Blue Highways: Pitt, Washington

Unfolding the Map

LHM chases a hang-glider from the top of a canyon down to the river, and learns how balance and knowing limits is important if one is going to undertake the mysteries of flight.  I'll expand on this concept a bit and apply it to life - as LHM intended for this section, I think.  To locate Pitt, a hard little place to find, check out the map.

Book Quote

"Something darkened the windshield just as I came to the edge of the high slope.  I ducked, braked hard, and leaned out to see what it was.  Should have guessed.  A man had just jumped off the mountain in a hang-glider....

"'....It's a balance,' Holliston said.  'We've got to risk a little more each time to improve and go beyond what we've done in the past.  But if we take on too much at once, it could be the last lesson.  The problem is we don't always know when we get in over our heads.  We've got to trust our gut reactions without giving in to them.  That's what's hard.'"

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 8

Klickitat River Canyon at Pitt Bridge. The field is the site to where LHM would have chased the hang-glider. Photo at Dry Side Property's website. Click on photo to go to host site.

Pitt, Washington

When I was young, I was fascinated by airplanes.  I could see them a long way off too because I am far-sighted.  A former foster parent once told me that when I was two, I would see an airplane that he couldn't see, and he didn't believe me.  Then he would hear the faraway sound and locate a speck in the distance and realize that I was right.

Today I'm still fascinated with flight and flying things.  Because of my eyesight, I've never tried to take flying lessons.  But my fascination extends out into other forms of flying.  I'm just as enrapt if I see a balloon in the air (and believe me, in Albuquerque you see a lot of balloons during the best flying weather) as I am if I see a squadron of F-16s roaring away or on a landing approach at the Air Force base near my house.  Just the other week I could be found outside my house, staring into the sky as the Air Force's Thunderbird squadron did its maneuvers for an airshow at the airport just down the street.  Though politically I am mindful of the need for a military, I am still against the use of the military unless it can be shown to be absolutely necessary.  Yet, I love watching the military jets do their maneuvers and think about the engineering that went in to creating these slim pieces of metal that can defy gravity and move so gracefully in the air.

Of course, as the quote reminds us above, everything has to be done in balance.  One learns to push the boundaries without going too far.  Those who are successful in pushing the boundaries are those that survive.  Those that don't might end up dead.

Think about it.  In an airplane, everything depends upon the balance of the wing.  From the biggest, most lumbering aircraft you have to the sleekest, quickest fighter jet, everything depends upon the balance of the airfoil the jet rides upon, its wing.  Upsetting the balance a little bit, such as raising or lowering a flap on one side or the other, causes one side of the wing to push down while the other raises, and the plane turns.  Too much, and the plane will spin out of control.  Even when fighter jets do some of those jaw dropping turns and maneuvers, they are doing it within the performance levels of the aircraft - slipping over the edge will still result in a small object, the plane, meeting a massive object, the earth.  We all know what body will survive that collision.

In a balloon, different circumstances are present but the need for balance is ever-present.  A balloon pilot is constantly judging the balance between warm and cold air.  Cold days are the best to fly, because the hot air created by igniting propane and heating the inside of the balloon canopy will give the balloon the best lift.  Once in the air, the only thing that can be controlled fully by the pilot is the rate of ascent and descent - other than that they are dependent on air currents at different altitudes.  A pilot must judge fuel, weight, ground wind-speed and other factors before making a determination whether to fly, and once in the air, how to land.  Misjudging any of these factors could be fatal.

I had a co-worker once who did hang gliding.  He was looking forward to the day that he could do a launch off Sandia Crest, the 10,600 foot peak to the east of where I live.  He told me that the flight would consist of taking off the peak maybe trying to catch a thermal updraft, gliding a bit, and attempting to land at a large field a few miles away and about 5,000 feet lower in the city.  However, like the men LHM sees hang-gliding in Pitt, he was fully aware of his present limits and what he would have to do to be able to take that leap.  He had been working with a hang-gliding instructor, and he had been gradually working his way up to larger hills to glide from.  It was a process of testing limits a little at a time.

Human experience has often, throughout our history, been viewed as a metaphor of flight, and for good reason.  We compare children leaving home with baby birds leaving the nest as they step out on to the branch, and launch themselves into the unknown.  If they survive the landing, and the other myriads of dangers out there, they will make lives for themselves.  We often talk about ideas, or dreams, or love taking wing.  We engage in flights of fancy.  We are up in the air about things but sometimes we can't get off the ground.  Occasionally, life hits us with some turbulence and we have to come in for a hard or a crash landing.

The Greeks gave us the story of Daedalus and Icarus, the father and son who escaped imprisonment at in the palace of Knossos in Crete on wings fashioned out of feathers and wax.  Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun nor too close to the water.  But Icarus wanted to try his wings and eventually got so close to the sun it melted the wax and he lost his feathers and fell into the sea and perished.  I read this story as a cautionary tale on two fronts.  Daedalus, the wise father, knew the lessons of balance and harmony and knew that the best path lay between two extremes, the sun and the sea.  Icarus, the impetuous younger man, failed to heed his father's warnings and, wanting to test the limits of his capabilities, flaunted the balance and harmony and paid for it.

We admire those people whose flight plans in life have kept them on a relatively safe course.  They may have navigated turbulence and faced times when they have been put in a tailspin, but they've kept their wits about them and they've only tested their boundaries within their limits.  We tend to pity and sometimes avoid those who don't seem to learn that lesson.  Their lives, out balance, seem to be crash landings that happen over and over again and sometimes, they don't walk away.  If flight truly is a metaphor for life, then our task is to keep our wings level, push the boundary once in awhile, and keep soaring until it is time to bring it in.

Musical Interlude

I can't believe that this song, from 1987, is almost 25 years old now, but it fits perfectly with the theme of this post.  David Gilmour had just taken the solo leadership of Pink Floyd after the departure of longtime bandmate Roger Waters.  Gilmour is an accomplished pilot, but for the first time he was leading the band on his own.  The song Learning to Fly can be read as Gilmour's realization that he was embarking on something new and, like a chick about to step off the branch, or a hang-glider about to make a first run down a slope, he was going to have to learn to fly again.

If you want to know more about Pitt

I literally couldn't find anything about Pitt.  A Google Search only brings up things about Pittsburgh or Washington DC.  I guess you won't learn much about it.  But here's some links for the county where Pitt is located:

Klickitat County
Klickitat County Fair and Rodeo
Klickitat County History
Wikipedia: Klickitat County

Next up: Klickitat, Oregon

Blue Highways: White Salmon and Appleton, Washington

Unfolding the Map

Hey there...how you doing, baby?  In this post William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) takes us on a little roadtrip into desire.  So why don't you go get yourself into something more comfortable, put on a little mood music, pour some wine, turn the lights down low and light some candles, and we'll do some exploration, if you know what I mean.  You know you want it.  If you need some visual aids to get excited about where we're going, why don't you get clicking on my map to get that spark?  And now, damn baby, you must be on fire because it's getting hot in here...

Book Quotes

"During lunch in White Salmon, I noticed the map showed a town up on the northern plateau almost in the shadow of Mount Adams called Liberty Bond.  No question about where to go next....

"I tried to get directions in Appleton, a fading place of three or four fading houses and a fading school...No one about...Then a sudden clatter of hooves and a long 'Hallooo!'  A horse whickered as a woman reined up at my window....

"'I'm looking for Liberty Bond.'

"She had long, black hair loose over her shoulders.  Muscular and pretty.  About thirty-five.  Very pretty.

"'It's gone.  Fallen down....All picked over and not a doorknob left....Afraid you're too late for that one.'

"'How about taking me home to the ranch?'

"She laughed. 'What've you got in mind?'  For a moment I saw a ranch-house parlor, low light through shades, the glow of whiskey in tumblers, a deep cleave and merge of thigh.  She smiled. 'Too late there too.'"

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 7

Town of White Salmon. Photo by "Michelle" and posted at City-Data.com. Click on photo to go to host site.White Salmon and Appleton, Washington

Poor LHM.  As we travel alongside him in the state of Washington, probably around the halfway point or just past halfway in his journey, one might wonder what was wrong with him if he had not gotten lonely for romantic companionship at some time.  We know from earlier passages in Blue Highways that he has left a marriage in Missouri after it went sour and that this trip has been, in part, a way to escape his situation.  It is also a journey to reconnect with himself and with the concept of America.  We also know that at times on the trip he has been desperately lonely.  Twice, at least, he has tried to contact his wife, whom he refers to as The Cherokee, and at various points along the earlier parts of his trip he hoped that she might try to contact him or leave a message for him in some way.  The only time he made some brief contact was when he was in Corvallis, Oregon and it left him feeling even more lonely when she asked to call him back instead of talking to him.

So should we be surprised when a siren on a horse, whose prettiness he takes pains to describe, stirs romantic and sexual longings within him?  Should we be surprised that after traveling, at this point probably around 7,000 miles, that he would hope for "a deep cleave and merge of thigh?"

I am writing this post about desire, because we all face it throughout our lives and we all succumb to it in one way or another.  Desire might be the unifying theme that is carried throughout cultures and throughout time in human experience.  We are surrounded by the objects of our desires daily, whether it's the attractive person walking by on the street that makes you look, the great looking car in the parking lot, the woman trying to get your attention or the man hitting on you in the bar, a beautiful piece of jewelry in the store window, or the song about someone else's desire that awakens your own longings.  Desire is ever-present and yet must be balanced like everything in life.  You may desire your friend's wife, or the guy that you run into at the copy machine every morning, but you make the decision to curb your desire in order to maintain social harmony.  You may desperately want that $1000 dress, or the Harley-Davidson motorcycle, but you forego these temptations in order to feed yourself or your family.

We live and struggle with our desires daily.  Some are lucky enough to pour them out in creativity.  When you read a great novel, see a great work of art, watch a great performance, you are often seeing the power of desire channeled into something else of equally great beauty and value.  The drive of desire is the drive of life and connects us with all living things and to aspects of ourselves that we would otherwise only dimly notice.  The most successful human endeavors tap our minds and rechannel desire.  Religion is very good at this, often redirecting the desires of its most fervent adherents toward enlightenment, salvation, community, faith, discipline, and all the other things that religion offers.  It doesn't have to be religion - politics, art, business, and even leisure dip into the wellspring of desire.

Capitalism works as an economic system, and faces it's biggest problems, because it is based on desire.  People getting what they desire in exchange for their labor or their capital is at the heart of capitalism.  Desire causes people to work harder so that they can make more money and achieve what they desire - including snaring a mate to meet the more fundamental desires.  Capitalists attempt to make more money partly to get what they desire and attract those they desire.  Everyone working to get what they desire leads to a balance that Adam Smith called "the Invisible Hand."  Yet if the balance goes awry, and it becomes harder for many to achieve their desires and accumulation begins to favor a minority, then capitalism itself can be threatened.  Perceptions of such an imbalance is driving the current Occupy protests pitting the "99%" against the "1%".

In the end, though, desire is about connection, no matter how focused or abstract the desire is.  Why accumulate more things that you can't possibly use yourself?  Because you want them to create connections to others.  Why write, draw, paint, succeed in business, join a religion, or even just be a person of leisure?  So that you can reach out and touch others who will respond to your activities and also touch you.

This blog grew out of desire - a desire to reconnect with and know myself better, as well as a desire to see if any of what I have to share would connect with anyone else.  It has also helped me channel my activities into positive and life-giving activities rather than unhealthy activities that would touch into the dark sides of my desires.  There is a dark side to everyone's desires.  That dark side can take one down a path of pain, misery, obsession, guilt, and shame.  I have been there once or twice.  Such a road is the stuff that makes film noir's so uncomfortably enjoyable as they delve into the dark and seamy side of life.

There are also consequences to acting upon our desires, and we have to be ready for them.  I just saw a Twilight Zone episode, The Man in the Bottle, that very effectively showed what happens when we are able to get what we desire and the unexpected results that may occur.  What if LHM had been able to act upon his desire, if the pretty woman had been available, and had gone back to the ranch with her?  His trip might have hung in the balance.  He might have had to admit to her that he was just out for a quick romantic stop but no long-term relationship, and that may or may not have had consequences.  Or maybe, he might have been delayed in restarting his trip.  Or he might not have finished it at all.  There may have been no Blue Highways.  Ultimately, LHM took the energy of his desires seething inside him and produced his book.  In doing so, he reached a connection with many of us.

Musical Interlude

Speaking of consequences of desire, there are a lot of mythological stories and warnings about what happens to men overcome with desire.  The Greeks embodied the essence of desire into the Sirens, a group of mythological women with a sweet yet sad song that drove men to anguish.  Mariners were induced to shipwrecks by the Sirens voices and survivors would later die of thirst and starvation listening to the exclusion of all else.  In The Odyssey, Odysseus tells his men to stop their ears and lash him to the mast of the ship so that he could hear the Sirens' song.  They were to keep him bound to the mast no matter how much he begged until the ship was safely away.  In the 2000 movie O Brother Where Art Thou, the Coen Brothers adaptation of The Odyssey set in Mississippi, Ulysses, Pete and Delmar run across some sirens at a river that end in consequences imagined (at first) and real (later).  That will be your musical interlude for today - the "sireens" of O Brother Where Art Thou.  And in case any male readers are overcome with desire for the ladies who play the sirens, the actresses are Mia Tate, Musetta Vander, and Christy Taylor.

If you want to know more about White Salmon and Appleton

GoNorthwest.com: White Salmon
White Salmon Enterprise (newspaper)
Wikipedia: Appleton
Wikipedia: White Salmon

Next up:  Pitt, Washington

Blue Highways: North Bonneville, Washington

Unfolding the Map

The gorge of the Columbia River and its tributaries is great for damming, and William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) runs across the first of the dams, Bonneville Dam, as he travels upriver in Ghost Dancing.  I will look at the costs and benefits of dams, from their clean energy production to their social and environmental effects.  Go to the map to locate North Bonneville in the context of the Blue Highways journey.

Book Quote

"At North Bonneville, the first of the immense dams that the Corps of Engineers has built on the Columbia at about fifty-mile intervals, thereby turning one of the greatest rivers of the hemisphere into staircase lakes buzzing with outboards....

"....Dams are necessary, the Corps maintains, and you can't argue necessity; nevertheless, I don't think Lewis or Clark or the old Chinooks would care much for Bonneville.  But then, like the wild river, they are dead."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 7

Bonneville Dam. Photo at the Washington Department of Ecology. Click on photo to go to host page.

North Bonneville, Washington

As I wrote in my previous post, the 1930s were an era of massive public works projects put in place by the Roosevelt administration to help pull the US out of the Great Depression.  The idea was that if government spent a lot of money to put people to work building roads, bridges and dams (as well as commissioning other types of public works), this would put money into the pockets of ordinary Americans, who would spend the money and thereby increase demand in the economy.  This would, in turn, stimulate greater investment as businesses restarted or opened to meet that demand.

The series of dams built along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest were part of a number of these projects.  The idea was simple if not massive.  If the massive water flow through the Columbia was harnessed, it could provide power for an entire region.  Construction of the dams would put thousands of people to work and put money in their pockets as well as stimulate business.  The result was a series of what LHM calls a series of "staircase lakes."

The dams have certainly provided power.  According to the Bureau of Reclamation, about 80 percent of the electricity in the state of Washington is created by hydropower dams on the Columbia and its tributary rivers.  With this electricity has come development, in fact, without the electricity one might be able to say that Washington would be a rural state with little industry.  Folk-singer Woody Guthrie, commissioned by the Bonneville Power Administration during the construction of the Columbia dams to write songs praising their utility, fully endorsed this type of development during the Depression.  To him, dams meant industry and industry meant work for millions of economically distressed Americans.  Other nations have used their water resources to spur development and provide their energy needs.  Rising economic power China is the largest producer of hydroelectric power - and its Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River has the largest electricity generating capacity and is second in overall output to Itaipu Dam between Brazil and Paraguay because of seasonal water flow variance.

Of course, dams have their downsides also.  Advocates of wild rivers, or rivers in their natural state, lament the loss of so many rivers to this type of development.  LHM makes a nod to this view when he states that Lewis and Clark, and the old Chinooks who fished the Columbia River, would not like the Bonneville Dam.  However, it is ironic that at least in the case of the Bonneville Dam, it is situated near where an ancient landslide made a natural dam that blocked the Columbia River for some centuries, until it eventually broke through and washed away the debris.

In order to settle and develop rivers, the rivers had to be tamed somewhat, but wild rivers left to their devices were a seasonal provider of river sediment which enriched the native soils and created fertile ecosystems for animals and humans.  Today, the mantra is to put levees, dikes and dams in place so that the rivers stay in their places, at some environmental cost. 

Another downside is that dams can impede the seasonal run of spawning fish, even if accommodations are made for them.  Bonneville Dam, for instance, has a fish ladder to allow spawning salmon to run past the dam.  LHM argues in this chapter, however, that 10 percent of salmon are lost and fish suffer from a variety of maladies caused by high nitrogen content that the dam's spillways introduce into the water. 

The flooding of areas behind the dam also comes at great cost.  Some of the cost is due to the loss of irreplaceable natural features.  When the Glen Canyon Dam was finished in 1966, it flooded a stunning area of slot canyons and other geological features that will never been seen again.  The building of O'Shaughnessy Dam in California for San Francisco's drinking water supply was opposed by John Muir and other naturalists.  When they lost the battle, California lost a valley, Hetch Hetchy, that by all accounts was as stunning as its neighbor Yosemite Valley.  Communities can be affected as well.  There have been many accounts written of the 1000 towns, villages and even cities that have been or are being submerged by the Three Gorges Dam, which has displaced over one million people.  Even dam projects in the United States came at social cost - some 3000 people were evicted from their homes because of the Columbia's Grand Coulee Dam, and the town of Roosevelt was lost due to the construction of the John Day Dam on the Columbia. There are many other "drowned towns" around the United States.

The other cost can be a way of life.  When the building of the Columbia River dams disrupted fish runs, it also disrupted Native American traditional fishing grounds.  Since a primary source of food and income was affected, these communities have felt wide ranging social effects from the loss of this primary livelihood.

Dams are also popular politically - it's a long-term project that a congressman or senator can bring home to his or her constituents.  To have the Army Corps of Engineers or the Bureau of Reclamation come into a state, plan and build a dam, and bring in federal dollars for the project can be a great short-term economic stimulus and gives politicians something to brag about at election time.  Yet there can be costs to that as well.  Though the New Orleans tragedy was not caused by a dam, the Army Corps of Engineers appears to be responsible, though it has denied this, for some catastrophic levee failures in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina due to a lack of oversight.  Other issues include the "greening" of places not meant to be green and the allocation of water.  Despite some spectacular dams in the western United States that have put communities in the middle of deserts and made millions of acre feet of water available for agricultural use, the Southwestern United States is and will remain a desert.  The effects of dwindling water supplies throughout the southwestern states due to drought and overuse are only now beginning to be felt.  There are some that forecast that a cause of some major future world conflicts will be over access to fresh water - just watch what happens in the Middle East as Israel and its Arab neighbors all fight with each other over access to water.

"Roll on, Columbia, roll on" sang Woody Guthrie in the 1930s.  His was an optimistic look at all of the benefits the river could bring if we just dammed it and used it.  In the early 1980s, when LHM was passing through, there was a budding sense that maybe we'd dammed too much.  As we now pass through the early part of the 21st century, dams are a conundrum.  They provide clean energy but still have environmental and social consequences.  Some want to "undam" the rivers, but others want to continue to use this natural resource until we can find other cost-effective clean energy measures as alternatives to coal and oil.  Perhaps we're not too damned using dams, but maybe we'll discover another way so that the rivers one day can again run wild.

Musical Interlude

I mentioned him in the post so I might as well use him as the musical interlude.  Here's Woody Guthrie, the famous American folk-singer, with Roll On Columbia.

If you want to know more about North Bonneville

City of North Bonneville
Columbia River Images: North Bonneville
Wikipedia: North Bonneville

Next up:  White Salmon and Appleton, Washington

Blue Highways: Skamania, Washington

Unfolding the Map

Driving through tunnels inscribed with the date of 1936 high above the Columbia River on the Washington side, William Least Heat-Moon makes a passing reference to road building in a different time.  I take the opportunity to compare the time when the highway was built with our situation today, and make a not-so-subtle reference to today's politics.  I hope you don't mind.  Please feel free to take a look at the map if you are tracking LHM's journey through these posts.

Book Quote

"At Skamania the road climbed so far above the river valley that barns looked like Monopoly hotels and speedboats were less than whirligigs.  East stood Beacon Rock, a monumental nine-hundred-foot fluted monolith of solidified lava....

"....Volcanic bluffs along the highway were flittering with cliff swallows, their sharp wings somehow keeping them airborne.  High ridges came down transverse to the Columbia in long-fingered projections perforated by narrow tunnels, some with arched windows opening to the river.  Above each tunnel the same date: 1936.  To drive state 14 in the snow would be a terror, but on a clear day it was good to find road not so safe as to be dull; it was good to ride highway Americans wouldn't build today."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 7

Washington State Highway 14 Tunnel in Skamania County. Photo by Amy McAllister on the ActiveRain site. Click on photo to go to host page.

Skamania, Washington

At Skamania, which is a rural, unincorporated community in Southwestern Washington, LHM chronicles the following as he traverses state highway 14 which cuts into the bluffs above the Columbia River:

"Above each tunnel the same date: 1936."

When LHM wrote that, he didn't explain why the date is important.  It may be that in the early 1980s, people reading Blue Highways understood why dates from the 1930s were stamped all over construction.  However, some 30 years after LHM's trip, I think that it might be helpful to return to the importance of those 1930s dates that we see on buildings, road dedication signs, bridges, sidewalks and other public works.  I think that it might be important because as a nation in 2011 we occupy a similar place in history, and forgetting why a seemingly inocuous date on public works does not do our nation any good.

1936, if you'll recall from your history, was in the midst of the Great Depression.  The United States, indeed the whole world, was reeling in the worst economic disaster of that century, perhaps many centuries.  The Great Depression was brought on by overspeculation on Wall Street.  Demand was not keeping up with supply but investors were pouring their money into overvalued stocks.  When the bubble burst, as it always does, factories closed, and people suddenly found themselves out of work.  The richest Americans, who squirreled away their money, were in a position to weather the economic storm but millions of middle class people were thrown into instant poverty.  Banks, faced with a run on money, closed up and many Americans lost all their savings.  A lack of money in society, especially in the hands of the middle class, kept demand low and discouraged investment and the opening of new business.  It was a continuing self-defeating spiral.

The situation was desperate.  There was a significant rise in the number of people who were unhappy and who were ripe to consider alternatives to capitalism, such as socialism and communism.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democratic president born into wealth and concerned that the Depression could threaten America's democratic values (and, some would say cynically, the position of the wealthy in society) put into place programs based on the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes (also from wealth).  In a depression, Keynes argued, government is the vehicle to jump start the economy because government can print more money and spend it.  Therefore, the government is able to, by developing programs, put more money into the hands of people who will spend it, thereby increasing demand and leading to the startup of new business to meet that demand.  Roosevelt heeded these arguments, and put into place massive government sponsored work programs for the unemployed such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  Over the next few years, the US upgraded its infrastructure.  Roads were built or upgraded, bridges were constructed, dams erected, creating thousands of jobs that allowed many families to weather the worst of the Depression.  The activity wasn't simply restricted to giant construction projects.  Foresters planted millions of trees, and upgraded national parks facilities.  Artists and actors were employed, creating new public works of art, massive photo collections, and commissioning important new works for stage and dance. Some give credit to Roosevelt's programs for perhaps staving off revolutionary activity, but economists today felt that Roosevelt was too timid in his deficit spending.  Such government sponsored programs weren't the only way out of the Depression but they helped - when Roosevelt backed off on government spending in the late 1930s, the economy fell back into a morass.  Ultimately, it was another stimulus of even more massive government spending, this time to build guns, tanks, ships, planes, and ammunition that reopened factories, put people back to work, and started an economic boom that continued for decades.

When you see these dates from the 1930s on public works, it was because of government-sponsored programs and the people they hired to build these works.  When I was growing up, I noticed that most of the bridges along the Coast Highway were all built during this time.  It took me a few years to connect the dots - when they were built and why.  The fact is that most of those bridges are still being used.  They have been patched up over the years, but are still in service.  There have been media reports about the sad state of US infrastructure in the wake of government cutbacks, and lack of spending on these vital areas.

I also remember my grandmother, a social conservative but who voted Democratic, who thought Franklin Roosevelt was the greatest man ever.  After all, his programs put my grandfather to work in logging during the darkest times of the Depression, allowing her family of four children to survive.  You could say anything about any other president, but you didn't malign Roosevelt.

Today, we are faced with a similar situation.  After economic speculation and a series of burst bubbles, we are in recession with really no clear answers on when we'll get out of it.  Spending is down as the economy contracts, and businesses are in the process of downsizing.  Arguments range from continuing to cut the deficit (in other words, doing just the opposite of what Keynes argued) to spending more money.  However, unlike the 30s, society and politics is more polarized than ever, leading to government paralysis.  Would putting into place massive government infrastructure projects, like in the 30s, help?  I'm not sure.  The US has become a much more diverse society socially and economically.  Most adults aren't willing to do the labor jobs that people in the 30s would have jumped at.

Perhaps, in the age of information technology, constructing and upgrading the infrastructure for our information superhighway might serve as an alternative.  Perhaps government injections of money into hi-technology projects, putting people to work as programmers and engineers might be the answer.  It would also help maintain our security edge, which would appeal to people of all political stripes.  Then, we may be able to get data connectivity on our cell phones and notebook computers in remote places even as we plunge off the crumbling 1930s-era bridges that are collapsing under us.  What will it take, in 2011, to put people back to work and get money into the hands of the middle class so that our economy will revive?  It will take action rather than finger-pointing, bi-partisanship rather than division, constructiveness rather than obstructiveness.  Is it possible?

Musical Interlude

Loudon Wainright III has put out an album called Songs for the New Depression.  The songs are in the style of those that were popular during the Great Depression, and some of them are actually from that era - though I must say I like the song on his album called Paul Krugman Blues after the liberal New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner in economics.  Enjoy, if you can, Times is Hard.

If you want to know more about Skamania

Skamania County
Skamania County Chamber of Commerce
Skamania County Pioneer (newspaper) (Facebook page)
Wikipedia: Skamania
Wikipedia: Skamania County

Next up: North Bonneville, Washington

Blue Highways: Camas, Washington

Unfolding the Map

William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) is beginning to head east, but stops for an Arkansas Traveler moment with a farmer near Camas, Washington.  What does that mean?  Think of it like a mid-1800s version of the Abbott and Costello Who's On First.  There's a little more to such moments than just comedy, sit back, laugh and enjoy the show.  Oh, and take a look where Camas is located on the map.

Book Quote

"In Vancouver I lost the highway, found it again, and drove east on state 14 to follow the Columbia upriver until it made the great turn north....I breathed a fresh odor of something like human excrement.  Near Camas I stopped where a farmer had pulled his tractor to the field edge to reload a planter.  'What's that terrible smell?' I said.

"'What smell?'

"'Like raw sewage.'

"'That's the Crown-Zellerbach papermill.'

"'How do you stand to work in it?'

"'I don't work there.'"

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 7

Downtown Camas, Washington. Photo by Triddle and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

Camas, Washington

The passage above, where LHM asks the farmer what smells, reads almost like an Arkansas Traveler joke.  If you have never seen or heard an Arkansas Traveler joke, the format goes something like this:

Traveler:  Hey farmer, where does this road go?

Farmer:  As long as I've been here it ain't gone nowhere.

Upon first reading of the Arkansas Traveler jokes, the farmer comes across as an uneducated hick.  And some might see the Arkansas Traveler jokes as equating rural America with backwardness and a lack of education - a place full of dumb bumpkins.  In fact, Arkansas itself made the Arkansas Traveler it's official state song from the 40s into the 60s, and it is now classified as the official state historical song.  What the Arkansas Traveler really does is highlight tensions between people on opposite sides of the American cultural spectrum.

In the typical telling of the jokes, and in the song The Arkansas Traveler, the traveler keeps asking the farmer questions and keeps getting answers that seem evasive.  The traveler gets annoyed, but never quite gets the straight answer he wants.  He wants to know where the road ends up.  Of course, the farmer, perhaps uneducated but also very clear, literal and to the point, is in his mind telling the traveler exactly what is, not what the traveler wants.  Therefore, in the farmer's mind, the road has been there as long as he has.  It is still there and as far as he can tell, it isn't going anywhere soon.

The Arkansas Traveler has been traced back to as early as the 1840s as a fiddle tune and a popular skit performed by traveling comedy troupes.  The tune is the same tune that many of us teach our children to this day - "I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee.  Won't my mommy be so proud of me!  Yes I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee.  Ouch, it stung me!"  The skit, according to the website Not Even Past, looked something like this:

The skit portrayed a traveler (usually from the city or the East) coming across a squatter in rural Arkansas.  As the squatter repeatedly saws the first strain of the tune on his fiddle, the two engage in pun-riddled banter.  “Where does this road go?” the traveler asks.  “It don’t go nowhere.  Stays right where it is,” comes the reply.  Tension grows as the traveler’s questions become more antagonistic and the squatter continues to dissemble.  It is finally eased when the traveler grabs the fiddle and finishes the tune that the squatter had started.  Laughter ensues, and the squatter welcomes the traveler to stay the night.

From Sounds of the Past by Karl Hagstrom Miller

The University of California at Santa Barbara's Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project has a copy of the Arkansas Traveler skit on an Edison Gold Moulded [Cylinder] Record issued sometime between 1889 and 1912.  The performer listed is Len Spencer, and you can hear it here.  There are other versions of the recording, with variations in the jokes.

One can read these types of jokes as a commentary on many different things.  For those who want to look down on a rural life and see the inhabitants of a rural area in stereotype, these jokes can serve as a way to promote the superiority of the educated urbanite.  For those who trumpet the virtues of a simple, back-to-the-land existence and elevate the "salt of the earth" farmer and his plain-spun homey wisdom, such jokes show how out of touch high-falutin city-dwellers are.  Some might read class into the exchange between farmer and traveler, with a wealthy traveler looking down his nose at a poor farmer and the farmer taking the opportunity to poke fun at the rich traveler a little.  A more middle ground on this issue might be that people in both lifestyles don't communicate well and can't understand each other.

LHM, faced with the plain answer of the farmer, responds with a simple "fair enough."  However, it's clear that the farmer, living with with the smell of the paper mill every day of his life, simply takes it for granted. It has become part of his landscape, just as the dirt and the plants he grows and the farmhouse he lives in is part of his daily reality.  Chances are he hasn't even thought of the smell until LHM asks him about it.  Therefore, there is a disconnect when LHM asks him how he can stand to work surrounded by such a smell, and he responds by telling LHM that he doesn't work in the paper mill, thus signifying that he doesn't work in it.

I think overall, however, the jokes reveal even more about what was going on in America.  At the time, rural America was made up of more small farms, but there was tension between the urban, industrial centers and the rural farming communities.  We see the same types of tensions today in developing countries, for that's what the United States was in the 1800s, a developing country.  Add to those tensions the political battles between the industrial and urban North and the agricultural and pastoral South.  One might be able to read many of those types of tensions into the Arkansas Traveler.  This was at the beginning of a great shift that has come with industrialization.  Making a living at farming is difficult, and one or two bad years could bankrupt a farm.  Where would a farmer go if he couldn't farm?  He would end up in the slums and ghettoes of big cities and trying to find a job in the factories.  Farmers may have been the salt of the earth, the backbone of the United States, once, but then they found themselves competing with new immigrants such as Italians and Irish now.

LHM's twist on the joke is that all of the elements are right there in front of our noses.  The industrial Crown-Zellerbach (now Georgia-Pacific) paper mill, the rural farmer, and LHM all come together near Camas, Washington.  LHM is clearly not a wealthy traveler, but he is a traveler nonetheless and unfamiliar with the ways of the region that he is in.  He may be asking an innocent question, but he has no idea what suspicions, resentments.  He has no idea what the farmer thinks of him.  Remember, LHM at one point was looked upon suspiciously by a man and his wife traveling in an RV.  At best, the farmer is poking fun at LHM.  Most likely, though, the farmer thought his question a silly one, and answered accordingly.

Musical Interlude

I wrote that there is a song about The Arkansas Traveler.  I really wanted to find a modern version by Michelle Shocked from her Arkansas Traveler album, but I couldn't locate one.  However, I did locate a version by Archie Lee in the Florida Department of State's Florida Memory Project.  He touches upon a lot of the Arkansas Traveler jokes in the song.  It's very enjoyable, and shows that this particular and long-lasting version of the urban-rural divide stays alive and well even in the 21st century!

Arkansas Traveler by Archie Lee.

If you want to know more about Camas

Camas-Washougal Post-Record (newspaper)
Center for Columbia River History: Camas Community Exhibit
City of Camas
Wikipedia: Camas

Next up:  Skamania, Washington