Whidbey Air Station’s popular skeet range was closed some years ago. Skeet shooting has always been a popular sport and was used in WW11 for training machine gunners to hit a moving target. Rumor had it that the CO’s wife was afraid the lead shot in the impact area would kill birds that might eat the lead pellets. Maybe it was thought they couldn’t resist the tasty pellets and eat so many they would be too heavy to fly. However no piles of dead birds were ever found. The area could have been mined, and the lead sold to China for making their paint and children’s toys.

I have another similar idea. Let’s plow under all the tobacco fields, too many people die from cancer caused from smoking. Then replant the fields with medical marijuana and use it not for smoking, but for making cookies and for some, fruit cakes. It would provide relief for those with lung and other types of cancer, and eating a couple cookies could even make for a more happy meal. Since smoking can kill, let’s also prohibit it, and discourage the habit by not selling tobacco to cigarette suckers.

These ingenious ideas could even see me joining Al Gore and Jimmy Carter in receiving that prestigious Nobel peace prize. I better head for the thrift shop to buy a necktie just in case.

Matt Burns

Oak Harbor