1970. Vietnam, assasinations, and publication of the classic First Field Guide Edition of Euell Gibbons', "Stalking the Wild Asparagus." Wild edible finding and preparation including plants, crawfish, frogs, turtles, herbs, medicinal uses, etc. Bought a lightly used copy the book today at a book exchange for $2.

I love that book, Euell Gibbons reminds me a lot of my grandfather.

-Blast

It is still a great read.

I thought you were talking about a book about the movie "Blast From The Past". That was a funny and entertaining movie.

Gibbons' book is set in a time and in places where the forager's take on land and in water is assumed clean. Was that just innocence or has our country changed that much?

The funny thing is the land is probably cleaner now than back when this book was written. The EPA didn't come into existence until 1970...

-Blast

The cars and their exhaust were dirtier, and cigarette smoke was not only ubiquitous, it was everywhere.

Not to mention most waste products from factories were dumped directly into rivers.

-Blast

And there was uncontrolled radiation from many sources. Ever had your feet fluoroscoped at the shoe store when trying on new shoes? (I am showing my age!)

I agree. My youth (and my last couple of weekends) was spent in the Mississippi bottomlands and in streams and hardwood uplands around it. The river is much cleaner now than it was then. I hate to give the government any credit though. I think that the nearly total loss of manufacturing to foreign lands is the main reason for less water pollution here.

Most people wouldn't know if anything bad was lurking in the water, air or soil unless it was the size of a large alligator and grabbed their leg.

All that crap is still there, it didn't magically dissipate into deep space. The DDT is still there, the mercury is still there. There's stuff in Colorado's water supply from mining a hundred years ago.

On July 14, 1991, a train derailed 45 miles north of Lake Shasta, CA, dumping a pesticide into the Sacramento River. It killed every living thing in the river.
New York Times article, 7-22-1991

If you have children, they were born with a couple of hundred foreign chemicals in their body.

Sue