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April 03, 2010
Where the grapes of wrath are stored
Purple Avenger takes a trip home made melancholy not only for its purpose but for observations made along the way. These notes from the "recovery" find precious little economic activity.
Read this and remember the same villains who produced the problem have in their hearts a religious fervour to destroy the automobile and destroy the long distance trucking that is the lifeblood of a continent.
- A lot of billboards are still empty. This was true on I95 as well as some of the alternate routes (like rt17 and various back roads through WV and VA I wandered off onto to avoid rolling into the D.C. vortex at 5pm rush hour. I guess out of business businesses aren't buying advertising.
- Many still existing painted billboards are quite faded and haven't seen fresh paint in a long time.
- At some exits, once thriving large truck stops doors are shuttered. This is usually when there's another competing one at the same exit.
Read the whole thing: This is real journalism, verging on social history in the raw.
One hundred years ago the land empires of Russia and Germany (two empires in Germany's case) were ascendent as railroads made rivers of steel into land once navigable - if at all - only by river or (latterly) by canal. It was the end of the line (if you will excuse the metaphor) for the sea empires of Britain and France and Holland but only the foreshadowing of the interstate empire of America to come.
Both the legislative and executive branches of the United States government are now in the hands of men "people" who want nothing more than to see destroyed the interstate empire made possible by the automobile. It is no coincidence these same people huddle on the coasts and imagine the only transportation worth mention is the one which allows them to fly over the commoners toiling below them.
If these men have their way, the desolation will make fine fodder for some latter day Steinbeck; if only the aesthetic guardians of the Left find some way to blame the next dust bowl on George W. Bush. But then their vengeful climate change sky god has that angle covered.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at April 3, 2010 11:29 AM
