Holding My Breath Across Bridges

I admit it: I was a weird kid. Of course, most little kids are weird in some way. Some children are really, really bizarre, while others just have some well hidden little personality quirks. I’d like to think that I fell into that second group, but it really doesn’t matter much to me now that I’m older. But I digress. One of the strangest things that I used to do when I was a small child was to hold my breath whenever we crossed a bridge in our car. I figured it would give me a better chance if the bridge collapsed and we fell into whatever huge body of water that we were crossing over. I had a novice’s faith in the integrity of whatever large Ford, or Chevy, or Mercury, or Buick that carried us, and assumed it would survive a long drop into the river. Bridges scared the shit out of me, but I believed in big American cars. Like I said, I was a little weird as a kid.

I don’t think anyone in my family was aware of it, but I may have mentioned it to my fellow backseat passengers (my two older brothers) on one of our family’s many treks across this grand land of ours, with its many bodies of water. In fact, my brothers may have gotten me started doing it, now that I think about it. I’ll never know for sure, now that they’re gone. They probably wouldn’t admit it anyway, and they loved to tease their little brother. Also, I don’t think my dad planned trips that required lots of trips over bridges, but we sure seemed to take more than our fair share. We crossed the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers on a regular basis on our trips to Watts Bar Dam Resort. We passed over the Potomac, the Cumberland, the Miami, the Niagara, and countless other streams. Each time I held my breath. At least as long as I could. By the time I road across the mighty Mississippi, I was over that particular phobia. Besides, that was a long bridge.

Oddly enough, at time we driving all over the place, in the ‘50’s, ‘60’s and early ‘70’s, America’s highways were in pretty good shape. The Interstate Highway system was fairly new, still under construction in many places, and most of the bridges we crossed were in top shape. I really shouldn’t have worried about the bridges back then. These days, however, it’s a different story.

I’m not a big fan of excessive taxation, or unnecessary government programs, but I don’t mind having to pay taxes for things I consider essential. I want my food inspected to make sure it isn’t contaminated. I like to breathe (relatively) clean air and drink (mostly) unpolluted water. I understand the necessity for a military to protect our nation from foreign invasion, because there’s always some nut job out there. Being more liberal in my outlook, I also think it is a good thing to help less fortunate people make a better life for themselves. It’s also awful nice to be able to hop in the car and drive anywhere in the country on nice, safe roads.

Recently, the US Congress was wrestling with a law to prop up our highway funding, which is running out of money. Highways are funded through the use of taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel (taxes on diesel fuel are higher than gas taxes, probably because trucking companies pass this tax right back to consumers, without us realizing it, although private citizens driving diesels just have to suck it up). Even though the costs of everything associated with building and maintaining our roads and bridges have increased significantly over the years, the gasoline tax has not been increased. That’s why the highway fund is running out of money.

Congress is reluctant to increase the gasoline tax because people (including the small percentage of people who actually bother to vote) will notice it right away. Higher gas taxes will increase the overall cost of gasoline, and those soccer moms and dads that have to pay $100 to fill-up their huge SUVs will have to shell out $120. That might mean cutting back on a couple of caramel mocha lattés at Starbucks every week, and that would seriously crimp their already strained lifestyles. The other side of that coin is that increasing the gasoline tax is extremely regressive. It falls heavily on the folks with less money, those living paycheck to paycheck. Absolutely no one in Congress has mentioned this aspect of the problem, in fact many seem to favor regressivity these days. But Congress finally put a couple of proposals together and hashed out a funding bill.

The bill that was proposed included a “creative” side, because apparently every single Senator and Representative is scared shitless of telling people that we really need to be paying a little more for gas in order to drive on safe roads and bridges. They haven’t bothered to ask the oil executives if they might be able to squeak by on salaries of $30 million a year instead of $40 million, which might smooth out the rise in gas prices, because, they’re afraid the oil execs might have to scale back on donations to their favorite Congressmen and Senators. One of the ideas proposed to postpone the inevitable included something called “pension smoothing.” I know that when I smooth my bedspread, the wrinkles disappear. My question is, when you “smooth” a pension, does the money disappear? I bet it does.

Making laws is a messy business. There’s an old saying that the two things you should never watch being made are laws and sausages (presumably because you won’t like what you see).  I was flipping through the channels the other night and caught a segment on the Food Network with host Guy Fieri at a little restaurant known for making everything they served on site. They were making the restaurant’s famous sausage.  Going against previous advice, I threw caution to the wind and watched them make sausage. They used a variety of highly recognizable cuts of meat (no pig hooves, hearts or snouts), combined them with a variety of fresh herbs and spices, and pushed it all through the sausage grinder. Guy pronounced the resulting sausage delicious, and I could tell he was being sincere.

It makes me wonder why we can’t be more transparent when we make our laws, or attempt to fund the laws already on the books. Funding highway construction is a good thing all around. It provides jobs for construction workers. It provides jobs for people who make concrete and steel (not to mention orange cones and barrels). It provides jobs for restaurant workers who feed construction workers, and for the folks that sell them their boots and jeans. The list goes on and on. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this country could use a few more jobs for its shrinking middle class. It also gives us safe highways, and safe bridges.

In 1967, as I was getting over my fear of bridges, the Silver Bridge which spanned the Ohio River collapsed at rush hour, killing dozens. It turns out that there was a flaw in the design of this bridge that had been in service since 1928. When you combined the design flaw with inadequate maintenance and insufficient inspections, a disaster resulted. A cry went up for more inspections for bridges, and a renewed focus on our nation’s deteriorating infrastructure. However, as usual, our short national attention span shifted to other matters.

Fast forward forty years to August 1, 2007, when a bridge on Interstate Highway 35, crossing the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed, killing 13 and injuring 143 people. Once again, a cry went up to do something about our crumbling infrastructure. Nothing significant ever happened. There have been other collapsed bridges in the past, as well as few instances where a timely inspection prevented disaster, but overall we’re still in the same boat (perhaps ferry boats might be safer alternative, unless you’re in Korea).

As the current Congress fought against time (it was close to their summer “recess” after all), the Senate apparently blinked, or just quit fighting, and adopted the House’s bill that will extend highway funding way into the future…um, I mean until next May. This, of course, does nothing to address the underlying problem.

I think that the real problem here is all of us. We allow our elected representatives behave like mildly repentant frat boys and sorority girls. They get a long recess from their jobs, and as the time approaches, they cram for finals. It’s as if they were telling their professors “I’m sorry I didn’t get that paper in on time, but hey, my plane’s leaving for Cancun in a few hours and I need to get my party on, you know? I promise I’ll be hittin’ the books extra hard when I get back. At least as soon as I get over my monster hangover.” Like the tired professor, we’re probably happy just to get rid of them. At least they won’t screw anything up here while they’re out of town. We have become the ultimate enablers.

We need to tell them that this isn’t acceptable. We need to tell them that they’ve failed their assignment, and that they are about to be expelled. We need to cut off their free tuition. But even if we stop giving them money, we’ve already seen to it that other “people” are free to buy their votes, and they’re not even people. They’re corporations, special interest groups, and lobbyists. If we want a better country for all of us, we have to stop allowing our major decisions to be made by a handful of wealthy individuals who only want what they think is best for them. But we have become like sheep being led to slaughter, afraid to speak out in our own best interest, and content with our situation right up to the moment that our throats are slit.

Having a well-functioning society requires effort on the part of its participants. It will take some extra work to turn things around. Will it ever happen? I won’t be holding my breath, not even crossing bridges.

The Silver Bridge, 1967

Fourth of July Memories

It was Wednesday evening, the second day of July, and I was preparing myself an after-work cocktail when I noticed that I was getting low on vodka. No problem, I thought, I’ll pick up a fresh bottle when I go to the Giant Eagle for groceries on Friday. But something seemed wrong about that. I smiled when I discovered the flaw in my logic because I remembered my late brother Gary’s favorite saying this time of year: “If you want a fifth for the Fourth, you have to get it by the third.”

Gary came up with this little chestnut of a reminder when he was living with me at my home on Lake Mohawk sometime in the early 1990’s, and I had heard him repeat it more times than I care to recall. Of course, since Gary passed away six years ago, I hadn’t heard it lately. It was a bittersweet memory that caused my smile. When one lives at Lake Mohawk, entertaining friends on the Fourth of July is pretty much of a foregone conclusion, especially since the end of my dock pointed directly at the spot on the dam where they launched the fireworks show as darkness fell. Gary always wanted to be sure that we would have a sufficient supply of liquid libations on hand for the party, therefore, he developed his little memory aid. Not that I ever recall that a shortage had plagued our festivities.

The reason you needed to get your booze before the Fourth was that Wood’s Grocery store, our local State Liquor Store franchise, closed on the Fourth of July. The owner probably could have done a pretty good business if he stayed open, but I don’t think he really needed the money, and he liked a good party himself. I’m not sure if any other State Store was open on the 4th (Ohio has some archaic liquor laws), but it didn’t really matter. We never left the lake on the holiday because there was always a line of cars at the gate where all guests had to check in. Also, although we tried to go water skiing almost every day in Ohio’s short summer season, we rarely took the boat out on the 4th because the lake was packed with rookies who didn’t know what they were doing when it came to boats. Of course, exceptions were made.

One year some out of town guests pleaded with us to take them skiing, not that they actually knew how to water ski. Gary and I usually had good success teaching people to ski, and despite choppy conditions (think of Lake Erie on a windy day) combined with far too many boats sharing the lake, we got our rookie up and skiing. As we approached a particularly congested point near the north end of the lake, I noticed that our skier was beginning to falter. Please don’t fall here, I thought, followed closely by our skiing student doing precisely what I didn’t want to see. I cut the engine as soon as he (or maybe she, I don’t remember) fell, so I could turn around and slowly putt back against the flow of traffic to retrieve him. That’s when I noticed a pontoon boat with a pilot looking the wrong way and headed directly toward our skier, who floated calmly in the water, buoyed by a floatation vest, and blissfully unaware of his pending doom.

Oddly enough, the driver of this pontoon boat was our new Lake Patrol officer, experiencing his first 4th of July on the lake, and busy yelling at some idiot who was doing something idiotic and not paying attention to the front of his own craft, which was about to become my skier’s personal Cuisinart. I yelled for my passengers to hang on tight then pushed the throttle down hard, aiming for the prow of the pontoon and blasting my boat’s horn. I noted an instant look of surprise on the face of Lake Patrol officer as he noticed a Ski Nautique bearing down on him in what would certainly result in a collision. In fact, I was prepared to sacrifice both my boat and his if it would prevent the imminent demise of my skier. My passengers were shouting and pointing at the skier directly in his path, and he quickly made the connection concerning why I was trying to run him over. His eyes opened wide in surprise, then he throttled back on his engine and steered safely away, while I slowed and circled back to pluck my fallen skier from the dangerous waters.

As we got the skier back into the boat, the Lake Patrol pulled alongside, apologizing for his near fatal mistake, and explaining that his attention was on the idiot he was yelling at, instead of paying attention to where he was going. I let him down easy and told him we all have to watch out for each other on days like this. For the rest of that summer, we got a wave and smile from the Lake Patrol every time we passed on the lake. After that experience, we decided to return the house and skip the rest of the skiing lessons. We all needed a bit of the “fifth on the Fourth” to calm our frayed nerves.

There are a few things wrong with Gary’s ditty about getting a fifth for the Fourth by the third. For starters, liquor bottles all switched to metric sizes by 1980, with the traditionally sized one-fifth of a U.S. Gallon, which gave the “fifth” its common name, shrinking to 750 milliliters. Also, we never bought a fifth of liquor for our holiday parties; instead we purchased the larger 1.5 liter size to ensure a reasonable supply. Then there was the year when the Fourth fell on a Monday. Gary was delighted to tell us that this year we need to buy our fifth for the Fourth by the second, since Wood’s didn’t have a Sunday license to sell it on the third.

Most of my memories of our July 4th parties are much less dramatic than the water skiing near-calamity. Gary had a plastic Elvis wig from Halloween that he put on with some funky sunglasses, then lip-synched Elvis songs playing on the stereo for the benefit of Dave and Dez’s little girls, using a borrowed hair brush as his microphone, as the girls squealed with delight. There was the time that I bought a huge fireworks display with dozen of tubes and a single fuse, which I set off at the end of my dock right before the Lake’s display started. It created a massive ball of thick smoke that drifted back toward shore, aiming directly for my new neighbors seated on their lawn chairs with their friends and family, in anticipation of the show. They had to temporarily relocate until the smoke dissipated. Also, for years after that, they scheduled out-of-town vacations during the week of the Fourth. Some folks just don’t how to have fun.

I told my mom that “In Gary’s favorite 4th of July saying, ‘if you need a fifth for the Fourth, you’ve got to get it by the third’” and she laughed, saying that she had never heard him say that. But her laughter was underpinned by the heartbreak that comes from losing two of your children before their time. She reached out to me (the last of her brood) for a hug, which I gladly provided, and she said that it sounded exactly like something Gary would have said. My brother had a playful, almost childlike quality that he maintained throughout his life, and endeared him to practically everyone who knew him. You might not want to discuss geopolitical policies with him, but if the subject was Steelers football, or how to shoot the biggest rooster tail while slalom skiing, or just what to do to make the day a little more fun, then Gary was your go-to guy. I miss him every day, even if I did sometimes want to shove a sock in his mouth when he said for the twentieth time that week: “If you need a fifth the Fourth, you better get it by the third.”

      

Gary at Lake Mohawk

A Hollow Man Reflects On 1984 and Our Brave New World

In the end, we gave up without a fight, although I certainly thought there should have been at least some shouting and perhaps a bit of minor bloodshed. Instead we quietly acquiesced, meekly retreating with our pocketbook in better shape, even if our souls took a fatal thrashing. Even my acidic wit failed me, delivering a single half-hearted glancing blow that the whole thing “…seemed a bit 1984-ish.” “Well, it’s just a little thing,” the agent countered, “and these things are already everywhere. You know, our cars used to have a computer in it. Now they are computers on wheels.” It was a line no doubt recited verbatim from his copy of the preparatory study guide provided by his own corporate overlords entitled “How to handle moral objections”. It still didn’t make me feel any better. I was selling out and deep down inside it hurt. Besides, I have a much greater respect for cars than to consider them computers on wheels. Also, I’ve never seen a computer go 100 mph (even when tossed out of a window).

The source of my moral outrage and anguish is a tiny little device that I will attach to the data port in my automobile. It will then be monitored via a satellite link-up by my insurance provider to see if I exceed the speed limit by a significant amount, or take corners too fast, or brake too quickly. Rational reflection on my part concedes that I really shouldn’t care. My days of going double the posted speed limit are far behind me (but if you put me behind the wheel of a new Porsche or a Mercedes S63 on the German autobahn, all bets are off). I’m almost positive the little econobox I drive couldn’t do so even if I wanted it to (at least at freeway speeds). I have a short commute to work, mostly down the main street in the small city where I live, and I pass the police station at the town square along the way. I plan my time sensibly and drive without significant haste. I’m fairly certain the folks who monitor such things for the insurance company will be bored senseless by my behavior behind the wheel. The end result of this whole thing that is currently causing me to reach for my antacids is that we will save a significant amount of money from our always escalating insurance bill. It’s always about money, isn’t it?

Now I have a vivid imagination, which I allow to wander freely. Suppose that when the yuletide holidays roll around again that I find myself seated at the bar of our local Quaker Steak and Lube, quaffing a pint or two of Great Lakes Christmas Ale in fellowship with my friends. If my monitored automobile sits for too long in the parking lot, will my insurance babysitters inform the local constabulary that I may be contemplating driving while tipsy? Or perhaps they might pass the information along to their health insurance division and warn them that I may be inside consuming one of those greasy stacks of onion rings that is served on a repurposed car antenna, risking clogged arteries, heart disease, or stroke.

You see, that’s the first problem with innocuous little devices that we allow to intrude into our lives for one simple purpose, like saving us money. I know that the reason the insurance company wants to attach it to my car isn’t really to save me money. The true purpose is to save them money. Because it’s always about money, isn’t it? The second problem is that such innocuous little devices, once attached, may take on other roles that we weren’t informed about, or may not approve of. Like monitoring my consumption of onion rings (which really isn’t even an issue, but that doesn’t mean it can’t piss me off) or just knowing where I go, or how long I stay.

So what should we do about innocuous little devices in our lives? The first thing I’m going to do is run up to the library in my as yet unmonitored vehicle and pick up a copy of George Orwell’s 1984 to reread. I kind of wonder if Orwell would be saying “I-told-you-so” about the way things are these days, or would he be saying “WTF!!! You let it happen?” Keep yourself informed, and if something is bothering you, speak up. Keep reading, expand your mind, and seek knowledge. We are letting the “smart devices” in our lives make us dumber, and the really smart people are laughing at us the whole time. And by the way, if the Thought Police are listening in, go screw yourselves.

 This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but a whimper.

From “The Hollow Men” by T S Eliot 

Olympics and Civilization

Clean water is necessary to sustain human life. One of the first things that any civilization must do is to make sure that its citizens have access to life’s basic necessities. In its effort to bring their brand of civilization to its ever-expanding empire, the ancient Romans constructed aqueducts, some of which still stand today. They understood the concept, and the world supposedly learned this lesson long ago. Therefore, I was initially appalled when I read a story about sportscaster Bob  

Costas getting an eye infection from washing his face in his Sochi hotel room while in town to cover the current Winter Olympics. I was ready to heap scorn upon the Russians, who have had years to prepare for this event, but were still working furiously after the deadline had come and gone. Perhaps their leader should put his shirt back on, gather a few civil engineers together, and solve this not-so-little dilemma. After all, these guys started the space race. Can’t they figure out how to provide clean water in a resort town?

After I had started writing about it, I paused for a little national introspection. Don’t get me wrong, despite how many times I get frustrated by my government or fellow citizens, I am still glad to live in a country where I can go to the sink and wash my face without getting pink eye. I’m thankful that the U.S. Congress once passed the Clean Water Act, back in the day when they actually did things like pass useful laws that benefit their constituents.  However, when I stopped to think about it, our track record isn’t exactly spotless these days. There was a recent chemical spill in a West Virginia river that sent nearby residents scrambling for bottled water because the stuff coming out of the faucet was poisoned. Contaminated water and coal fly ash are still leaking into a river in North Carolina. It’s never a good idea to hurl rocks from inside a glass house.

I would like to see some country, someday, open an Olympic Games when everything is in place and ready to go, but that’s probably never going to happen again. Perhaps it is just our need to over-complicate everything that makes this too difficult to accomplish in our modern age. The ancient Greeks just camped out during their Olympic Games way back when. But then again, they didn’t exactly invite the world to come over and play. It was hard enough getting Spartans to abide quietly alongside Athenians while ignoring the Corinthians. These days, we expect amenity-packed hotel rooms for our rest, and gourmet-quality restaurants to provide our sustenance. Anything less is unacceptable, and apparently subject to worldwide ridicule if the effort falls short.

Currently, the world seems to be holding its collective breath in anticipation of a terrorist strike from whatever ideologically inspired nutcase that sees the death of uninvolved innocents as an acceptable method of furthering their cause. Providing security at the Olympics is now a task of beyond Olympic-sized proportions. The games are now fraught with dangers from both within and without. Why do the athletes even bother taking the chance? Some actually compete because they would like to be considered the very best at what they do. There will be no significant recognition beyond the medal they receive in their fleeting moment of triumph. Others recognize that Olympic gold leads to that ever more desirable real gold, or at least money and fame. We root for our nation’s athletes in a nationalistic frenzy usually reserved for actual wars. But it’s easy to see that Olympic Games are a better alternative to real war, even if we’re able to provide air conditioned barracks and potable water to our battlefields and not our Olympic venues.

The Romans used their military might to conquer the Greeks, who had invented the concept of the Olympics. However, Roman civilization eventually peaked, then declined, then fell into the abyss known as the Dark Ages. Perhaps they lost focus of the important things like providing everyone with good drinking water, when the one-percenters of Roman leadership began to focus instead on orgies featuring luxuries like hummingbird tongue casseroles and entertainment featuring lions and Christians, where the cats held a distinct advantage and ensured a blood-soaked finale. There are lessons to be learned here, but we’re likely to miss them. We’ll be busy tweeting about the failure of Russian electronic signs and betting on the Jamaican Bobsled team.

     

When a Professor Became President

“Freedom exists only where people take care of the government.” 

-T. Woodrow Wilson

How do you feel about civic responsibility? Our most important responsibility is exercising our right to vote for the people that run our government on all levels. In order to do this, we should do a certain amount of research concerning the people that receive our vote. The problem is that the vast majority of our "research" is based on watching campaign ads on TV. Rarely can you get a complete picture from thirty seconds of bullshit on a slick TV ad. Currently, our campaign ads have reached the point of uselessness because they twist facts, convey only half truths, or in some cases, lie outright. This isn't a problem with just one party. They both do it. Frankly, it offends me, because they think we're stupid, or at least lazy. They're usually at least half right.

Unfortunately, we get the government we deserve. We've become so jaded by being constantly disappointed by the people that we've elected, that we feel that it really doesn't matter who we vote for, since they're all bound to let us down in the end. I'm here to tell you that we can do better, but we need to make an effort. One way to start is to learn something from history.

I love to read. I also consider it my duty as a citizen to expand my base of knowledge, and reading books is one of the best ways to accomplish that task. Recently I finished reading Wilson by A. Scott Berg, which is a new biography about our twenty-eighth President, T. Woodrow Wilson. I never really knew much about President Wilson (including the fact that his first name was Thomas, not Woodrow), and always thought of him as a prim, uptight, stick-in-the-mud kind of guy. I knew he was reelected President using the slogan “He kept us out of war,” and then, before his second term even started, began the process to lead America into World War I. That had always seemed a bit incongruent to me. Of course that’s why it is always a good idea to add to your knowledge base. Our current world seems to run on sound bites and tweets, but they rarely present enough depth to fully understand issues.

One of my favorite historical quotes comes from George Santayana:  "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” which underscores the necessity of learning and applying our knowledge of the past to the problems of the present. However, I was surprised to learn that Wilson said: “The world’s memory must be kept alive, or we shall never see an end of its old mistakes.” This was said in a speech which commemorated the 150th anniversary of Princeton University and predated Santayana’s famous quote by a decade. It’s not surprising that Wilson recommended learning from the past since he was a professor of history at several colleges before becoming the President of Princeton University.

Another thing that surprised me was that old Woodrow wasn’t as much of a fuddy-duddy as our superficial first impressions of the man might suggest. His love letters to his first wife, who died in 1914 while Wilson was President, bordered on erotica in some cases. In 1915, he married a buxom younger widow that had caught his eye. He was known to be romantic, a good dancer, and even humorous. Wilson said that he left academia for public service in order to escape politics. You see, “politics” doesn’t just influence how our government is run, it influences how everything in the world is run. Apparently, Wilson thought the situation was worse in the administration of educational facilities than it was in Washington. Plus, he was going for a laugh. However, history suggests that despite his impressive record of accomplishments, he remained pretty much a novice in the politics of governance. 

Wilson held only two elected offices in his entire political career. He served briefly as Governor of New Jersey before being elected President on the Democrat’s ticket. His actions in office tend to reflect a more of a statesman-like approach to his jobs than what would be more typical for a politician. Wilson greatly admired the British Parliament, where the Prime Minister and Cabinet remained an integral part of the legislative body, feeling that it offered a better system for enacting needed laws and reforms. Unlike chief executives before or since, Wilson frequently left the isolation of the White House for the Capitol, where he addressed the Congress in person. He was also considered one of the most eloquent speakers ever to hold the top political office, which helped him push his agenda of progressive reforms.

America faced various problems at the start of Wilson’s first term as President. Wealth was increasingly concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest citizens. Corporations and wealthy individuals exercised considerable influence over elections. Teddy Roosevelt was elected to his first full term as President largely through campaign money provided by only four groups. These included the J.P. Morgan banking company as well as railroad and steel magnate Henry Clay Frick (once known as the most hated man in America). Although TR was known as the “trust-buster” and eventually ran for President on the Progressive Party ticket, he actually thought that the trusts should be regulated, not “busted” as his nickname would otherwise suggest. At the start of the 20th century, the average American worker toiled for long hours, frequently under less than ideal conditions. While Wilson was able to pass significant progressive reform measures, often as a result of magnificent speeches made in person to Congress, it seems that many of his efforts to provide some relief to working men and women have not endured.

Unlike today’s “free-market” loving Republicans, the Republican Party of Wilson’s time had enacted high tariffs on imported commodities, which adversely affected poorer Americans, by causing high prices for life’s basic necessities while providing excessive income to domestic corporations. At the urging of President Wilson, tariffs were reduced or eliminated, with the tax revenue lost from tariffs replaced by a tax on income. The wealthy hated the income tax, primarily because they were the only ones that had to pay. Most of the lower income Americans were exempt. While the wealthy pissed and moaned about the inequity of the income tax, the economy actually grew and improved, and wealthy Americans became even richer, and still enjoyed all of the benefits that entailed.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the First World War had begun, although at the time it had yet to be numbered. America, including its President, saw no need to embroil itself in this European brouhaha, remaining blissfully neutral, with the economy benefitting from increased trade with everyone. Sadly, Germany’s actions eventually forced America’s hand, and we entered the conflict on the side of England, France, and Italy (Russia was also an Allied Nation at the start of the Great War, but was dealing with its own internal revolution at the time, which eventually brought a communist government to power). The addition of fresh American troops, backed by our country’s incredible industrial might, turned the tide, resulting in a victory for the Allied Nations.

Wilson saw the chance that the victory offered. He made it his mission in life to make the world safe from this kind of horrible conflict forever more. The keystone of his plan was to establish a League of Nations that would have the power to prevent this type of total war through negotiated settlement with united world opinion to back it up, before it could ever get started.

One of the sad realities of learning about the lives of great men is when we are able to look back with perfect hindsight at decisions, or events, that prove to be their undoing. Wilson was a man that thought through a problem, then made a decision and stuck to it, never changing his mind. He sailed for Europe and the peace talks with a devoted cadre of minions who would offer no resistance to his grand plan. He should have made the group bipartisan, and included someone like his most vocal critic in the Senate, Henry Cabot Lodge. After months of negotiations and discussion, Wilson returned home with a peace proposal that he believed would forever prevent the kind of mass slaughter and destruction that had recently devastated France and Belgium, among other places. Furious over having been excluded from the limelight (as well as the actual peace process) Lodge and the rest of the Republican leadership vowed to sink the peace treaty, including its most critical element, the League of Nations, before it could start.

Another sad reality of our political system is that the American electorate loves to change its collective mind at the drop of a hat. The opposition managed to derail America’s involvement in the peace treaty that ended the war as well as quashing Wilson’s hope that diplomacy would forever prevent another world war through the negotiating process of the League of Nations. After two terms that mostly saw a healthy, rapidly expanding national economy, American voters elected a Republican-controlled Congress, Senate, and made Ohio’s Warren G. Harding President of the United States. Harding managed to become one of history’s worst ranked Presidents during his brief tenure in office. High tariffs were restored, and income taxes for the wealthy were significantly lowered under the theory that high income people were “job creators” in the economy, needing the extra income to create more jobs (recent research has shown that such funds are typically used for speculative purposes, not job creation).

By the end of the decade, stock market speculators plunged the U.S. economy into what we now refer to as the Great Depression. A decade after that, the League of Nations was too weak without America’s participation to halt German military aggression, and the conflict known as World War II began.

In recent years, campaign financing laws have been weakened, once again opening the door to excessive corporate influence with money considered equivalent to free speech. Our system of government has been held hostage by our own elected representatives, who, despite hard evidence to the contrary, are still claiming that tax cuts for the wealthy are necessary for job creation. History again seems to be repeating itself. It is time for all us to learn from the past, and apply those lessons to bring about a better world for us all.

Woodrow Wilson’s obsession with establishing the League of Nations on his terms led him to undertake a speaking tour of America in order to take his message directly to the people. The stress of the tour, following on the heels of the exhausting peace negotiations, led to a stroke from which he never fully recovered. Although the League of Nations was established, America never joined, and without us it was never able to achieve the results that were envisioned by its founder and principle champion. We’ll never know what might have happened had he been willing to compromise. It is a lesson for our time. It is a lesson for all time.

“The world’s memory must be kept alive, or we shall never see an end of its old mistakes.”   -T. Woodrow Wilson

More Thoughts From A Car Guy

Back in May, I was inspired to set down a few musings about automobiles that I called “Thoughts from a Car Guy.” Well, as the title implies, here’s some more. Car and Driver magazine recently wrote an article about one of their favorite places to road test vehicles. It’s located in Southeastern Ohio, in an area known as the Hocking Hills. This article points out a key fact that underlies the love that all “car guys” (and, of course, car gals, too) have for the automobile: the best cars are a joy to drive. They not only take us places, but allow us to appreciate the journey as well.

 I’ve got a friend named Mike who owns some land in the Hocking Hills, and he used to tell me about the fabulous roads in the area. It’s not a particularly easy place to get to from where I live, with lots of less than great choices of routes that will eventually get you there, even if it’s not a direct route. But I’ve found my way to his place a few times, and it has always been a fun experience. When I was leaving once, he told me the route to take on my way home. It wasn’t really the most direct route home, but Mike assured me that the road had just been repaved, and would be a joy to drive. I’m not sure exactly which car I was driving at the time, but I think it was one of the four Honda Preludes that I owned consecutively after I finally got rid of my Mercedes 280S sedan. The Prelude wasn’t a sports 

car, but rather a “sporty” car. It was front wheel drive with a four cylinder engine , but it handled better than most front drive cars, and I always opted for Honda’s smooth shifting 5-speed manual transmission, which the guys at Road and Track and Car and Driver both considered mandatory.

I found the road without difficulty. The scenery alone was worth the experience, but the road was a thing of joy. It wasn’t a road designed to modern standards. Some turns were reverse banked.  Large rocks and great trees sat far too close to the pavement. It didn’t matter. A huge grin spread across my face as I rowed through the gears through the sweeping curves, upshifting and downshifting frequently and happily. All too soon it morphed into a typically boring highway that eventually led to an even more boring (but much more efficient) interstate highway, and then home. That experience has lingered on for the decades that have passed since then. And I know what the writers at Car and Driver are talking about when they wax eloquently about their favorite roads in the Hocking Hills.

I found a similar road in west central Ohio quite by accident, when I was on my way home from an appraisal assignment inspecting a nursing home in a little town I had never heard of before. I had arrived by a different route from the northwest, but I had to look at some comparable land sales on my way home, which took me more south and east. At the time, my vehicle was a Honda SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle), a Passport, which wasn’t even manufactured by Honda but was a rebadged Isuzu assembled in Indiana. Since I lived at Lake Mohawk at the time, I had to have a vehicle that could tow my boat and personal watercraft. It had lots of “utility” but came up rather short in the area of “sport.” Fortunately for me (if you consider facing a couple of grand in repair bills “fortunate”), my vehicle was at the repair shop, Leyland Motors (http://laylandmotors.com/), which is owned and operated by a truly talented guy named Denny, who also happens to be a friend of mine. While my vehicle was in the shop, Denny lent me his personal Porsche 911 Carrera Targa to drive. Now that’s a friend!

It may have something to do with the geology of central and southern Ohio that leads to these fine driver’s roads. During the Ice Age, the huge glaciers that covered our hemisphere ended in these areas, and piled up the rocks that they had scraped off of the land in the north into this area that geologists refer to as “terminal moraines” (http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/portals/10/pdf/glacial.pdf) which creates the area’s undulating terrain. The road that I happened upon was a gently curving delight, carved out of a hillside, with a sheer rock wall to my left that fell away to gently rolling pastures to my right. It had been recently repaved and I was in automobile nirvana as I clicked through the Porsche’s

fantastic 5-speed gearbox as the car’s powerful flat-6 engine snarled at me from behind. Traffic was light and while the curves lasted, it was bliss in a borrowed ride.

I should probably add a few more comments about my friend Denny, who has provided me with many automotive close encounters. I used to live across Lake Mohawk from Denny, where he has a huge house with a garage that was almost as large as my entire house. But I had already known him for years before we both relocated to that scenic wonderland. If I consider myself a “car guy” then Denny is a CAR GUY, or even car guru, or perhaps car god. He’s done complete restorations on several cars, including a twelve cylinder E-type Jaguar roadster and more recently a little Triumph sports car. One beautiful spring evening, Denny, with his wife, son and daughter, pulled down my long straight driveway in an immaculate turquoise Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible. He suggested that I get my brother Gary, who lived with me at the time, and take a drive to a new family-friendly bar and restaurant in nearby Minerva for a drink. Oh yeah, he wanted me to drive. Like I said, he’s a good friend.

Gary and I took the front seats, while Denny and his family squeezed into the back (even Rolls-Royce convertibles don’t have very large back seats). We were on the road to Minerva when a railroad crossing loomed in the distance. I began to slow the Rolls, in order to give my tightly packed passengers the most comfortable ride possible. Denny leaned forward and said, “No, no, don’t slow down. Punch it.” In all matters automotive, I defer to the master’s expertise, and did as instructed. We flew across the uneven railroad tracks as if we had encountered a mere pebble on the highway. In the rearview mirror, I could see Denny’s “I-told-you-so” grin.

Minerva is a little village that straddles three counties in northeastern Ohio. It grew in importance due to its location along the Sandy-Beaver Canal (there’s a name that would never get used in modern times) in the early-1800’s, and the original coast-to-coast “Lincoln Highway” also known as U.S. Route 30, passes through the north end of town. As we drove toward our destination, I caught a glimpse

of an older Jaguar sedan sitting in front of an old, nondescript industrial building off to my right, but kept driving toward our destination. Now Denny is a true Jag aficionado, and he had been staring at the car as we drove past. He leaned forward from his seat and spoke in my ear. “Did you see that? That was a perfectly restored 1959 Jaguar Mark 2 sedan. Turn around. We need to go back.” Again, as in all matters related to automobiles, I deferred to Denny and turned the car around.

We pulled into the parking lot as a guy around our age emerged from the shop building, carrying a stuffed gorilla doll which was the size of a husky 12-year old, and placed it in the backseat of the Jag. Denny insisted on getting out first to talk with the man alone. We were strangers after all, with young children present, and Denny didn’t want to spook the guy before he had a chance to fully savor the fine-looking sedan. I suppose there is no better way to approach a fellow car guy in a less-threatening way than arriving in a sparkling clean Rolls convertible. We were all waved over in a matter of seconds, and introductions on a first name basis were made all around. I don’t recall the owner’s name after all these years, and he made only vague references to his job, cryptically mentioning having to “…go into the plant and sign checks once in a while.” Apparently he had level of financial comfort that the rest of us were still seeking.

The Jag was pristine and he was staging it for exhibit in a car show somewhere. In the backseat, the car had  furniture-quality little wood veneer picnic tables that folded down from the back of the front seat like a much nicer version of an airliner table. The gorilla had been placed on the rear seat with an open table from behind the driver's seat before him, as if he was about to turn to us and ask "Pardon me, but do you happen to have any Grey Poupon?" The trunk was open and revealed a custom-fitted old-fashioned wicker picnic basket, with leather straps on the underside of the lid that held real china dishes, silverware, and crystal glasses in place. He explained that the car was purchased from an Ivy League college professor who had purchased it new and driven it until he retired. At some point, he had driven it off the road and smashed into a tree, deciding that it was time for him to finally relinquish driving duties to someone else. Our host told us that the car had literally been shipped here in boxes and he had done a complete ground up reassembly and restoration. He had just gotten the car back from “his interior guy” who had restored the leather clad interior to better-than-showroom condition. We were too polite to ask what such a service cost, but it appeared that money wasn’t a real issue for our host. After gushing over the car for a few minutes, Denny peered into the shop, and then boldly asked if he could look around. Our host may have given young Daniel and Demi a worried look, but Denny sternly warned them “Don’t touch anything!” They were remarkably well-behaved kids, at least when mom and dad were around to keep them in check. Then we stepped inside.

Inside the shop can only be described as the ultimate Car Guy’s toy box. The walls were covered in old gas station and car dealership signs, among other automotive memorabilia. Just inside the main garage door was a late-40’s or early-50’s Packard Limousine in dark blue, with little chrome flag holders on the front bumper. I think the seats were missing, swapped for the Jag’s and taken by the “interior guy” for restoration. I could almost envision Harry Truman sitting inside, waving and smiling and wishing he was somewhere else, like maybe playing poker with his buddies. I think there was another older car inside, maybe an old Ford or Chevy, but I was on sensory overload by then, and I just can’t remember. I do remember a real old and very rare Indian motorcycle that our host was evidently very proud of which we all reverently gathered around before moving on. We moved through the building, carefully avoiding the tightly packed antiques which were everywhere. Outside, there were several other cars parked, awaiting the master’s careful touch. The one that really caught my eye was a 1956 Chrysler Imperial, with the taillights mounted above the tail fins. As the evening light faded, we finally thanked our host and bid him goodbye, heading off to our original destination and thankful that the children, and us, didn’t break anything.

I drove by the building several months later, and it appeared to be abandoned. There were no cars parked anywhere. I have no idea what happened to our generous host, but I can only hope that he decided to move to a larger building. He did need a larger toy box. Journeys are as important to drivers as destinations. It's often the unsought road that makes for the best traveling, and the unplanned destination that is really the place that we should be. As a car guy, my wish for you is to have many happy trips.

As a postscript, I offer this little insight about the difference between a car guy and a regular person. After my brother Gary had passed away in 2008, I was going through a box of his old photographs. I came across a photo of a Lamborghini Countach parked in my old driveway at the lake house with the passenger side scissor door open and pointing skyward. Perched in the seat and smiling from beneath his mop of curly brown hair was a very young Daniel, Denny's son, who by 2008 was a very tall teenager. It was the 4th of July, and I was heading down to my nephew's house at the lake to watch the fireworks, so I decided to take the photo over to Denny and give it to him. Arriving at his house, I first encountered Denny's wife, Diane, and showed her the picture. "Oh look at Daniel," she gushed, "how cute. Show that to Denny." I found Denny down by the pool, whipping up a batch of margaritas in a blender powered by gasoline fueled weed-eater motor. When I showed Denny the picture, his first response was: "Oh yeah, check out that car."

PPS: Thursday, November 21, 3013:
I was going through a box of old photos, and came across these shots of Denny's fully restored E-Type Jaguar V-12, and thought someone might like to see what a Car Guru's hobby looks like.

          

Big Ideas and Tunnel Vision

It’s been an interesting summer, but I haven’t written very much. I have been reading though. The three-volume biography of Winston Churchill by William Manchester and Paul Reid has been occupying much of my reading time. I finished reading it this morning, all 2,911 pages (OK, I skipped the notes at the end, which brings it down to a more manageable 2,600 or so). Churchill was born during the reign of Queen Victoria and died 90 years later, when Elizabeth II was queen, spanning a time from when steam power and horses dominated, and ending when atomic power and rockets had been developed. He was a fascinating man, full of insights and ideas, some of which were amazing while others bordered on lunacy.

One of Winston’s big ideas developed as a result of the static trench warfare experienced during the First World War. The major weapons in trench warfare were artillery (which Churchill always called “cannons”), machine guns and rifle-toting infantry. A typical offensive action would start when one side started firing their artillery toward the other guys’ trenches. After the typically massive bombardments, the attacking infantry would scramble from their trenches and race toward the enemies’ trenches. The enemy would pop out of their holes after the shelling stopped and open fire with their heavy machine guns, usually resulting in massive casualties for the attacking force. Overall, neither side gained much ground. A big idea was needed.

Churchill held several posts in the British government during the war, including First Lord of the Admiralty, or the government’s man in charge of the Royal Navy, which was the world’s largest at the time. For trench warfare, he conceived of a warship on land, and led the development of tanks (the name “tank” was chosen to disguise what they were really building, in case the enemy broke their codes). They were designed to run over and through trenches, deflecting the enemies’ machine gun bullets and protecting the infantry that would follow safely behind. It is said that the generals are always fighting the last war, meaning that they have difficulty adjusting to new technology. The main problem for the tank was that the generals fighting the war didn’t want the tanks, and didn’t really know how to use them. Many times, the infantry was put in front of the tanks for an attack, which defeated the purpose. Finally one general got it right and let the tanks lead the way, with the infantry following behind. The attacking force gained miles instead of the yards of distance that were the norm. Then for some reason, he had the tanks stop and ordered the infantry to surge ahead, where the enemy machine guns cut them to pieces, as usual.

Toward the end of the war, and during the peace before the next one, Churchill also learned to fly airplanes, and had visions of their importance for the future of warfare. But foremost in his heart were the huge, fast, heavily armored and heavily gunned battleships, which were the pride of the Royal Navy. He wanted more of them built when he became the British Prime Minister during World War II. The only problem was that the Royal Air Force already proved that these behemoths of the sea were obsolete. Using rather old and slow torpedo bombers, the RAF attacked and sank a large portion of the Italian fleet while they were anchored in the safety of their home harbor. However, Japan took notice of the British success, and used the same tactics to attack Pearl Harbor, where they destroyed or incapacitated all of the US battleships. Fortunately, all of the American aircraft carriers, which were the ships that really mattered, were safely out to sea.

During World War II, tanks became an important factor in ground warfare when they were finally massed in an assault force of their own and coordinated by radio commands. The aircraft carrier became the primary weapon for naval forces, with attacking aircraft replacing the huge guns on battleships. On land, airplanes were used in support of ground troops, again called-in and coordinated by radio. But all of these things were envisioned and developed by other people than the ones who first conceived of the breakthrough developments in the first place.

It is rare to find someone who comes up with a great idea to solve some problem and then continues to adapt that solution to solve other problems. The same situation is observed with the development of the computer. The original use of modern computers was for calculating the trajectory of artillery shells. They were then adapted for use by other government and business groups that required lots of data storage and calculations. When I started college, we learned to use a computer that had its own room in the Computer Science building, and we wrote our programs on stacks of punch cards (yes, I know, I’m practically a fossil). By the time I was leaving Graduate School, personal computers were just starting to show up. They were useful for creating documents, databases and doing calculations, but little else.

When Jobs and Wozniak created the first Apple computer, they thought its main appeal would be for home hobbyists, basically geeks such as themselves. Microsoft’s Bill Gates didn’t initially see the importance of connecting computers with the Internet, and concentrated his efforts elsewhere. It took Steve Jobs decades to realize that the computer itself shouldn’t be confined to a machine used on a desk or even a lap, but could instead be combined with a cell phone and carried in a pocket.

Big ideas and technological breakthroughs are important to our growth as a society. However, we must never view them as being a final product. Don’t restrict your view to tunnel vision, but always open your eyes fully in order to observe all of the possibilities that they offer. We must strive to focus on the potentials offered by the evolution of our thoughts and ideas. Maintaining rigidity in our beliefs may sound like a strong moral position, but it will lead nowhere except to stagnation and death of the system that has brought us to a greatness that we are already beginning to squander.