She worried about me but, sensing my needs, and did her best to be excited about the snakes. Back then. I didn’t recognize danger in oddly dead vegetation, pungent odors, unmarked barrels of strange liquids, or an absence of birds. I saw those back lots as remnants of paradise not as a general abdication of society’s responsibility to care for the places we live. I didn’t see them as the result of a wholesale rush to the riches promised by “anything goes capitalism”. Now, along with a lot of other people, I get it. When Jill and I drove up through the southern Great Plains I saw those plains for what they are: the giant back lot of our nation, hidden from the sight of most citizens, but sickening and impoverishing us just the same.
The panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and on up through much of western Kansas and eastern Colorado is littered with detritus from failed farms, ranches, and oil fields. Senseless farming has left it nearly devoid of fertility. The top soil moves with every frequent wind storm much like it did during the dust bowl. Only meteorological luck keeps it from blowing away. Crops are successful only sporadically, and only with the support of massive inputs of chemicals and water pumped from a diminishing source. All crops and livestock in that area are somehow supported by tax dollars in the form of unfair and inappropriate agricultural subsidies. In the southernmost portion we endured the sight of cotton farming that sends hundreds of millions of subsidy dollars to absentee landowners and leaves the true residents – human and otherwise – with the devastation of a farming method that kills every plant, but one. The only plant left standing in thousands of square miles is cotton, a crop that is in chronic over supply. Much of the rest of the land in the southern Great Plains is dedicated to the nightmare residue of our national dream of cowboys. 
Hundreds of thousands of mother cows are pastured on the ruins of what was once a grand, expansive, and functioning ecosystem. They stand among the rusting machinery and tumbled down houses – gleaning a mouthful of grass here and there. They cows pace along the temporary electric fences that hold them on the flat, shelter-less, winter wheat fields. The ocean of grass, forbs, and sedges that once thrilled men like Charles Goodnight and Kit Carson is gone. Any cowboy worth his salt would be appalled to -see that little bluestem and Indian grass are nearly gone.
And any cowboy worth his salts would sob to see where the calves end up. Tens of thousands of acres of what once was fine cattle country between Lubbock and Nebraska is now a series of feedlots. Cattle in there last few months of life are crowded together by the hundreds of thousands. They stand in their own waste, in pens containing a few hundred, and wait for the trucks to dump the cheapest grain available into their feed bunks. They really don’t want to eat this high energy ration. Their systems can’t handle it. But they eat because there is nothing else to do, while they wait. Here is industrialization in one of its most sinister forms. Animals forced into inactivity and gluttony to achieve the cheapest possible weight gain and to produce food that is arguably as poisonous as that fog of DDT that I rode my bicycle through as a child. The cattle are enormously fat and on their way to death by over eating. But here and there, along the road we traveled, there slaughter plants ready to save the cattle from a gluttonous death by turning them into meat in the nick of time. The beef is packaged and shipped to the tables of America’s families. This back lot of America is the head waters of the torrent of obesity that is crippling our country.
What Jill and I saw in the southern Great Plains is a symptom of greed, ignorance, and unregulated capitalism run amok. Much like the rust belt of my youth, the abuses of land, health, and food have been pushed out of sight and out of mind. It’s hard not to say that the southern Great Plains are permanently ruined. That is what I thought about the rust belt when, as an eighteen-year-old, I packed up and left – looking for what my home could no longer provide. But here is an upbeat fact: Some time between 1966 and now the people of the rust belt came, at least partially, to their senses. For the most part they called a halt to warehousing the dangerous, ugly consequences of thoughtless living on forgotten back lots. The rust belt is much cleaner and healthier than it was when I was kid. It is not good enough, but it is a better place to live. Many of the birds that I never saw as a child are back. The fish have returned to Lake Erie. When I was in Ohio last fall I saw a swarm of ducks cycloning into the slough that my father pointed out to me fifty years ago. That little marsh is no longer a sad and desolate place and, though it is probably too much to ask, I hope it is visited by a kid on bicycle. I hope the kid is allowed to carry a twenty-two rifle and that occasionally he plugs one of those ducks. I hope his mother has enough sense to realize what her son’s offering says about the re-born health of their life. I hope his mother throws out the planned beef roast and substitutes the duck for dinner. I hope she marinades it in olive oil and parsley and that her whole family shows up to enjoy it.
As a cynical man, I try to have hope that in another 50 years something similar could happen on the southern Great Plains.
Comments 23
I know how you feel Dan, I lived in the rust belt for about 25years before returning to the Great plains. I missed them dearly the clean air and water except around the front range of the rockies. good job !
As species become more concentrated and over populated, strange behavior starts to appear. Greed and less concern for one’s surroundings are just two of those. I really appreciate your skillful writing.
What you describe is so grim.
Do you have a sense or feeling for how this situation can change in the southern Great Plains?
This is sort of my hope for Great Plains. It’s not a perfect solution but it is a step, sort of, in the right direction. A biologist from the University of Minnesota has basically proven that if you restore native tall grass prairies to their original state they produce more ethanol per acre than corn. He has proven this on test prairies in Southern Minnesota. Native grasses provides a superior source of bio-fuel that is relatively drought and disease resistant through its inherent diveresity. They also require little in the way of fertilization. This isn’t perfect because it looks at the prairie as just another commodity, but wouldn’t it be kind of ironic if what was once there is one of our pathways out of a petroleum based economy. Although I have to admit I’m not that hopeful.
Feb. 9th is my 66th birthday. I feel blessed to have the opportunity to read this vivid description of destruction and hope on my birthday.
Please keep writing, Dan. We need to hear what you see and think.
Shalom,
Margaret Birdsall
This is why I have committed to eating only local meat as much as possible. Every time I’ve done it, I’ve never regretted it.
Wow ! What vivid descriptions . It makes me really sad especially the cattle in the feed lots . My husband made a lot of his living by hauling thousands of those cattle there . I feel so sad for them . I live in ranch country and see the thousands of head of cattle free rangeing in the mountains here and I also think of their fate .
This is a very sad tale you tell, Dan. I also grew up in the Midwest and I can attest to what you write about growing up there. But there is a ray of hope and I hope it can spread to the Great Plains. Kudos for writing about this and for all you are doing to change the way people think about sustainable farming and ranching.
Your writing is excellent, and so full of details for us who do not get out to the Great Plains. Thank you. And my thanks for your interpretation of what you see. May we come to know the power of diversity in all forms of life.
Dan, I can only say what disgust I have for those feedlot farmers. Especially after reading your book and knowing what you are trying to do to restore the plains with your buffalo. You are an inspiration, keep spreading your message and target the young generation! I think a kids book with Curly Bill would be a great seller!!
Boy,
I’m touched and moved by all the responses to my description of our nations Back Lot. I had no idea there were so many rust-belt refugees or so many who have a grasp of what industrial agriculture is and leads to. As for HOPE, it is hard to have, but we must do our best. Which does not mean we should go quietly into that dark night. A little kicking and squealing seems very much in order.
Always enjoy your writtings. Refreshing and natural and so connected to the real soul of our planet. I am an artist in Chicago about to leave my life in the city for northern California in the hope that I can struggel as an artist just as well in a beautiful, natural evvironment, than in the great city of the midwest. Your writting connects me with my need to be closer and respectful of nature. Thank you, Francine
Elloquent, as usual, Dan. I have this hope that in the struggles of current economic times, people will revert to some of the practices from earlier times: simple farming, raising meat for the family, gardening, and riding bicycles!
Dan,I remain ever grateful that you share your gift and talent as a writer in such a way that you constantly shine a light on the harsh truth of the present atrocities. If the city consumers could only get a whiff of a feelot they may think twice about what they put on the table!!!! Keep on keepin’ on Dan, someday maybe folks will wake up. I used to ride my horse along the bypass out by the sugarbeet and Cooper tire factory and remember that stench to this day!
I am a big fan of the Cheyenne River writings and look forward to it every month. I am a little disappointed in this months effort. There is so much whining in the news and on the internet these days about anything and everything you can think of. Be careful blaming capitalism for everything, even Wild Idea is a form of capitalism.
Gary,
I agree that whining is a no-win undertaking and that capitalism is generally a good thing. But capitalism without a sense of social and environmental responsibility is dangerous to all that we hold dear.
Great article Dan. I wanted to add a bit, hope you don’t mind.
Growing up on a dairy farm, I remember well pulling on my boots to go out to the pasture and gather the cows for milking. My Dad would call them with a simple “come boss”, which greatly helped in bringing them closer to the barn. Although we fed silage and hay in the winter months, they were always free to roam or to take shelter if needed. We took care of them and they took care of us. So for me, confining animals in feedlots is very personal, not to mention the end result of the food product. As my mother used to say, “you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit”.
Your observations reminded me of my trip last fall thru Iowa and Nebraska into eastern Colorado to visit my daughter. I remember the constant stench of intensive agriculture all the way to western Nebraska when the landscape finally changed into rolling hills of grassland. As I drove thru eastern Colorado toward Boulder I drove by two giant feed lots a size I have never seen before. It was disheartening, but what else is there but being hopeful and work on turning this thing around for a healthier way of life for all life on earth for the next 7 generations to come.
Well said. Thank you for the time you take to communicate because lots of us can then get it, and with that begins the change. I am aware of the creator mainly because of time spent where it is wild and that without that I would not have achieved much age, and I know that we all need to grok the land since it evens us out when we are in it long enough and far enough away from manmade stuff. I much appreciate your so-evident heart for the land and I’ve got the pom-poms out for you 🙂
What would be the best way to help, do you think?
Really enjoy reading your exploits with THE animals and especially this short story of your trip through the plains where Eleanor and I grew spent formative years. Keep telling it like it is and keep holding some hope that tall grass prairie can return.
Your mom sounds like a peach, Jill. Reminds me of the other related saying, “don’t shit where you eat.” I grew up in the rust belt, too, and it’s a small bit of wisdom we just plain forgot.
Dear Dan, Thanks very much for your vivid prose. I have read “Fast Food Nation” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” Your insight regarding our failure to manage our resources echoes both of those books. The factories of industrial manufacture have been appropriated by the agriculture industries these past 30 years with terrible consequences. Thank you again for your blog and posts.
I was born in northeast Ohio and spent summers wandering the woods and ponds around Cuyahoga Falls. We moved to Texas the year the river caught fire. We returned to Ohio a few years ago and now live a few miles from the edge of Cuyahoga Valley National Park. As you say, things here are better–but not perfect. The scars of our abuse persist.
At the same time, our 2.5 acres and the adjoining woods are host to a wide variety of wildlife. Our red-shouldered hawk pair has returned to nest again this spring. I counted 11 deer in the woods the other morning. All we are missing are the large predators. In the park, an area that was once an auto junk yard is now a healthy marsh with beavers, muskrats and a variety of waterfowl. Peregrine Falcons and Bald Eagles have returned and are successfully nesting in the park.
This recovery is due in part to the hard work of a lot of caring people, as well as to the demise of the polluting industries that plagued this area. We’re not the most economically viable part of the country, but we are learning to respect the world we live in.
Because of people like you, I live in hope. Thank you for your part in showing the world that a successful business can coexist with the natural world.