Strange Fruit Blooms in East Texas Woods...

Strange fruit. That's a term that's been around. An old college room mate might have looked in an old nasty fridge in an old filthy trailer we lived in and said something like "What strange fruit is this?" I did not have an answer that day and I still do not have an answer for things I don't know about. The past week I spend quite a bit of time in the great outdoors enjoying the fall season and I noted some things in the woods that should not be there. People that litter are bad people. 

I think of littering like I think of smoking. I seriously doubt that you could find anyone that does not know smoking will kill you. I seriously doubt that there is anyone who does not know littering or dumping is bad. I noted this item on a walk down a country road a couple of miles from my house. There was also the box the new one came in as well as a paper cup from an upscale fast food restaurant about 10 miles away. The pictures of those were not as artistic as I think this one is.  

If we are to talk about bad people, not littering the woods, old trailers and times gone past I guess we need to talk about the song Strange Fruit. After I left that nasty fridge and filthy trailer of my college days and landed a good solid blue collar job paying long green I began some serious record collecting. Maybe 35 years ago I purchased a double album of jazz singer Billie Holiday's greatest hits. It contained a song written in 1937 by Abel Meeropol called Strange Fruit. It's Meeropol's protest to the photo of the lynching of two black men in Indiana in 1930. A little internet research tells us that between 1885 and 1942 there were 468 lynchings that left strange fruit hanging in the trees of the state of Texas. I'm sure there were people that spoke against this just like I speak against littering, smoking, what ever but it took a while to catch on. 

Speaking of nasty fridges here is one I found laying in the woods of the Big Slough Wilderness area. It's not the one from the old trailer. It's about 2 miles down in the woods from the nearest parking This area was set aside as wilderness in 1984 and the few roads that allowed access to the place this was dumped were blocked that year. I'm guessing 70s vintage? 

Another find not to far from the fridge. Again it had to have been dumped before 1984. I actually have an old hot water heater marked on my GPS as a way point but I think it is another one as the last time I used the way point one it was almost covered with pine straw. 

Yeah, let's all go litter, lynch, whatever. I'm feeling that kind of thing is not going away. It's alive in the land tonight.