Apple Barrels:

As a child I read Treasure Island and of course wanted very much to become Jim Hawkins and sail off to Hispaniola. For those of you that never wondered there actually exists an island of Hispaniola and today the Dominican Republic is on the east end of the island and Haiti is on the west end of Hispaniola. Of course I never got to sail off into the sunset with Long John Silver spinning yarns about treasure. The scene of Jim crouched in the bottom of the apple barrel remains with me still.

In later years I came to realize that apple barrels were simply a convenient way to store and ship any number of items including apples. Tobacco was shipped in larger barrels called hogsheads. The reason for shipping this way was to protect the contents of the barrel from sea water contamination. Coopers were carpenters who specialized in constructing barrels. A good barrel had a bulge in the middle that permits it to be easily rolled. Barrels also became convenient unit of measurement. In fact the price of oil is still quoted in terms of dollars per barrel.

There has come into use a different connotation for the humble barrel. Here I am speaking of the phrase “Don’t let a single bad apple spoil the barrel”. What is generally meant is that when spoilage occurs in a barrel often if left unattended the barrel is found to contain spoiled product. Two important points are overlooked when this phrase is applied to people. The first is obvious: people are not apples. The second is more subtle and is that the barrel is left sealed and unopened for extended periods of time.

Let us consider for a moment inner city Detroit Michigan. At this time Michigan has the highest unemployment rate of any of the states. While the demise of Chrysler Motors and General Motors added to this rate it was already high in Detroit the acknowledged hub of the automobile industry that has in essence driven the American economy for the past 100 plus years. I hear some speaking about the excessively high wage paid to American auto workers and wonder if they are truly listening to the words leaving their lips.

American wages should be a matter of pride to the American people. But that does not seem to be the case. It seems that a well paying job has become something to be scorned. The labor unions that secured these benefits for the American worker are also singled out for derision often by the very people that should be applauding the collective bargaining that led to these wage and benefit packages. The benefits of a well paying job have eluded most of inner city Detroit.

The sad truth is that inner Detroit lacks a single chain super market. One of the major signs of American prosperity is absent from a city that was the fourth largest in America in 1950. Inner city Detroit has become hermetically sealed off from the rest of the American prosperity and the question is has this sealing preserved the apples? My answer is there is no source of fresh produce within the city. And oh yes inner city Detroit is predominately black. I guess these “bad apple Americas” are getting exactly what they deserve. For shame America.