I had dropped by the home of my neighbor (the one with the hand-painted Trump sign on his farm) to pick up a pint of maple syrup. I\u2019d noticed mud clumped around my beets, so I asked if it had been raining when I was away. \u201cThree inches in a single storm!\u201d The Chenango River licks at the foundations of houses by the bridge in Greene when that happens. \u201cI have no sympathy for them!\u201d he bellowed. \u201cIf you build on a floodplain, you\u2019re going to get flooded. And then they expect taxpayers to bail them out.\u201d I felt he was itching for a big-government fight. \u201cFloodplains,\u201d I said, invoking the Nile and Egypt, \u201care for farming, not building on. And then these idiots build dams that stop the floods so the soil never gets fertilized.\u201d I was itching for the big-development fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But apparently we\u2019d hit a point of accord, so he took me to lunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his F-150, I bragged about my recent success \u2013 thanks to many hours on YouTube \u2013 in repairing my backup generator, a class of machinery that had not been in my life a year ago. This brought up his sawmill, powered by an engine no longer allowed by his nemesis, the EPA. \u201cJust imagine! Every day, dozens of trucks take trash out of New York City, to Seneca Meadows, in the pristine Finger Lakes, and they worry about my<\/em> little engine?\u201d NYC takes care to dump its trash far from the Catskills that supplies its drinking water. \u201cYep, they should be composting their organics,\u201d I suggested hesitantly, hoping not to trigger him. \u201cThey oughtta stop buying all that goddamn stuff and throwing them away after six months. And every truck oughtta be made of the same parts so you can repair them anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n