Ah, Wasteland!

Traveling through the lower southern states of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana was a real eye opener, a rude awakening to the realities of a dismally failed economic “recovery.” Traversing hundreds of miles on highway I-10, we passed town after town of derelict buildings, boarded up windows, going out of business banners and blank-faced storefronts, interspersed with long stretches of washed-out farmsteads.

The landscape is strewn with junk, seemingly joined end on end, border to border, an unbroken panorama of rotting cars, rusted campers, ancient farm equipment, dismembered machinery and crumbling outbuildings juxtaposed with gaudily colored plastic gewgaw garbage, all abandoned where they lay, their usefulness at an end. It presented a despairing picture of failed enterprise and broken dreams, depressing to witness and impossible to contemplate when viewed in the light of the stories each piece of detritus must represent. 

The very infrastructure of these places cries out to be tended, bridges, roadways, and signage, all neglected and sagging with the weight of their own cost of repair. Nothing apparently will be fixed until a random tragedy forces the issue. No one seems to possess the will to remedy any of it, or more importantly, to be shut of the wanton wastefulness, greed, and incessant consumerism that created much of the trash in the first place. Creating it was easy, dealing with it, not so.

Louisiana, still bleak after Katrina, abounds with tales of ongoing hardships, claims not settled, livelihoods permanently lost, and residents­—all these years later­—still living in motor homes.

Alabama, also hard hit, seems to be banking its recovery on casino gambling, true to the riverboat tradition of its forebears. Mobile is awash in casinos, the sole glitz in an otherwise glimmer-less cityscape.

We drive through towns and boroughs, former bustling thoroughfares and county seats, now bypassed, some replete with architecturally gorgeous structures, the lucky few undergoing a Renaissance of sorts, many more of them shuttered and ignored. Wooden structures have suffered most by neglect. Roofs have long since caved, yet walls remain, their stout wooden beams and studs still true and strong. 

The overweening waste, a sickening mass of rotting shattered offal, stand as grim reminders of our disposable cultural mindset. One wonders whether these cast off resources could be put to good use elsewhere. During World War II an entire nation was galvanized to “make do.” Objects were valued, treasured, preserved, conserved. Kids made money salvaging scrap. An entire nation of necessity became well practiced in good stewardship.

Is there anyone willing to find innovative ways to repurpose this mass of wreckage? Housing for the homeless from camper shells? New buildings emerging from the old? A nationwide scrap drive to feed the hungry? Organic victory gardens? 

Or has innovation expired along with the phantasmagoric American dream?

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