Red Barns to Road Rage

While I was licking on popsicles in the local grocery, the construction of the interstate system in Wisconsin was well underway. Years before I had a driver’s license, more than three-fourths of the state’s interstate system had been built. Nowadays, as I cross the first section of the interstate to be constructed, back in 1956 (between Goerke’s Corners and CTH-SS in Waukesha County), and continue on to work, I wonder about those days....

Two years before construction was begun on the first stretch of the interstate in Wisconsin, President Eisenhower made it clear that it was important to “protect the vital interest of every citizen in a safe and adequate highway system."  The resulting Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, opposed in the Senate by only one Senator from Louisiana, who opposed the gas tax increase included in the bill, ended up costing $114 billion (adjusted for inflation, $425 billion in 2006 dollars) and as we are well aware, maintaining that system has become increasingly difficult.

Not included in that cost, however, was the twinned dynamic of urban sprawl and the decline of our cities, as they sustained losses in tax revenues and experienced increasing stratification. Also not included in that cost was the’ undercutting’ of our mass transit systems. Not included in that cost was the need to engage in a never-ending cycle of easing congestion, only to find ourselves ever more congested as we continue sprawling outward.

For example, a new bypass along the CTH-SS corridor in Waukesha County is being considered as one proposal for connecting I-90 and Hwy 59 along the west side of the city of Waukesha. What we seem not to realize is that for every bypass we build to ease traffic congestion, we eventually increase traffic congestion as more motorists commute to other suburbs and city centers from farther and farther afield.

The senator from Louisiana might not recognize our countryside or our cities, however he would feel right at home resisting funding mass transit systems, especially inner city mass transit systems, with user fees and what could be called, ‘decongestion’ fees, such as an increased gasoline tax and taxes on tire and equipment sales.

President Eisenhower might well bemoan what he would see now. Years before becoming a proponent of the interstate highway system, while on the US Army’s first transcontinental motor convoy, the not yet President Eisenhower “experienced all the woes known to motorists and then some – an endless series of mechanical difficulties, vehicles stuck in the mud or sand; trucks and other equipment crashing through wooden bridges; roads as slippery as ice or dusty or the consistency of ‘gumbo’….”

The irony is, that even as our suburbs blend more and more into each other and the remaining red barns are giving way to named developments, those of us commuting from the suburbs are finding more and more of our day spent dealing with the ‘woes of being motorists,’ with ‘it’s a parking lot’ and road rage replacing mud, sand, wooden bridges, and roads the consistency of ‘gumbo’.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System
http://www.wisconsinhighways.org/interstates.html
http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/transportation/a_highway.html
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3406400461.html
http://www.milestonedocuments.com/documents/view/federal-aid-highway-act/

Red barns, Popsicles, and the Electrification of Our Countryside

Our Cooperative Heritage

1985

The Wisconsin I grew up in was dotted with red barns, Holsteins, local groceries, implement dealers, post offices, and farms that had only recently been electrified. 


1972 - Cows out in pasture

 The barns were the workplaces of families, but also the place kids swung from ropes into piles of hay or built hay forts.

Lead cow bringing the herd in

The Holsteins were known by name and eccentricity; their milk hauled to the dairy by the man whose daughter I went to school with; and when their time came, those cows, their names thankfully inscribed in the herd register when successfully born, then played with as calves, were sent solemnly sent off to slaughter.

The local grocer would let us kids start licking on our popsicles long before we laid our coins out on the counter.  When the baler broke down; we’d send someone out to a town whose name I’m no longer sure of. There's been no reason to go there since the implement dealership closed.  The post office was attached to the grocery store and run by the same family, a family we saw in church on Sunday.

I drive to the family farm these days and wonder:  where have all the red barns gone?  Gone are the Holsteins that used to dot the hillsides.  The local grocery closed long ago.  The implement dealers are in the cities now, what dealers are left.  There’s still a local post office - the next town over, although its local grocery closed a few years ago.

Only recently electrified farms?

1951


An interesting story that; one that reminds me of the decisions my generation must face.  In 1925, just over 3% of farms in this country had electric service.  In 1935 President Roosevelt established the Rural Electric Authority (R.E.A) by executive order, making electrical service affordable for farms throughout the country.  Fourteen years later, the R.E.A. began financing telephone cooperatives, making telephone service available to our rural areas as well.

All the while, during which our rural areas began to see such appliances as refrigerators, the undertaking was said to be too expensive and opposed by groups arguing that the federal government should not be involved in the business of electrical power; that the government was unfairly competing with private enterprise.

Nowadays, almost all of us have electric and telephone service. Our manufacturing industries that produce products that generate, distribute and use electrical power still employ over 370 million of us.  And I, for one, cannot even remember not being able to plug in a toaster, an iron, or a refrigerator.

What I wonder about is: what would it be like if my parent’s generation, and the one before it, had not chosen to undertake the projects that made health care, rural broadband, a smart electric grid, green energy, energy efficienient lifestyles rural electric and phone service affordable to so many Americans?

References
http://naldr.nal.usda.gov/NALWeb/Agricola_Link.asp?Accession=IND43893747
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/malone.electrification.administration.rural
http://newdeal.feri.org/tva/tva10.htm
http://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag335.htm