Posted on 11/24/2014 9:43:40 AM PST by US Navy Vet
dear sam,
When i saw the rock, it was the only thing on the beach, behind a small fence, i.e., small to a 10 yeaar old child. There was no “tourist trap”, in those days. It held more respect. Plymouth Village is THE recreation of THE Pilgrims’ village, from the historical records, and how they constructed the houses in those times. Yes, Plymouth village is a living museum, just as Old Bethpage Village on Long Island, NY, is as well.
It was in the early 60’s, when i first looked upon Plymouth Rock. There was no ‘tourist trap’ fittings, as another wrote. To an OTIS AFB 4th grader, it was pretty big!
On a side note, the good ship Mayflower, sure looks bigger on screen than it did at the mooring.
Norway
Greece
Australia
New Zealand
....all of the above because their citizens love their countries.
Scotland (ancestry)
France (for Normandy and WWI battlegrounds)
Switzerland
Vietnam (father served)
Maldives (the few citizens I’ve met loved it)
Egypt (pyramids/sphinx)
dear sam,
since you said you have always questioned that ... what about now? The information highway has been open to the public since the early 90’s, when the federal government found they could make money on it. that has been 23 years. I would think since you are intelligent enough to be able to form a cognitive sentence, employ a website for your opinions, and place an answering opinion or retort, that you would have spent any minutes of those 23 years, in the search for your answers to that pressing question! And yet, here you sit, with the statement:
“I’ve always questioned that. “
sam, life’s timeclock ticks on, so might you stop questioning, and start seeking, before that question is one you might have to ask somebody a lot bigger than any of us?
The other reason for the Interstate Highway system was, of course, a method by which the military could rapidly move men, weapons and supplies across our continent in the case of an invasion. When Eisenhower was busy liberating Nazi Germany, he was impressed with the efficiency of the Autobahn and saw a need for it over here. Otherwise, our military would have been bogged down with red lights, congestion and ticky-tacky tourist shops while trying to navigate our maze of county and state roads with Rand McNally Atlases.
Apparently the risk of invasion was deemed much more likely back in the 1950s. Which was how the Interstate system got funded. It is difficult to imagine Congress funding what turned out to be the largest public works project in our nations history if the main reason was to make it easier for tourists to take long trips more efficiently!
Anyway, there another aspect to the Interstate Highway system that Eisenhower did not foresee and that leads me to the mystery that I have been unable to solve: Commuters.
Back in the 1950s, people generally lived pretty close to where they worked. Many more people were able to walk to work or maybe hop on a bus or trolley for a few blocks or so. The Interstate Highway system now made it possible for suburban folk to work city jobs many miles away. So suddenly housing developments and shopping plazas exploded in the suburbs that ringed the major cities. People thought nothing of commuting 25 or more miles to and from work each way. This was unthinkable before the Interstate highway system.
Those left behind in the inner cities formed ghettos, went on welfare and well, that's a story for another post... so let's stick with the commuters on the interstates.
Commuters now make up the bulk of Interstate traffic. So now you have areas of gridlock on the Interstates surrounding our major cities for multiple hours each day. Instead of whipping along efficiently at high speed as Eisenhower envisioned, they are stuck in bumper to bumper traffic. Not good.
But it need not be that way and that is the mystery!
The reason for the Interstate gridlock is not because we do not have enough highway capacity. It is because each individual commuter acts in his own selfish interest. Instead of staying in one lane at a constant speed, commuters weave in and out of lanes, seeking an advantage of a car length or two. This causes other drivers to hit their breaks, causing a chain reaction behind them that eventually brings traffic to a halt. Instead of merging into exit lanes in a logical manner, commuters tend to "jump the queue" and enter the exit by swerving from the middle lane into the right lane at the last possible moment. This causes the drivers sitting in the right lane to wait and fume. Eventually people in the right lane lose their patience and swerve into another lane to get up to the exit quicker.
There are other examples of selfish behavior by commuters to generally jam things up and gum up the works.
So that is the mystery that currently confounds me. If only the other commuters thought as I did, we would all rapidly move down the interstates to our destinations with zero delay - rush hour or not.
Ferguson, MO, hands down!
dear sam,
welcome to reality.
There are always going to be three kinds of folks:
1. elbows,
2. anal orifices,
3. those that watch the first two and laugh, because they find happiness in wherever they are!
- Brown Cow whole milk yogurt (with cream layer on top)
- Fresh blackberries
- Granola
Mix them all together.
Of course, bacon and eggs trumps that every time. I prefer my eggs over hard and the bacon crispy. If an English muffin is at hand, I toast it and make a sandwich of the eggs and bacon - throwing in a slice of swiss cheese if it is at hand.
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