THOUGHTS
                                by Duane Bristow

                                      KIDS

        When I was a boy I was interested in the outdoors, science, 
        cowboys, indians, and cars.  I had to work on the farm two or 
        three days a week, usually 4 to 8 hours a day, in the 
        summertime.  I did chores including carrying in firewood each 
        night, milking the cows night and morning, and before we got 
        running water, I carried buckets of water from the spring.  
        Going to town usually happened on Saturday unless my dad broke a 
        part on a piece of farm equipment during the week and had to go 
        to town to get the part.  We went to the city, a three hour 
        drive away, usually about twice a year, and visited my 
        grandmother in another state once a year.  I walked to a one 
        room grade school every day.  I lived close enough that I could 
        walk home for lunch. Men were macho in those days.

        Now the world is different.  My boys are apprehensive about the 
        outdoors.  They look on it as a fearful place of dirt, bugs, 
        heat, sweat, cold, etc. They think of science and math as 
        difficult, unknown, and uninteresting subjects.  They think of 
        history as dull.  Where I was fascinated by electronic gadgets 
        and machines and spent hours finding out how and why they 
        worked, my boys open the box of a new appliance or toy, expect 
        to use it immediately without ever reading the manual, and are 
        completely uninterested in why it works, so long as it does.  
        They live in a world of going to town daily, TV, Computers, 
        VCRs, and Shopping Malls.  Spending an hour mowing the lawn is 
        considered a hard day's work.  They don't know the speed of 
        light, the Capital of Norway, or the ethnic race of Genghis 
        Khan.  They know how to press the shutter release on a camera, 
        but not how to compose a picture, or arrange the lighting, or 
        figure the relationship between f stop and shutter speed. 

        I feel that if the world is to be inherited by people like 
        this, then it is truly headed for destruction.  But, I think my 
        parents felt the same way about me, and I suspect that all 
        parents have always felt that way about their children.  I 
        don't think the world my generation has created is such a bad 
        place although I don't know if my ancestors would agree.  But 
        if all the children of the past have caused the world I now 
        live in, then perhaps there is hope and maybe my children's 
        world will not be completely hopeless either.