Don't know how many of ya'll have traveled the old route 66 in the past few years. All it took was Interstate 40 being built and the reverse took place. What used to be thriving towns all along the route are pretty much ghost towns compared to what they were.
Yeah, Route 66 is a dramatic illustration of it. Not as famous as Route 66, but of more significance to me, US Highway 41 used to run from Canada to Florida; and it still does, sort of. But Interstates have bypassed most of the towns along the way, leaving Highway 41, once the only way of traveling in that direction, as the business route that everyone avoids. Or don't even know of, since no one's GPS is going to take them that way. Of course, businesses all along the way were adversely affected and, while people can get to Florida or Canada more quickly, they miss a lot along the way.
@Bobby Cole After getting divorced, my Mother living with me, finishing degree requirements at UNLV (Vegas), we drove to Albuquerque to visit old friends. I-40 east of Kingman was not yet completed. We drove 66 out of Kingman, I remember Valentine, Hackberry, Seligman, some very scenic high desert, trees and shrubs. Recently, visited by my old high school friend Charlie, We drove that route to Grand Canyon Caverns, beautiful area, about 7000 ft. Had ice cream in Seligman, returned via I-40. Old 66 looks pretty much unchanged. Frank
@Ken Anderson My folks retired to LP Mich. in 1966. They had a nice little house built outside of Union Pier. Previous to that, my Grandma, my Dad's mother, had lived in a home which was intended to someday be the garage, on 8 acres my Dad had bought for retirement. That was previous, 1950s. After Grandma's death in 1958, we received word of a new Interstate Highway link being built, I-94; it cut right across the center of my Folks' property, a swath 300 ' wide, effectively cutting us off from the woods beyond. We ran across the highway, anyhow. A few years ago, my wife and I drove up into Mich. after visiting her kin in N. Indiana. I managed to find the old first place, on Warren Woods Road, but could barely recognize the property. The house my Folks retired to I did find, a lady out back was tending to her garden. I hesitated, reluctant and backward, as usual, though she looked at us curiously, and drove on. I yearned to tell her things she likely wouldn't have cared about anyway, how my Folks had built the house, how my Dad's ailment worsened quickly forcing a move back to the Chicago area, how I wondered if the Blueberry bushes I had bought and planted for Ma & Pa had flourished during the previous 40 years.......... Sentimental old fool. Frank
Well, even though I don't totally agree about some of the take-over of small towns by big business and building new homes, even though I'm sure it's happened, I know there are small towns in America that are still just that "small towns" with the "small town" feeling with very little modernization, if any. Actually, I've been to them. Now, on the other side of the coin, I know that most, if not all, rodeo cowboys in the PRCA and cowgirls (barrel racers) in WPRA, own a cell phone and/or lap top computer so they enter the next rodeo they plan on competing at. That's one privilege I didn't have when I was involved in the sport. No cell phone, no lap top. Home phone only. Another thing, and I read this in a Western Horseman magazine, a lot of horse and cattle ranches, as well as regular farms of today, are run by home computers. Feeding and breeding program software are used by the owners of these ranches and farms. Combines have a nice air-conditioned cab and computerized controls. A lot of newer tractors are the same way. The old tractors of "yesterday" are pretty much gone and so are the parts to fix them. A farmer buddy of mine, that graduated high school the year after I did, bought a brand new field sprayer (for bugs/insects). A person drives it, but has to climb a short metal ladder to get inside the cab. This thing is big! I seen in 2008, on a visit. Don't know how much it cost, but it sure wasn't cheap and very, very modern.
Picture of the Field Sprayer, just mentioned in above post. Sorry, going to have to get rid of Photobucket and get another photo website. Picture won't come up anymore.
I was watching an ag show and they were reviewing some of the farm tractors that farmers are now able to purchase. Everything is computerized and run by GPS to maximize the land usage. In essence, the good farmer can get into his air conditioned cab, hit the go button and then turn on the stereo or play his favorite movie on dvd or on his puter. Hard day's work for the modern tech smart agriculture specialist. Of course, all that is good provided that his credit score is high enough to be able to buy one of those monster tractors.
Easy, but not this quite easy. This thing isn't "self-driven", but is nicely air conditioned with a cd player inside. The farmer still has to do some things when he crawls into the cab.