Harvest Gypsies

Reading Steinbeck's essay, I was greatly intrigued. I don't know much about the frontier era and certainly never painted the picture of it quite like he did. Sure, I played The Oregon Trail as a kid. Remember that game? You had to try to get your wagon to Oregon without anyone dying... I never grasped the reality of it. I was young and naive, what did I know? But reading these stories sheds light on an era that is not familiar to our generation, one of great mystique. I thought that the way they set up their own governments was ingenious. We should all be inspired with what they did. The campers had very little yet shared everything they did have with those even more less fortunate. Look at what our country has become? People are unwilling to share their resources and even their time with those less fortunate. I found this essay humbling, there is so much that our country has taken for granted and yet we do not often reach out to those in need in our own country, let alone throughout the world. Now, I'm not speaking about everyone, there are people who are very generous in America, and I commend those people. But as a whole, our country is pretty selfish. But it does comfort me the our country was not always like this. Maybe we should study this era of history more often. Maybe then we could turn this country around...