Corral, Idaho
There’s not much left of Corral, Idaho – not that there was much in its heyday either.
Settled in 1886 near Corral Creek – named after a location of corrals used during cattle round-ups of the 1870s – Corral served the needs of local ranchers. The first school was built in1891, replaced by two others in 1908. School was held between December and February up to 8th grade – considered a full education in those days (with a curriculum much more difficult than faced by 8th graders today).
It was a 12 hour ride to get to a doctor until the telephone lines came through in 1900.
The town continued to grow …
A creamery was established in town but didn’t last long; the buildings were moved to another location – the creamery didn’t do well in its new location either.
By 1905, the town had a store and post office. A feed barn and saloon were opened; a hotel and second saloon were soon added. Another general store and farm implements store were opened.
The railroad came through in 1911 but missed the town of Corral by about a mile. Grain elevators were opened but the town itself struggled, kept alive mostly because of the post office and a pool hall. The railroad shut down the line in the 1960s.
The Corral store remained and was bought in 1968 – signs along the highway proclaiming “It’s Coffee Time!“. The population was 38. It was the only business in what remained of the town.
Most of Corral is gone now – so is the railroad but the grain elevators still stand as does one of the school buildings. The general store still sits along the highway, but the coffee … and store … ran out in 2001.
Americana. And it is being rewritten and erased by AI. Artificial—An imitation. Intelligence–Knowledge. And this is our future. We have been so suckered into believing this demonic tool of evil is good and what has been good for thousands of years is no longer needed. Ask a normal person who is their congress critter and they probably have no idea but ask them what was on judge Judy and they will relate it word for word. SAD BUT TRUE. Add this to the pot.
This is happening now. Our so called “Allies” are bleeding America to death. Congress Aims to Give Israel Leverage Over America by integrating our militaries.
That picture would make a nice watercolor painting.
I think Photoshop has a “water color” effect in the tool menu.
That’s a great idea, ghost.
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
William Falkner, from his novel The Reivers, P. 193, previsioning the future based on conditions observed in 1961: “there are no seasons at all any more, with interiors artificially contrived at sixty degrees in summer and ninety degrees in winter, so that mossbacked recidivists like me must go outside in summer to escape cold and in winter to escape heat; including the automobiles also which once were mere economic necessities but are now social ones, the moment already here when, if all the human race ever stops moving at the same instant, the surface of the earth will seize, solidify: there are too many of us; humanity will destroy itself not by fission but by another beginning with f which is a verb-active also as well as a conditional state; I won’t see it but you may: a law compelled and enforced by dire and frantic social – not economic: social – desperation permitting a woman but one child as she is not permitted but one husband.