The Vine That Ate the South by J.D. Wilkes

Author:J.D. Wilkes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

THE GRID

I feel like a pioneer out here. A veritable Daniel Boone, forging a trail through the darkness. Or maybe I’m an old homesteader back in the days of “Westward Expansion,” the White Man’s quest for more American land.

As you may recall from history class, millions of Sooners hit the trail, staking their claim, and, as they did, they rendered straight and true the crooked buffalo trails and footpaths that led them to the Pacific. In the process, they created a sort of grid that divided up this American wilderness.

New property lines and railroads soon criss-crossed the old aboriginal wilds, creating order out of chaos. And, if you stop and think about it, these crosses are quite the fitting symbol for the conquering force of Christianity. For what is a grid but an infinite expression of interlocking Christian symbols?

This American Grid reminds me of another great Wonder of the World, the Native American Nazca Lines. Both the grid and the lines are extraordinary examples of man’s ability to carve the land into giant symbols. And both serve as immense ground-displays meant to impress their god(s) upon high. One is rigid and cruciform, the other sinewy and amorphous. But which of the two would the Heavens favor from its LORD’S-eye view?

Perhaps it was the White Man’s telegraph poles that tipped the scales. Miles and miles of yet more crosses, and their overlapping cables, added insult to pagan injury. The resulting culture clash, as history books record, was not pretty. After shedding much blood, sweat, and sap, both Nature and Native America were sent kicking and screaming into the corner of their new rectilinear confines. It would seem the Heavens had made its decision.

Ah, but you ask, aren’t the two of you there to get “off the grid”? Indeed! For look at those crosses now! The barbed wire is all rusty, the railroads are overgrown, and the old telegraph poles trail off in a row of haphazard diagonals. Their arms uphold flaccid, ivy-draped wires, and every other one is betokened with the stamped tin badge of a defunct utility: as worthless as a Confederate coin.

If I squint, I can imagine rotting pale-faces crucified on every pole, creosote dripping down like blood, their American Dream long exploded in their hearts. No surprise though. Pagan Nature, by Design, will always strike her balance. Even today’s proud infrastructure will one day be like an overgrown lattice, its grid overwhelmed and its symbols of Christendom broken into a cacography of Cherokee runes.

“They usta give us smoke breaks in junior high,” says Carver. “Bell would ring and we’d all go out there, teachers and the students, a settin’ side by side, just a-lightin’ one off the other. But the dentist says I gotta give it up. I tolt him I been smokin’ since I was eleven year old and I ain’t a-quittin’ now. So to learn him a lesson, right before my last appointment, I ate a whole row of Oreos and didn’t brush my teeth.”

“Okay.”

“So he’s

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