the costliness of imported cloths
had induced the practice of
making domestic woollens,
and the raising of sheep
for that purpose,
riker describes in one
of the opening segments
of his Annals of Newtown,
a record of the founding
of the settlement that would
centuries later become elmhurst.
the depredations of wolves offered,
however, a serious impediment
to the safe rearing of flocks.
this comedy occurred
in and around
the first few decades
of the dutch settlement,
when the terrain was dominated
by natural elements whose threat
outstripped the reach of man.
i like to walk around the parking lot
of the georgia diner and feel how
it would be to have been prone
to such a fantastic death
in a new, empty land.
the area would have abutted
horse brook, of course, so
it's likely that predators
would be lurking nearby.
now, there's only an
indonesian grocery store
with decent prices on meat
and a stretch of tall weeds
along a chain-link fence
on the southern side
of justice street.
and though the inhabitants
of this town were less annoyed
by these midnight prowlers than
their neighbors of the adjoining towns,
they found it necessary, in february, 1692,
to offer twenty shillings a head
for every wolf killed within
the limits of the town.
