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Stephen H. Provost is an author of paranormal adventures and historical non-fiction. “Memortality” is his debut novel on Pace Press, set for release Feb. 1, 2017.
An editor and columnist with more than 30 years of experience as a journalist, he has written on subjects as diverse as history, religion, politics and language and has served as an editor for fiction and non-fiction projects. His book “Fresno Growing Up,” a history of Fresno, California, during the postwar years, is available on Craven Street Books. His next non-fiction work, “Highway 99: The History of California’s Main Street,” is scheduled for release in June.
For the past two years, the editor has served as managing editor for an award-winning weekly, The Cambrian, and is also a columnist for The Tribune in San Luis Obispo.
He lives on the California coast with his wife, stepson and cats Tyrion Fluffybutt and Allie Twinkletail.
Ruminations and provocations.
Filtering by Tag: highways
We’re still in a pandemic, and we’re still social distancing, so you might think traveling is the last thing you want to do, right? Not so. I’m convinced that if you do the right kind of traveling, it can be the best thing for you.
Read MoreWe Americans have a selective memory. And we trust labels over facts.
Anyone who doubts this only has to look at two words: Infrastructure and healthcare. Infrastructure is supposed to be something that “everyone agrees on.” Who doesn’t want better roads? And who has a problem with the government paying for them?
We view good highways as a human right. Healthcare? Not so much.
But it wasn’t always this way. There was a time, back in the late 1800s, when our roads were in terrible shape. If you wanted to use yesterday’s highways, you had to depend on private businesses to surface and maintain them.
Why would businesses want to do that? The only ones with any incentive were merchants, and manufacturers who needed them to distribute goods. Naturally, the roads used by these merchants and manufacturers were in decent shape. The rest of them were barely passable – if at all. If those businesses weren’t on a direct route, tough luck. You, the ordinary traveler, had to go out of your way to be sure they were getting their money’s worth.
Sometimes, a long way out of your way. Halfway decent roads back then were a maze of twists and turns and double-backs.
The private businesses that forced everyone to go out of their way weren’t in it as a public service. Like today’s insurance companies and drug makers, they wanted to make money. If travelers happened to benefit, that was fine. If they were inconvenienced or got stuck in the mud, that was fine, too. It didn’t matter to them.
If you like the fact that today’s roads aren’t a bunch of rutted, muddy dirt trails, you’ve got the bicycle to thank for it.
Cyclists back in the late 1800s weren’t happy about the sorry state of the nation’s roads, so pressed for legislators to dedicate more money to improve what we now call “infrastructure.”
The prospect was expensive. The federal government resisted setting aside money for highways, preferring to kick the can back up the (dirt) road to states, counties and those private businesses.
But the movement picked up steam once farmers joined the cyclists in calling for better roads.
One cycling activist, Isaac Potter, published a plea to farmers detailing the cost of bad roads to their bottom line: He put it at $2.35 billion, which would translate to about $56 billion today – pretty close to Michael Bloomberg’s net worth.
Wagons broke down as a matter of routine; sometimes people were hurt or even killed.
Potter made another point, too: Roads in places like France, Belgium and Italy were well maintained – even country roads. The condition of these foreign roads stood in marked contrast to the terrible shape American highways were in. One early road advocate ranked them alongside Turkey’s roads as the worst in the world.
This was all back around 1900.
Flash forward to today, and the arguments on healthcare are eerily similar. Poor healthcare coverage costs the American economy billions of dollars in lost productivity. When people go bankrupt to pay obscene medical bills, it kills consumer spending: They’re no longer fueling the economy by spending on things like cars and Christmas gifts. And that’s not even mentioning the real price: People without health care suffer. They die. They leave loved ones behind who don’t know what they’ll ever do without them.
More than 100 years ago, other countries were building and maintaining roads while the United States was doing neither. Today, other countries are treating and curing patients, while the United States is – that’s right – doing neither.
Back then, Americans responded. Starting in the 1920s, the federal government began kicking in serious money to build and maintain the nation’s highways. As part of that, the feds got to decide where the new highways went.
That didn’t sit too well with the merchants and manufacturers who had controlled where roads were built up to that point. They didn’t like the government deciding to bypass their businesses for the good of those who actually needed to use the road. They did everything they could to stop it from happening.
But they failed.
Today, drug companies and insurers won’t like being bypassed, either. Not for the sake of the people who need to use healthcare. Not for any reason. That’s why they’re fighting the idea of universal healthcare tooth and nail.
We’re all used to government funds paying for our roads. We don’t remember what it’s like before they did. Today, we view good roads as a human right. If we don’t have them, we get mad at the government and demand them. We don’t remember what it was like before the government paid for them, because we weren’t around then.
If we did remember, though, we’d realize it was exactly what it’s like now with healthcare. Other countries provide it; ours doesn’t. Other countries are saving money because they’re willing to invest in something worthwhile. Something noble. We’re not.
If you want to dismiss universal healthcare as “socialism,” you’ll have to dismiss the federal road system, too.
But maybe we should flip things around and look at it the opposite way. What if we started viewing healthcare as human infrastructure? Without it, our society will break down, just as wagons broke down on those muddy, potholed 19th century roads. Our economy will suffer. People will die, too – and a lot more of them.
History forgotten is hypocrisy unleashed.
The history of our highways holds lessons for today’s healthcare crisis. It’s time we start listening and doing something to save the human infrastructure that’s crumbling right before our eyes.
Last year, I went on a “bucket list” tour of the Lincoln Highway, Route 66 and other highways across the country while compiling information for my latest book, Yesterday’s Highways. It reminded me of a lot of things I missed — highway sights and experiences from my youth that are just no longer there. So, I decided to compile a list. Here are my top 10:
The Sunset Drive-In in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Drive-ins are largely at thing of the past. At their peak, more than 4,000 such theaters dotted the landscape; today, there are barely 300 (The Sunset in San Luis Obispo, pictured at top, is one of them). Many of them made their home along the highway, close enough to town for easy access, but far enough away to keep the bright lights and revving engines away from quiet neighborhoods. Some drew attention to themselves with huge neon-lit murals on the back of their screens, where giant horses reared up in San Pedro and Van Nuys, and sailboats plied the ocean waves in Lakewood (all in California and all, sadly, gone today).
A juice stand, no longer serving juice, in Chowchilla, Calif.
I grew up on Highway 99 in California, and whenever I’d head north, I’d pass something called the Mammoth Orange in Fairmead, near Chowchilla. It was a juice stand under a giant canopy that also served “Alaska-sized” burgers. There was one at the southbound exit that, at some point, got painted blue and white with little stars and a red stripe. It was called Fast Eddie’s and got torn down in the 1990s. The stand off northbound 99 lasted a little longer, until a new interchange forced its removal in the middle of the next decade. Fresno radio personality Dean Opperman even recorded a song about it, as his alter-ego, Bobby Volare.
A Howard Johnson’s postcard touts its 28 flavors of ice cream.
At one point, HoJo seemed like it was everywhere. The roadside restaurant-diner-coffee shop started out as a Massachusetts ice cream stand serving 28 flavors back in the 1920s, and within a half-century, it was the nation’s largest restaurant chain. It had motels, next door, too. The chain exploded in the 1940s when it won contracts to build locations every 50 miles or so along eastern turnpikes. Everyone recognized its orange roofs, weathervanes and “Simple Simon and the Pieman” logo. But by the 2010s, the chain had been reduced to a single location, in Lake George, N.Y.
An old-style International House of Pancakes building in Burbank, Calif.
Yes, this chain is still around, but somehow, it’s just not the same. Who can forget the days when it wasn’t called IHOP, and when it wasn’t just another boxy restaurant? The earliest International House of Pancakes locations were housed in steeply gabled A-frame buildings with Tudor-style siding and a replica gas lamp on the sign out front. The chain really did go for an international flavor back then, offering menu items like Maine Blueberry Pancakes, Viennese Potato Pancakes, Brazilian Banana Pancakes and Tropical Tahitian Pancakes. Ah, those were the days!
Sprague’s Super Service on Route 66 has been restored but no longer sells gas.
There was a time when service stations really did offer service! When you pulled in, you’d hear a double bell go “ding-ding,” and an attendant in a spiffy (sometimes in a cap and bowtie) would come out and pump your gas for you. Not only that, he’d check your tires and your oil, wipe your windshield for you, and give you a free map of the area if you needed directions. Phillips 66 even enlisted former nurses to make the rounds to be sure its restrooms were clean. The era of full service went out the window for the most part in the 1970s with the Arab oil embargo, but a few places, like Oregon, continued to put the “full” in “full service.”
Mom’s Cafe in Utah.
Long before Starbucks was charging $4 or $5 for a designer cup of coffee, roadside cafés were keeping motorists and truckers awake with coffee for a quarter. Or a nickel. Back in 1977, Perry’s Chuck Wagon on Highway 99 ran a special charging a nickel for a cup of java (the regular price was just 20 cents). It was my parents’ regular stop between our home in Fresno and my grandparents’ place in Southern California, and we’d always pick up a sandwich and a slice of pie there. Unfortunately, the small chain went out of business, along with many other mom-and-pop roadside coffeehouses.
A bovine statue stands guard over a road in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Once upon a time, roadside architects put an emphasis on the creative. An ice cream stand might be shaped like and cone, or a root beer place like a mug of root beer. There was a chain of seven motor inns called Wigwam Villages, stretching from Kentucky to the West Coast, where you could spend the night in a replica wigwam. Giant “muffler men” like the Gemini Giant in Illinois and Big Chip in Pennsylvania guarded the side of the road, along with their female counterparts, the Uniroyal Gals. Attractions like the Blue Whale of Catoosa on Route 66 gave kids a break from the long, monotonous drive. Most of them are gone now, but a few are still there, remnants of an age when crazy was cool and creativity stole the show.
Valentine Diner at the Route 66 museum.
Yes, they still have diners, but most of them aren’t what they once were: long, rectangular prefab buildings that looked like rail cars because they were built at a factory and transported to their ultimate destination... yes, on rail cars! One manufacturer, Valentine Diners, sold small, boxy buildings for $5,000 a pop (or monthly payments of just $40). With just 8-10 stools, they were easy — and cheap — to operate with just a waiter and a cook. It’s no wonder so many of them popped up along the nation’s highways in the middle of the 20th century.
The Blue Whale of Catoosa on Route 66 in Oklahoma.
Before Disneyesque super-sized theme parks, smaller roadside attractions dotted the highway, such as the aforementioned Blue Whale of Catoosa and an animal park behind Pea Soup Andersen’s restaurant on Highway 101 in Buellton, Calif., which operated around 1970. There was Santa Claus Lane in Santa Barbara, where giant statues of Santa (poking his head out of a chimney) and Frosty the Snowman held forth, overseeing a line of Christmas-themed shops and restaurants along the California Coast. They’re all gone now, but the street is still called Santa Claus Lane. One of my favorites was Lion Country Safari in Irvine, Calif., where you could drive a jeep through the park and gaze at African-wildlife like zebras and, of course, lions. Unfortunately, it closed in 1984.
Old Motel Drive in Fresno, Calif., is now just a memory.
You knew you were coming up on a new town when you saw the glow of neon lights up ahead. Once upon a time, motels owners built neon gateways to many towns, offering travelers a place to bed down for the night. They were like miniature versions of Vegas, and they provided a template on which the Nevada gaming capital built its empire. But as new interstates bypassed old highways, those neon gateways lost their luster. The motels that once seemed so glamorous were torn down or forgotten, converted into apartments or seedy, low-rent shadows of their former selves. The neon went dark, turning out the lights on the golden era of America’s highways.
