It doesn't seem so far back to the age when children were not warehoused.
Today, the more health-conscious people amongst us are beginning to value the advantages of free-range chickens.
Chickens allowed to range and find their own way around are just naturally better than warehoused chickens. The coop-raised chickens just get fat, and have less of the natural qualities that The Creator intended for them to have.
Sure, they sometimes eat things you might not like to know about. And sure, some of them are injured in accidents that could not happen to the coop hens. But, look here, who would enjoy being a coop hen, being fed and standing around doing little except laying an egg most days?
A free-range chicken is a happy chicken.
You can tell by their look of total contentment as they amble around, clucking and eating a goody here and there. They learn self-reliance and become creative in living their out-door lives. They know to go to their chicken-house and roost high up at night.
Daybreak finds them with the same obvious zest as the day before. My guess is that they go to sleep at night reflecting on the pleasures they experienced that day, and looking forward to the next day's adventures.
It's too bad that the coop chicks can't live that more vital, more enjoyable life, more resistant to disease because of immunity bestowed by exposures. Somehow, Mother Nature provides free-ranging chickens with an instinctive knowledge of what constitutes a balanced diet. And they usually get it if allowed, pecking high and low, and joyfully scratching in the dirt for God only knows what.
One who enjoys eating chicken, and compares free-range ones with cooped chickens, usually finds that the free-range ones have flesh which is leaner, tastier and more wholesome.
The cooped or warehoused children spend their youth dreaming of having the opportunity to live the exciting lives that the "free-range" ones do. Their parents are more interested in hot pursuit of all the material goodies they can squeeze out of two incomes, while ware-housing the small children in day-care centers, and closely managed recreation for older ones. Fifty years and more ago, children learned to watch out for themselves. They created their recreation with imagination. Many of their lessons were in the form of mishaps. The school of hard knocks is an invaluable teacher, whose lessons are indelibly impressed upon the child. The child grows up to be more creative, more imaginative, more self-reliant, with acquired immunities to disease and temptations to which warehoused ones will yield for lack of experience or exposure.
Unfortunately, growth in population density has worked in several ways to curtail the existence of free-range children. There is no open country-side around which to roam. There are no open-roads of dirt along on which to walk or bike. We have outsmarted ourselves with growth, and those wonderful country-side attributes will never return. As we are decimating the populations of wild and free-range animals, we have also, unwittingly, decimated the existence of free-range children. There is a price to pay for all of it. Adults of tomorrow will lack many of the admirable qualities of their ancestors. That lack is already beginning to show itself in a less self-reliant, less decisive society, lacking in problem solving creativity, and a propensity toward quick surrender when facing very difficult circumstances. Could this lack be a component of the threatened downfall of western civilization?
Charles Walker is a lifelong resident of Conyers and served as mayor for nearly two decades from 1978-1997. You can reach him at Charles.Walker@conyers-rockdale.com.
