In the year 1870 Ezekiel Jones is an old
mountain man who’s explored the west
all his life, a hunter and trapper who’s sold
many a fur, still living the life he loves best.

After a day of buffalo hunting, friends and he
are sitting ‘round the evening fire when suddenly
a flash of light surrounds old Zeke, who yells, “I be
lightning-struck!” just before he disappears totally.

His friends jump to their feet in alarm and wonder.
Another flash of light and Zeke is back, dazed but
unhurt. Now he’ll give them all something to ponder.
“Friends, ‘though you ‘aint gonna believe me, what

“I am fixing to tell is all the gospel truth sure enuff.
Best as I can figure, the United States Army done
gone and invented this here contraption and stuff
for allowing travel in time. I wuz in the year 2021.

“They showed me all sort of fantastic things on a TV,
as they called it. There weren’t no more horses to ride.
Millions of buffalo had all been kilt. Fer as I could see,
the whole goldurned country out here had been citified.

“People everywhere – cities the likes of which you never
seen, stone trails four stagecoaches wide cutting through
the prairies, the forests mostly gone, and you ’aint ever
gonna believe this next…the fresh air they didn’t renew.

“They all lived cooped up in houses with ‘conditioned air’.
And the waters were all so foul that rivers could catch fire
and they all drank ‘bottled water’! Plus no one traps there.
They done ruint Nature and everything we love and desire.

“It broke my heart to see how in the future they must live.
That we all got to live in 1870, it’s thanks we should give.”