This iconic image took on a whole new meaning for me last night. I learned that if Thomas Dewey had indeed defeated Harry Truman he planned to make J. Russell Smith his Secretary of Agriculture.
What a different world we'd be living in! Now it's possible that even a man of Smith's brilliance and unbridled energy wouldn't have been able to break the strangle hold of corn and soybeans on our land and wouldn't have been able to implement his vision for a permanent agriculture based on tree crops... but what I wouldn't give to turn back the clock, change the outcome of the election, and give him a chance to try!
If nothing else he would have funded the research and demonstration projects that would have gotten things started. He would have preached the gospel of tree crops, as only he could, to a wide audience. He would have had a seat at the table with the most powerful man in the world.
Sigh. What's that dopey old saying? If "if's" and "but's" were candy and nuts it would be Christmas every day? We can't go back and rewrite history.
But we can be the ones who make his vision come true.
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