The Passing Parade; R.W. Demers

Consider the situation which has surely confronted· us all on fre quent occasions - a long, rumbling freight train has crossed our path, and what is our usual reaction? We wait, of necessity, but we are im patient, irritable, and aggravated Mr. Demers is a vocational counselor in Veneta, Oregon. 288 R. W. DEMERS at the inconvenience this rolling behemoth has imposed upon us. What niight have been, or could still be, a much more fruitful reac tion? Could we not find a wealth of concrete, specific examples of the amazing success formula which has blessed us as the most free and independent of all people? As the cars roll by, starting with the chug ging diesels to the rickety caboose, we have a graphic, demonstrative testimony to the genius and indus try of free enterprise, acting in concert across a vast span of miles. Long refrigerated cars bearing 1973 THE PASSING PARADE 289 perishable citrus fruits from the sub-tropical climes of Florida, Ari zona and Southern California to tiered flat cars loaded with the gleaming, shining bodies of new cars and trucks from Detroit and the various assembly plants across the land. Huge earth-moving roll ing stock lashed to swaying flat beds in their multicolored cover ings of paint, and defying imagina tion as to the nature and variety of their uses. Open-top cars, re vealing their cargo and destination by the streamers of sawdust and wood chips as they bump and clat ter across the rails. All sorts of cars with letters, titles, codes, and destinations from a host of rail ways across the length and breadth of the U.S.A., challenging the im agination as to what cargo, if any, fills their interiors. Stacks of ply wood, huge timbers, and sheets of gypsum. Sacks of grain, lime, ce ment. Tanks of milk, oil, gasoline, and acid. Dump cars of sand, stone, scrap iron, and coal. These and many, many more all followed by a swaying, creaking caboose, with wisps of smoke from its peaked smoke stack and a friendly face and a waving hand from one of the trainmen as it terminates our pass ing parade.

Is all this to you just a noisy in terlude of annoyance and inconven ience? Have you joined the ranks of the brainwashed who can no longer feel goose flesh shoot up and down their spines as the whis tles blast, and the bells ring, and the thunder of the rolling wheels become a glorious overture to the wonderous symphony of free and competitive production? The trains will still roll, the ma chines will still operate, the fields will still grow, under the heel of an omnipotent government; but the days will be dull and grey, the pro duction will be inadequate, weak, in decay; and a cold, chilling shroud will be drawn over the light and spirit of free man. Unless we awaken and realize that the festive table of plenty at which we feast is the result of hard-working, frugal, honest, trustworthy, God-fearing, free in dividuals, we may find our table swept clean and the bright lamp of freedom extinguished. I) RONALD F. COONEY WHEN, on July 1, 1858, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace presented their paper on the ori gin of species before London's Linnean Society, they could have had but little inkling of the revo lution in thought they were fo menting. Of course, a theory of the origin of man outside the ac cepted religious belief of man as a divine creation was sure to pro voke a new clash, in a war cen turies old, between science and religion. Then too, the assumptions of science up to that time would have to be modified-or abandoned - to fit the new knowledge. This much Darwin could have divined.