Posted
on December 11, 2015
In the town of Enterprise, Alabama, city officials dedicated a monument...to an agricultural pest!
The
monument was dedicated to an insect called the boll weevil, a
creature that had been devastating farmers' crops left, right, and
center.
Wh-wh-wh-why
honor a pest? you ask?
Well,
I think that the monument was really honoring people's ability to
meet a challenge with change, and then come back better than before.
Here's the story:
In
the late 1800s and early 1900s, a beetle that had been common in
Mexico began to appear in southern states in the U.S., creating havoc
by infesting cotton crops. In 1915 the first boll weevils appeared in
Alabama, and by 1918, farmers were losing entire cotton crops to the
critter.
A
man named H. M. Sessions decided that this wasn't JUST a disaster; it
was also an opportunity. He convinced a farmer to grow peanuts, and
they met with such quick success that many other farmers switched to
growing peanuts, as well.
Eventually
cotton was grown in the region again, and some farmers who
diversified did so with crops other than cotton and peanuts. The
people of Enterprise and Coffee County, Alabama, ended up with a more
stable economy because of the variety of crops grown in the area.
So
REALLY the monument is a tribute to people who changed disaster into
growth and a reminder to always face adversity with creativity.
So...tell
me about this statue...
As
you can see, the statue depicts a woman in a lovely, flowing gown.
She is holding over her head a trophy. On top of the trophy is a boll
weevil, but that was added 30 years after the original statue was
unveiled – apparently, the original designers were perfectly happy
to create a boll weevil monument with no boll weevil!
It
is strange to realize that the boll weevil has been stolen many
times. Apparently the entire monument has been stolen, even! Each
time city officials have found the monument or beetle and restored
the statue, until 1998, when the statue was so badly damaged by
vandals that it would be too costly to repair. Now the original
statue (which was sculpted in Italy for about $1,800) stands in a
museum with security cameras, and the statue that appears at the
original site, at the center of a fountain in downtown Enterprise, is
a polymer-resin replica. (Polymer-resin is a sort of plastic.)
Also
on this date:
Plan
ahead:
Check out my Pinterest pages on:
And
here are my Pinterest boards for:
No comments:
Post a Comment