We seem to be smugly sitting back and thinking that we're still the leaders of the world in all things.
Let's take a few minutes to see if that works out to be true.
First, we were of course — at one time — the leaders of the world in atomic weaponry. We had the only "workable" atom bomb to bring World War II to an end. But, obviously, we're not alone in that capacity today.
Could we have prevented other nations from proceeding with their own development of such weapons? Possibly, but not using "the bomb" to end the war in the Pacific would have meant the death of more of our own citizens, and we were certainly sick and tired of our war casualties by the time the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
So, let's say that it's really a standoff on that terror for the present — unless some Russian idiot deploys such weaponry to save his face in Ukraine. But, hopefully, we'll work our way out of that situation with the fact that no other nation wants to be the target of the retaliation that would result from making the first move against us. Could we count on that? Your answer?
Let's move on to the fact that nationwide our traffic is choked beyond belief in cities (especially large ones) that have more automobiles than they have room for. We once led the world in their manufacturing and now we curse their existence — except for the electric hybrids and the couple of them that we may own ourselves.
How many people are old enough to remember that when General Dwight Eisenhower returned from World War II? He was almost ecstatic about the German creation, the Autobahn, but then did very little to copy it here in the U. S.
True, it was primarily designed to allow faster movement of military power from one area to another, but it also kept traffic out of cities. But now Germans are making wonderful use of it as a way of ignoring traffic tie ups that they would have accrued by driving through cities.
How many people can remember riding a bus or driving from Olympia to, say, Toledo in the 1950s and now wonder if they could even make the same trip today?
As a kid from Tacoma going to a boarding school in Portland, I can remember what it was like to ride a Greyhound on Centralia's Tower Avenue, crossing the railroad tracks to Gold Street on the way to Pacific Avenue in Chehalis. Imagine the Interstate 5 traffic today traveling on those same streets!
The point I want to make is that we ignore the fact that traffic will continue to increase as population increases — as it always has — and I-5 is already loaded to a maximum.
What are we thinking about tomorrow? How do we plan to deal with it?
Many other nations of the world have switched to fast electric trains. I've had the opportunity to ride on at least one of them. They're magnificent, but those trains don't run on tracks that were designed and built a 100 years or so ago.
Now, compare that with the condition of American railroads tracks. Am I wrong, or have our derailments increased in recent years?
We might suspect from the list of recent accidents that money is more important than speed, maintenance and safety.
And while we're on the topic of trains, have any of you had an opportunity to count the number of cars that now make up an average train going through Chehalis and Centralia these days? Both the trains and the tracks seem to be progressively overloaded. When I was a kid and we were stopped from crossing the tracks by a passing train, we'd usually count the number of cars as they went by and — as I remember — never did we reach more than about 65 or so, and certainly not 100 as we could have easily done today.
In fact, I seem to remember a letter to the editor not too long ago where somebody did that very thing and came up with a total well over that 100-car length.
Is that safe? What's your opinion?
And, lastly, I have a confession to make. In a recent column, I bragged about having conducted a total of 970 wedding ceremonies as a legal minister of the Universal Life Church. My mind must have gotten twisted. A later check showed that there were really only 917 of them.
My only defense is that when spoken aloud, 917 and 970 sound almost the same.
Sorry. See you next week.
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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.
