Kelly McAllister remarked on the transformation of the Kent Valley from
classic flood plain (of the Green River) to concrete and warehouses.

(I risk looking "old" here...)

For four years, during the late 1940's -- third through sixth grades -- I
lived at Briscoe School, essentially a orphanage run by the Christian
Brothers of Ireland, in the Kent Valley. (Not everybody there was an orphan
-- not even most -- but most were "circumstantial" orphans.)

In those years, I could look east, north, and south and see nothing but
green, agricultural or natural, vegetation, broken only by the BN railroad
and an occasional road. To the west we backed up to the Green River, ever
present -- and if you need to know what an "ever present" river is, just
wait until the Green floods. The bank was, even then, built up to about
eight feet above the first floor of the school -- you climbed ~up~ a bank
to get to the river! (I learned to tie flies and catch trout there --
reason? bullheads don't take flies! <G>)

For a week one year, we all lived on the second floor, and ate only peanut
butter and honey sandwiches, which the brothers had brilliantly decided at
the last moment to carry upstairs as the river was rising -- big cans of
honey and peanut butter, and boxes of loaves of bread, baked at the last
moment to save the flour from becoming just more river sludge. I can
recall to this day the wonderful smell of that freshly-baked bread as I
hauled boxes of it up the stairs -- and could not to this day -- ever --
eat a peanut butter and honey sandwich again.<G>

The Army came in with amphibious jeeps to resupply us with food and fresh
water in Jerry Cans -- my introduction to the smell of Jerry Can, recalled
on later occasions and remembered to this day.

In the summers we husked corn from the fields to supply us the rest of the
year, and in the fall we went out into the fields to dig potatoes with our
bare hands after the field had been turned with horse and plow. Boy! Did
we eat a lot of potatoes and corn, and drink a lot of milk, in that place!
Home grown milk, watching calves drop...

The Kent valley, with the ~village~ of Kent as simply a little necessary
interruption, was a virtual example of habitat and agriculture, and
literally "atremble" with creatures because the "modern" insecticides were
yet to be transformed from Nazi chemical plants to American agrichemical
concerns, and used to kill everything "not useful." (I don't intend to be
radical here, but that's simply fact!)

I left the Western Washington at Uncle Sam's call in 1960, after finishing
high school and a few years working in Seattle, not having looked down upon
the Kent Valley since leaving it in 1949. In the late 80's I returned --
"OH MY GOD!" as I drove up I-5 past 200th to 188th. Kelly is not
exaggerating. it is concrete -- that's all that's left. And, Boy!, do they
have that nasty river under control!

But, you know, that had to be. The problem is not so much what people do,
as the fact that we ~are~. My personal feeling is that "Kent Valleys" will
recur as long as our population continues to grow -- those places are
simply a necessity to support populations. You can't control that which is
required to support humans -- you must some how control the human
propensity to breed (for lack of a better word). (I know this will upset
some -- I don't wish to participate in that "everybody loses" argument.)

No wonder there are only about six Red-tailed Hawks in the valley...

Jerry Blinn
EMail: <jerry at avisys.net>
Web site: <www.avisys.net>