free range americans

I'm at the beach, so I'm busy trying to keep the offspring from drowning and distracted by the shake and bake sand batter on all things delicate and sensitive.
What I just thought of today is that we are running out of free range Americans. Nobody is born at home anymore, like my Mom and Dad were and nobody damn sure dies there. There is something sad about that. I don't mean to romanticize poverty, but there was a time when we knew where we came from and we knew what we were eating and we saw each other for more than a few minutes at a time.
The people I see here at the beach are good enough. They are heavier than they should be, just like me, but they are active and they love each other. I just don't feel like these are the people who could fight off a commanche or keep floodwaters at bay with shovels all night.
They....we...are the people who are most likely to stand on our roofs in the baking sun waiting for helicopters that no longer exist. We always say, "somebody needs to do something about all this shit...." but we never mean for that somebody to be US. I miss the free range American. Perhaps they are just beneath the surface in each one of us, just beneath the XXXL polo shirt, the sunscreen and the flab.