"John Kessel - Buffalo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kessel John)

"Buffalo" by John Kessel.

Copyright 1991 by John Kessel. Permission is granted to
the downloader to read this story, but further distribution,
republishing or the placement of this story in other archives
without the permission of the author is prohibited. All Rights
Reserved.

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IN MAY 1934 H.G. WELLS made a trip to the United States,
where he visited Washington, D.C. and met with Franklin
Delano Roosevelt. Wells, 68 years old, hoped the New Deal
might herald a revolutionary change in the U.S. economy, a
step forward in an "Open Conspiracy" of rational thinkers
that would culminate in a world socialist state. For forty
years he'd subordinated every scrap of his artistic ambition
to promoting this vision. But by 1934 Wells's optimism,
along with his energy for saving the world, was waning.

While in Washington he requested to see something of the
new social welfare agencies, and Harold Ickes, Roosevelt's
Interior Secretary, arranged for Wells to visit a Civilian
Conservation Corps camp at Fort Hunt, Virginia.

It happens that at that-time my father was a CCC member
at that camp. From his boyhood he had been a reader of
adventure stories; he was a big fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs,
and of H.G. Wells. This is the story of their encounter,
which never took place.

In Buffalo it's cold, but here the trees are in bloom,
the mockingbirds sing in the mornings, and the sweat the men
work up clearing brush, planting dogwoods and cutting roads
is wafted away by warm breeze. Two hundred of them live in
the Fort Hunt barracks high on the bluff above the Virginia
side of the Potomac. They wear surplus army uniforms. In
the morning, after a breakfast of grits, Sgt. Sauter
musters them up in the parade yard, they climb onto trucks
and are driven by forest service men out to wherever they're
to work that day.

For several weeks Kessel's squad has been working along
the river road, clearing rest stops and turnarounds. The
tall pines have shallow root systems, and spring rain has
softened the earth to the point where wind is forever
knocking trees across the road; While most of the men work
on the ground, a couple are sent up to cut off the tops of
the pines adjoining the road, so if they do fall, they won't
block it. Most of the men claim to be afraid of heights.