The Oregon Trail

I used to love that game as a child. It was super simple having played it on those old school mac computers that we all had in school back in the day. The graphics were laughable compared to the graphic capabilities that we have today but to me back then they seemed magnificent. Looking back the game wasn’t very exciting, reminding me of how you used to draw stick figures on the bottom corner of school text books which when flipped through fast enough would appear that the stick figures were moving and doing something action related. Compared to today’s computer games, The Oregon Trail was trash but I still loved it. So now, sitting on a Greyhound bus heading west on I-80 through Wyoming I can’t help but think about it. Mary got typhoid fever or our wagon was damaged as we attempted to ford the river. Samuel got snake bit so we lose 2 days while he recovers. Loved that simplistic shit. It must have been a trip back then. No smartphones. No Twitter. Facebook, Instagram, Myspace, no social media whatsoever. Social media back then must have been when a couple of separate wagon trains stumbled upon each other and had coffee and grub over a shared campfire. This bus trip, from Columbia Missouri to Grant’s Pass Oregon is gonna take 2+ days from beginning to end and I don’t care who you are that’s a long ass bus ride. But imagine back then. No Greyhound, shit no combustible engine at all. No gas stations or rest stops. You were hungry? McDonald’s and Taco Bell don’t exist so you better grab your gun and hunt yourself a deer or a bear or some shit. Typhoid fever? Small pox? Get bite by a rattlesnake like old Samuel and you ain’t calling 911, ain’t just shooting to the nearest hospital for some anti-venom. Shit you get bit by a rattlesnake and there’s a pretty good chance your ass is dead. Electricity is only a concept. There aren’t any hotel chains to kick back in and rest up at. Fuck you wouldn’t have even been able to flush the toilet. 2+ days from Missouri to Oregon? Fuck you’d be lucky to make it in 2 months. When put in perspective things that seem unbearable can be handled easy. We have become so spoiled with technology that were we placed back in those times I’m not sure how many of us could of made it. I mean I get bent out of shape when my phone hits a deadzone, imagine the world being a deadzone. No more calling a friend just to talk who’s 500 miles away, shit you’d barely communicate if they were only 10. The population, all of them, be it city folk or country bumpkin, were they to be placed in a fight with the population we got now? They’d smoke us. Kick the shit out of us. Because back then, even the city folk who were considered soft had more survival skills then the majority of us combined. We cry over being forced to stay at motel 6, when we wanted hilton, believing it unsuitable for our entitled asses. Imagine laying out a bedroll next to a campfire, trying to fall asleep with the threat of some pissed off Indians sneaking in in the darkness and scalping your ass. Yeah 2+ days on the Greyhound, a greyhound equipped with semi-comfortable seats, wifi and a flushable toilet, yeah now that shit don’t seem so bad.