17 Comments
User's avatar
тна Return to thread
Susan Russell's avatar

You know, Steinbeck saw the beginnings of that loss of localness, of regional dialects, customs, foods, manners, as early as the 60s. This grounding and rootedness would have held the US together, resisted this farcical but dangerous BS.

Expand full comment
Atma's avatar

@ Susan Russell

Steinbeck was prescient in many matters ! I grew up on seriously *remote ranches in Montana. We did not lock our doors at all.

During the day we left a pot of coffee on the stove for anyone who might need a cup while we were out trailing cattle. We left a key in our pickup truck at night, so that any hapless traveler in trouble could take it into town to get gas, or whatever else they might need, without waking us up to ask permission.

Users would almost inevitably return the truck with a full tank of gas in *it. In remote *freezing areas like that, if people did *not take care of one another, we would find their bodies at the time of spring melt.

Then came the Interstate Freeway in about 1968. Within about a year, I came home on leave to find *all doors locked (in town, close to the freeway) and people suspicious of one another even when they would stop to help you with a flat tire. So all of the many decades of the *advantages of small, bucolic little towns disappeared in less than one year in my little Podunk town, leaving us with nothing but the *disadvantages of remote "wide spot in the road" villages.

From then on, a person could take the off ramp into our town, commit murder and mayhem, jump back on the freeway and be in North Dakota before our sleepy little cop-shop became aware that there had *been a problem in our town earlier that night.

Freeways in many aspects are wonderful inventions. But there WAS collateral damage to a long-established American way of life.

Expand full comment
Susan Russell's avatar

How interesting and how relative. To me, East Coast bred, Montana (mainly) is wild and beautiful. What air! When he returned to Monterey, the wild hills were smothered by little box houses with blue flickering lights. Wonder what caused that? GI housing? Too many people? Will have to re-read.

Expand full comment
Atma's avatar

Western Montana will justifiably *take one's breath away !

I grew up in Eastern Montana, which is rolling plains, cactus, sage, and rattlesnakes. The other thing that the *gorgeousness of Montana will conceal is a very "basic" consciousness among most of the population. If you "do" redneck, then "Big Sky Country" is the place to be.

Expand full comment
Susan Russell's avatar

We were in a Pilot store in the badlands and a man offered to sell me his old dog.

Expand full comment
Koshmarov's avatar

What were you supposed to do with the dog?

Expand full comment
Atma's avatar

@Susan Russell

The Badlands *HAS a Pilot Sore ? ;-D ;-D

Expand full comment
Susan Russell's avatar

Somewhere near there I reckon.

Expand full comment
Atma's avatar

@ Susan Russell

I meant to say a Pilot STORE ! (Freudian slip ? ) The Eastern end of Montana, the Western Ends of both North and South Dakota, are all Badlands - great fossil hunting, and almost nothing else. South Dakota is home to "Badlands National Park", so now you know more about the "lay of the Badlands" ! ;-D

Expand full comment
BillPD's avatar

Badlands: Absolutely great to travel through by train!

Expand full comment
Koshmarov's avatar

"Freeways in many aspects are wonderful inventions. But there WAS collateral damage to a long-established American way of life."

Excellent insight here. The interstate highway system was first and foremost a Cold War project so missile trailers could more easily be hauled around, but it also had this unintended (?) consequence: "If you don't want to live in the big city, we'll bring the big city to you."

Expand full comment
Diogenes's avatar

Just to confirm your point and perhaps expand on it, a young Army officer named Eisenhower, the father of the Interstate system, describes crossing America in the 1930's as part of a military expedition. It took over 3 weeks to cross the country by motorized vehicle.

Fast forward to Germany's Autoban developed by Hitler prior to the war and Eisenhower had his solution.

Yes the interstate system was designed for the movement of missile trailers, but it was also designed for the movement of tanks and all other military tracked vehicles so they could be moved seamlessly from coast to coast as needed.

To this day, all interstate highways are rated for military equipment movement and military vehicles are never built so large that they could not travel on our interstate system.

Expand full comment
Susan Russell's avatar

It amazes me what people on this page know.

Expand full comment
Koshmarov's avatar

That's just the people who post.

Spend a minute thinking about what the lurkers know.

Expand full comment
Atma's avatar

Absolutely SO ! Thus the location of all of those Cold War ICBM Silos located out in the coyote-ugly plains of Eastern Wyoming ! They are *still there, and they are *still maintained !

Expand full comment
Koshmarov's avatar

A fascinating thing to me is that schoolchildren from the 1950s through the 1980s were relentlessly bombarded with propaganda about imminent nuclear war. Duck and Cover!

The USSR collapsed and it was as if a magician waved his wand and made the whole thing go away.

Some of the missiles got moved around. There are now new and better missiles. Nothing has really changed except the messaging.

I apologize, I am the master of thread drift.

Expand full comment
Susan Russell's avatar

Well there's our answer.

Expand full comment