Charlie and the Ground Beef Factory

i really love what i've read of roald dahl's autobiographical work (click on the golden ticket to enter). even granting him some artistic license and old man tall-tale-telling, his stories from his childhood, in particular, are marvelous and menacing both, which may explain some of the marvels and menace in his fiction. anyway, yesterday we went to the central library in buffalo and took out 48 items with a library card limited to 50 items. one of those items was My Year by dahl.

Here is a choice quote:

"There was so much fruit every autumn that I told all the children in the village they could come in at any time and ask to borrow a ladder and pick what they wanted. They came in droves. Today, old age and storms have finished off many of the trees and there are only about thirty left. Even so, there are still plenty of apples on them, and in October, the trees are dripping with big green cookers and rosy eaters, but no children come anymore asking to pick. They haven't come for the past ten or fifteen years. I wonder why. Recently, I met a bunch of boys in the lane coming back from school and asked them if they would like to go up the trees and get a basketful of apples. They shook their heads and said, 'Naaw.'
What has happened to these children? I believe they have too much pocket money and prefer to buy crisps and Coke in the shops rather than climb trees for apples. I find this infinitely sad. Boys should want to climb trees. They should want to build tree-houses. They should want to pick apples. Maybe all the crisps and the Coke and the junk food they consume nowadays has made them sluggish."

i find it infinitely sad, too. and girls should want to, too, for that matter.

the sole reason why this is a "choice quote" instead of an account of his childhood stunts is because today i was also reading the book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. (Rolling Stone isn't my primary news source, but they published these portions that are now included in the book.) The best part is in Fast-Food Nation: The True Cost Of America's Diet. Part Two, in which the meat-packing industry is detailed. mmmmm.

i am a hair away from deciding to not eat ground beef that either
1. Scott Terry or another honest, small-scale farmer, can't vouch for
or
2. John and I have not raised (in our pipe-dream future of homesteading)

and all this comes on the coat-tails of watching Supersize Me before we left for Long Island to eat fast food for a week.