Editor,

How ignorant can one man be?

I can’t express kindly how I feel about this slaughter of the innocent, generous and patient old oak. I want to scream, “Why not cut down all the oak trees of Oak Harbor? Cut them all down, every one of them, from the parks to the right-of-ways.

“Every one (of them) is a liability to the city power elite.”

We could then put up signs on the roads leading into Oak Harbor proclaiming, “Welcome to Oak Harbor. Don’t worry, we cut down all the oak trees for your safety.

“Even if they never hurt anyone as much as cars, trucks and buses or dogs or people have. Even though they cleaned our air and water and gave us shade and beauty.

“We did this for your own good whether you like it or not.

“We are the government and we are smarter than you. God bless America!”

Why stop with the oak trees? Proclaim “eminent domain” and cut down every darn tree within the city limits.

People are too stupid to realize how dangerous the trees in their yards are.

They will surely damage their homes and cars or fall on their fences or lawn ornaments. And, these trees suck up the water people sprinkle on their lawns and litter their roofs and walkways with leaves and needles.

And, of course, thinking people know that trees slowly die over a period of decades and look unsightly; they only live for a few hundred years or so and, therefore, are not worth keeping around.

What Oak Harbor really needs is more paved right-of-ways and more big box stores with acres of parking lots and more storm water run-off sewage treatment facilities.

These projects create jobs, unlike arborists and landscapers and yard workers.

We’ll all be safer with the removal of every native tree and shrub and the paving of every square inch of public and private land.

God save us from nature; it’s so dirty and dangerous, unlike roads, parking lots, vehicles and building materials.

I don’t know what these nature lovers are screaming about.

After all, after the world burns up all that coal and oil and natural gas we’re gouging and fracking out of the earth, the acid rain would probably have killed that darn tree anyway.

And, after the ice caps are melted, the sea level will be above where that now dying stump is bleeding its sap into the heart of what will someday be ol’ Oak Harbor.

It can be an underwater archaeological site, saved as a World Heritage site by the United Nations if it lasts another hundred years, unlike oak trees that can last for hundreds if ignorant men don’t cut them down.

Vern Pederson

Oak Harbor