Just One More Brick In The Wall …

…that is closing off the incoming generation of Americans from – everything.

I have posted a few times pictures that I have taken from the Anacortes Ferry boardwalk.

While I wait for a ferry I like to go see what sort of images I can collect.

To get to the boardwalk there is a path from the boat ramp, down a gradual slope and down a nice smooth little notch in the bank that folds neatly into the beach.

At that point one walks down the beach to the boardwalk that gives multi mile access the flora and fauna of the shoreline.

The other day I was returning from such a walk and was at the notch and about to walk back up the bank to the ramp.

It was a busy, sunny Friday morning so there were a lot of people waiting for ferries.

Several of them were coming down the bank and were just the other side of the notch.

The notch, being a notch, there was only going to be room for me going back or those coming down, but not both.

Since there were more of them than there were of me, I stood aside to let the others get onto the beach.

I could not believe what I was seeing.

A young mother and her eleven or so year old daughter were about to step into the notch.

( I may not have made this clear enough; I call it a notch because it is a dug out little bit of the bank to make an easy, smooth, one small step down to the beach possible; even in my advanced arthritic state it is like walking on the sidewalk; it requires no thought, no adjustment, no taking of care – even for an old man.)

The young mother took her child’s hand and cautioned her to be very, very, very careful and to take multiple tiny steps to get to the beach.

The worst part of it was that the child complied looking extremely worried about the danger of this world shaking adventure.

I had briefly hoped that she would tell her mother to leave her alone: she was a healthy athletic looking young woman, more than capable of walking on a sidewalk.

But she did as her mother told her.

I felt like screaming at the mother.

But I didn’t want to be put away as a madman.

So, when they had made their cautious, multi-stepped traverse to the beach, congratulating themselves about eluding serious bodily harm, and the notch was free to me, I jumped over the notch as far and high as I could up the bank and ran up to the ramp.

“Must be a nut” I thought I heard someone say.