Bounty Day
A story using the word 'Blimp'.
October 25th, 2077 was the day everything began to get better. From then on it was called Bounty Day. Every year on that day, we celebrate with feasts, because we can. The feasts are only possible because of the Bounty, so it makes sense that feasting is how we go about marking it.
I was a girl of fifteen when the Bounty crashed into the side of Grey Mountain — the backdrop to our town. We are Grey Valley, and are named that for the grey/green Eucalyptus trees that are all around our home.
Later I learned, for I didn’t know it then, that the flying machine that smashed into our mountain, was a blimp, or a dirigible. It was a startling and strange sight for me, and for all the young people of Grey, to see the huge,floating elliptical bubble in the sky. We knew about aeroplanes and such that once flew, taking people far and wide, but that was a very long time before. Anyone under 20 years old had never seen one, since there was no fuel for flying machines now. So, the brightly coloured egg in the sky was amazing to us.
The blimp made no sound at all, as it gently floated overhead. Just like a fire catching alight and jumping from one tree to the next, the news of the addition to the sky spread quickly. The whole town full of people were standing and looking up. And the whole town full of people saw it break open on the side of the mountain.
The Mayor took over immediately. I saw him bluster about, huff and puff himself up. He made pronouncements like, someone needs to take control of the situation. He seemed to think that should be him, and most of Grey went along with him. The Mayor named a party of men, and my mother, to go to the crash site and see what was what. The rest of us gossiped, and imagined, and speculated on what they would find. Not one of us predicted right, though.
When the Mayor led the team of town investigators back into Grey, there was a flurry of excitement, but also arguing, and back and forth, which didn’t really stop until well into the next afternoon.
The blimp had burst open, as we had all seen, on our mountain. But what had spewed out of it was our Bounty. The search team had found that the flying egg had been full to overflowing with cargo; food packages, cloth for sewing, and things for the house, and things for people. But what caused the most excitement — at least amongst the elders — was a huge package of seeds for planting, that would grow in our dry land.
These last were such precious items that they were the only things that the searchers bought down with them from the wreckage. And it was the cause of the biggest disruption to our town’s equilibrium.
My mother stood up at the town meeting — every single person of Grey Valley was there — and made her case to replace the Mayor. It was he who had let the town fall into the desperate state that the blimp had plummeted into. He, who did not take heed of the climate change warnings. He, who did not prepare the town when our crops would no longer grow when the water became scarce. The Mayor had ignored the Grey Villagers fears of food shortages when the trucks would stop delivering supplies.
My mother had stood up years and months ago to speak her worries, but no one had listened. And now we had no crops, no food and little water. The blimp’s Bounty was like a heaven sent gift, and my mum would not let it rest in the hands of the man who had left us with no hope but to wait and slowly die of starvation.
The women, and some of the men, too, supported my mother as Mayor. So, it was decided, and things finally quietened down. That’s how my mum became the Mayor of Grey Village, and made it her life’s work to make sure the Bounty was not wasted, or lost.
Her first actions were to send another party up the mountain to the spilled goods, and care packages were put together for everyone in Grey, to share out the Bounty. The land folk, who had been our farmers before, were put in charge of turning the old, dry fields, and making the soil ready to plant the seeds.
Whoever had filled the blimp had known to put seeds in that would grow in dry ground, that didn’t need a lot of water, and could grow in the heat. Eggplant, pineapple tomatoes, lima beans, New Zealand spinach and okra. And herbs for cooking and healing, basil, rosemary, lavender. A book of instructions came with them, telling how to tend and harvest in the new hard, hot climate. My mother studied it cover to cover.
Now we have seeds in reserve, future plans and systems to keep the soil producing, and enough to feed us all — and extra for feast days!
All of us have wondered at the origins of the blimp. Who filled it, and who sent it out? But more thought has been put into wondering where the blimp had been headed, when it was stopped by Grey Mountain. It must surely have been meant for some other place than here. A bigger, more important town than Grey Valley.
And we wonder what happened when they didn’t receive their delivery. Of course, I feel a little sad to imagine that town dying out, just as we had been on the verge of doing when the blimp arrived so unexpectedly.
I think that’s why, when I took over as Mayor after my mothers’ passing, I decided it was important to package up some of our seeds, and send out search parties to our north and our south, and around, to look for others who might need some Bounty of their own. So far, they have found only dusty, dead towns. Which only adds to the importance of Bounty Day for us, honouring the day the blimp crash landed into our mountain.
