Back in the 60’s my older brother attended the University of Montana and their forestry department. He told me of a debate back then about preventing forest fires. If a forest went too long without a fire, the underbrush and the forest floor would become a tinderbox and the age of the forest’s trees would provide huge amounts of fuel for a fire. Fighting a fire in such a forest would prove impossible. Forest fires naturally started (lightning strikes) kept forests young, and young forests don’t burn well. So was the theory. Those who opposed fighting every forest fire would hang poor Smokey in effigy. Back in the 80’s or 90’s, I believe, this theory was proven with the Yellowstone National Park Forest Fire that proved difficult to contain due to the age of the forest.
Still, put out your fires and don’t throw your matches away carelessly while out in the woods! Happy birthday, Smokey!
Winston Churchill visited Afghanistan when the British tried to occupy it about hundred years ago. He wrote then that every Afghanistan tribe was against every other tribe, but all the tribes were against the foreigner. Still true today, only now we are the foreigner.
The Detroit Lions: fodder for sport jokes since 1957.