text: The burning of the church was the first in a series of last straws for Richard Kennethworth. While not a religious man himself, he saw the value a church could have on a small-town community like his own, he saw the downtrodden expressions on the faces of the church's few constituents, and for the first time in his life, a wave of anger burned through him, fast and bright, but it was an accident, and he did nothing. The second in Richard’s series of last straws came when the local market closed. He heard of the SuperMarket coming into town and he waited with bated breath. It took some fighting, but eventually, the corporation won out. He sees the storefront abandoned every day when he goes to work, he remembers the smell of the bread baking wafting in through his childhood window, and the glow of the owners when he showed up on time to his first job bagging groceries. He thinks of their faces when he went to see them last, the new lines on their foreheads and the broken look in their eyes. The anger comes easier now, and it is much harder to dissipate, but that is how the industry works, and he still did nothing. The last and truly last straw was the most heartbreaking to Richard, and that was the destruction of his local lake. Countless memories came before him if he even thought of the word. His mother singing to him as a child, her soft voice lulling him to sleep under the blanket of a warm summer night. Swimming with his friends on the first day of senior year, drinking what he thought was stolen beer into the early morning. As the town grew, so did the trash, and the lake that he so cherished was tarnished and blackened, the fish that he would catch and eat with such gusto dead and floating day after day. The rope he would swing off of as a child was replaced with a NO SWIMMING sign. Richard saw his town slowly die, he saw lush hills replaced by black smoke and burned grass, smiling faces replaced by the grimaces of the distraught. The anger would not leave now, and he had to do something. The town square was not the harbinger of life that it used to be, but there was still a good amount of people as Richard strolled in with a gas can in his hands. He found a good spot, a picnic table still standing from when he was a boy, and sat on top of it. He noticed the crowd, some of which had started to gather, and he began to sing the song his mother used to sing to him as a boy, his voice hoarse but strong, and the crowd gathered larger. He kept singing, small tears forming from the corners of his wrinkled eyes. The crowd was larger now, and people were beginning to whisper as he upended the can over himself, still singing. He finished the song, and with trembling fingers searched his pockets for his matchbook. He looked out at the crowd and caught the eyes of the store owners, their eyes taught with sadness. “I’m sorry everybody, but I know we can do better” the match was lit, and Richard wasn’t angry anymore.