The following essay was submitted by 11th grader John Doe, Jr. of Seattle's Cellular One/Roosevelt High School to the Subway/Coca-Cola Washington State Secondary School System official contest, held in September of 2012.

HOW I SPENT MY BANK OF AMERICA OFFICIALLY SPONSORED SUMMER VACATION

By John Doe, Jr.

For our summer vacation this year our family decided to tour the National Parks in our own State of Washington. We had planned to do this last year, but they were all closed because they had no federal money. My dad said that it was our patriotic duty to sacrifice what remained of National Park public funding and use it to help rebuild the power plants and schools in Colombia destroyed through "Operation Coffee Bean Freedom." He also said that we, as taxpayers, shouldn't fund feeding grounds for elks when Disney can do a much better job.

Anyway, our trip began on the Dubya/Olympic Peninsula where we went to see the acid rain forests, the new beachline in the foothills, and the convenient snow-free mountains of Microsoft/Olympic National Park: Providing A Window on Our Nation's Natural Beauty. Thank you to Microsoft, which now also owns the patent to our high school science classes.

This part of the trip ended up taking just a few hours because the Paul Allen Experience Nature Project, located very conveniently on the top of Hurricane/Windows 2010 Ridge, offers a virtual tour of Microsoft/Olympic National Park for a very reasonable price. Besides, the access road to the park was closed for repairs, which Dad says is a much less frequent occurrence ever since this work was privatized three years ago. The corporation that won the bid (Enviro-Glut Corporation) cut costs by eliminating all of the curves in the road and blasted a path straight to the top! It erodes a bit every year and after last winter's floods created a new scenic gorge in the park, so everyone wins with privatization, according to my Dad, who is a salesman for Enviro-Glut. We also got to ride to the virtual tour in the official SUV of the park--the Ultra Gargantuan Hummer II--for a reasonable price. Then we enjoyed a virtual helicopter ride to the top of Mt. Praise the Lord and America, which used to be called Mt. Olympus, and a look in the museum freezer where the last glacier has been relocated for our convenience.

Next on our summer voyage we traveled along the Reagan Memorial Trans-Washington Superhighway to Starbucks/Boeing North Cascades National Park. Once again, thanks to President George W. Bush's privatization vision for the 21st century, the park has been able to deal with the weekly road washouts. The left-wing terrorist group, Sierra Club, outlawed by the Super Patriot Act IV had planted propaganda leaflets along the clear-cut road claiming that logging was to blame for the washouts, which is really crazy! Thanks to getting all of those rotten old trees and fire hazards out of the way, the views in the park are so much better! It took a little longer to pass through than we had expected because of the number of toll bridges (178--my Mom counted) and the long lines to get through them. Dad said this is what pays for upkeep of the grounds around the Starbucks coffee shops, conveniently located every five miles. Official Boeing Park Flight Attendants also hand out official Starbucks/Boeing DVD's for everyone to play in their vehicles while waiting in line, which give a detailed history of the park and how it was saved by the wonders of the free enterprise system.

We actually considered getting out of our Chevy Marauder to check out one of the Park's two hiking trails, but they were both closed for repairs. One is being paved by--you guessed it--my Dad's company and will be renamed the Enviro-Glut/Dick Cheney Memorial 100-Foot Trail and it will feature plaques with renderings of our greatest-ever President--I mean, Vice President--with the historic site oil wells constructed on national park land. I asked one of the Park's three remaining Starbucks/Boeing Park Flight Attendants/Baristas about some of the plaques, and he just stared at me and smiled, then said "no comprendo." Dad gushed about how cutting costs on rangers meant more money for the trail, and the attendant/barista nodded and said "Si! Viva Bonzo y Bush!"

Well, my Dad's annual five-day vacation was rapidly coming to an end so we had to make haste to get to the last of our State's park gems: Mt. Weyerhaeuser/Rainier National Park.

Once again, it took us about six hours to get through the park entrance line because the Revised Super Patriot Act requires that all vehicles be searched and items like food, water, cameras, binoculars, toothpaste, charcoal briquettes, and shoelaces be confiscated. Anyway, all of these things are available at the Wal-Mart at the Park Boundary Shopping Mall. After performing our patriotic purchasing duty, we proceeded to the McDonald's/Sunrise Official Sponsor Visitor Center to enjoy Freedom Fries and some of the most magnificent views of the continental US's official highest peak. Dad told me that this designation once belonged to Schwartzeneggerland's Mt. Disney/Whitney until they lost official height rights in the 2009 bidding war.

Mom says that she remembers days when, believe it or not, you could actually see Mt Weyerhaeuser all the way from Seattle, but Dad says she sometimes lets the terrorist Mountaineers Club propaganda cloud her judgement. Anyway, we purchased the park's official Kodak camera, waited four hours at one of the two official viewpoints, then bought temporary rights to the official photo angles available from that spot. I wish that the other viewpoint hadn't been closed for repairs!

There were masses of smoke clouds around Weyerhaeuser/Rainier, the long-lasting bane of pollution produced by the trees that used to blight this landscape before Weyerhaeuser took over stewardship of the park (the prophet Reagan had that brilliant insight about polluting trees way back in the 1980's). However, we must have been truly blessed because the clouds parted and allowed us to get several shots of the mountain just as they were lighting the 2,000-foot-long Weyerhaeuser logo at the very top. Boy do I dream of someday taking a trip in the Paul Allen Guitar Neck Orbiter and taking an official shot of this from outer space. Dad says just to keep plugging away at Capitalist Theology 101 and I'll get there! We also managed to get sanctioned shots of the official park sponsor--Biotech Billy, the Genetically Modified Marmot--as well as Coke chilled with Carbon Glacier Memorial Replica ice cubes.

Thus ended our Washington State National Park tour, which was far and away the high point of my summer vacation! Thanks to my official sponsor, the Bank of America, and thanks also for the assistance of Weyerhaeuser, Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, McDonald's and Wal-Mart. Special thanks also to Halliburton, which owns the rights to my educational development and to which the remainder of my existence is dedicated. Sorry that Enviro-Glut was outbid for that, Dad, but that's the way the Nabisco cookie crumbles!

NOTE: According to a 2004 report by the non-partisan National Parks Conservation Association, decades of neglect and insufficient funding have created a backlog of deferred maintenance needs in our National Parks, now estimated by the General Accounting Office to be in the range of $4-6.8 billion. One of the ways that George W. Bush seeks to remedy the problem is to study the extensive privatization of park service jobs, claiming that private sector workers could save money and improve efficiency. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council on May 10, 2005: under pressure from the Bush Administration to increase cost-effectiveness, the US Forest Service and the National Park Service began to explore the idea of outsourcing operations and jobs to private companies.This includes contracting out 312 federal positions at three national parks to private firms.

satire and note by Glenn Reed