Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you (Exodus 20:12).

I am not one to complain, but there are entirely too many children running free on the streets of Deadwood.   Why, in my day, children would be seen and not heard.  There is no reason for children to be left to  wander aimlessly.  It is not good for them, nor is it good for the community. Left unattended, who knows what might happen?

This God forsaken place, filled with women and men of ill-repute, is no place to let children run about unfettered.  I would ask “are we animals?” and yet – even wolves run in packs I am told.

Is it not bad enough that during the day, the town sits quiet as the “ladies” (and I use the term loosely, as there are truly few of those about) sleep all day while the men are off to the mines or sitting behind closed doors smoking and drinking thinking that their mothers are fools who do not know?  One can peer out one’s window and see these little ragamuffins roaming about with rarely one doing anything of worth.

I am not one to tell others how to lead their lives, but what this town needs is a school for the children and internships or jobs for those too lame to attend.  There has been talk of an orphanage, but I say rubbish!   There is always plenty of work to be done for those who have no parents.  Let them earn their keep, it will make better people of them.

For those parents who are letting their children stray about, shame on you!  Have you no concern that your children will end up at worst robbers, harlots or drunkards, at best, depraved and unemployed, living off the pity of kind souls such as myself?  ”The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.”Prov 29:15:

I am not one to judge others but I say unto you, Wake up! stop your drinking, cease your dancing, halt spending your money on wanton pleasures!  If you cannot tend to your own, call forth your own parents whom you have probably left, forlorn and forgotten hundreds of miles away and never written to for months, and have them come to do the duty you seem unable to do yourself!

No orphanage, I cry!  Good folk of Deadwood, shoo strange children off your porch, ask them of their parents and if they have none, grab them by the ear and insist they do a good day’s work for a meal.  If they refuse, show that we of Deadwood care deeply for our children and do as the Good Book instructs by paddling their behinds: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes  Prov 13:24

Posted on Saturday, July 10th, 2010 and is filed under Mama's 'What You Need to Know' Column, Volume 1 Issue 5.