The Journey: Kicking a Dead Horse

THOUGHTS ABOUT TOWNS AND CITIES WE VISITED IN 2023

My mind, and this is a bit troubling, continues to revisit Barstow, California, population 25,000, and #1 on my list of the Worst Cities Visited in 2023.

I have a theory about cities in decline, or damned near dead, and I’m going to share it with you at this time.

Barstow was in its heyday during the 1940’s and 1950s, a rest stop, an oasis if you will, in the middle of the desert, fed by Route 66, the wildly popular thoroughfare in the U.S. at that time.  Drive through Barstow today and you will see the remnants of that heyday, the motels and small cafes and trinket shop dotting the main road, cutting through the heart of the city, the heatwaves glimmering and shimmering just above the concrete, signs which once proudly announced America’s Highway now faded, chipped, pockmarked by gunshot, or given up the ghost and crumbling in a parking lot.

What happened?  President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which opened the door for funding of the Interstate Highway System we now travel today . . . and that Interstate Highway System bypassed Barstow and many other once-thriving cities and towns.  Within a few years of that signing, a military base, just outside of Barstow, was deactivated, making it a one-two punch to the kisser for that once-thriving city, left to sweat in the 110-degree temperatures and dream of better days.

You can find many of these towns and cities traveling east to west or, if you prefer, west to east, along secondary roads which once thrived, but few of them have taken such a severe hit as Barstow.

I was less than impressed when we pulled into Barstow, back in February, 2023, for a gas fill-up, but little did I know that there is a revitalization, of sorts, happening in that city. The population has actually risen by five-thousand in the last ten years; the defunct military base has reopened; two corporations of some heft have broken ground for construction; the schools received grant funding; all in all, even though not apparent to a visitor’s eye, the city is making a rebound, and I, for one, am happy to report that fact.

I thought about another once dying city, in Eastern Washington, once a booming lumber town, left to die on the vine back in the 1950’s as lumber lost its economic clout, the name of said town is Leavenworth.  Two visitors stopped by that town on the way to Seattle, fell in love with it, became citizens of it, and spearheaded a revitalization of the town over the next ten years, turning it into a Bavarian village and one of the top tourist destinations, today, in Washington State.

The point of this rather meandering article is that some cities find a way after being dealt what could have been a death blow.  They find a way to reinvest, or find investing, they strengthen the infrastructure, they invest in education, in short they do whatever they have to do to make change happen.

And then, in other parts of this country, there are hundreds of towns, and cities, which seem to have given up, accepted their dismal fate, and await the vultures to pick over their bones.

I just find it interesting, is all. I do know that education is crucial for there to be hope, and no amount of arguing with me will change my mind.  An educated population means skilled workers, and skilled workers are appealing to corporations.  An educated population signifies hope and forward movement. An uneducated population signifies, as they say in Spanish-speaking countries, NO MAS!

THE ARRIVAL OF OUR FIRST ATMOSPHERIC RIVER

It’s happening as I write this, our first atmospheric river, hopefully the only one this year, possibly one more, something we Washingtonians know quite well.

For those of you not familiar with the term, our atmospheric rivers start somewhere in the vicinity of Hawaii, and they stretch all the way to our shores, over two-thousand miles of one storm after another, broken up by, no exaggeration here, maybe an hour or two of showers rather than downpours. The term “atmospheric river” is fairly new to our northwest jargon; growing up, we just said “it’s raining a lot this week.”  Now we have a fancy name for it, like the Polar Vortex, also a new term for an old occurrence, meaning it’s going to be damned cold this week.

Anyway, it started today, Monday, November 4^th, and if we are lucky, it will end sometime Thursday night/ Friday morning.  This is the kind of stuff that wears out even native Washingtonians and has us web-footed stoics complaining to anyone who will listen.  The weather reports drone on with a call for inches during the day, inches during the night, and flood watches are issued, rightfully so, for valleys and any intersections poorly planned by overworked City Developers . . . and up in the Cascades, it means feet of snow, not inches, and skiers and snowboarders dream of the upcoming weekends when they will pay overinflated lift prices for the chance to hurtle down hills at breakneck speeds (remind me, sometime, to tell you the story about the one time I went downhill skiing).

This is the type of weather that had me dreaming of road trips this winter, but the Fates had other plans for me, so here I am, writing about the moist misery and hoping my dreams can happen in January.

So there you have it, your climatology lesson for the day, a new term to flash around at your friends, make you look smart while you sip a cocktail wherever you are, surely less-waterlogged than I am at this moment.

BACK TO BARSTOW FOR A MOMENT

This is like kicking a dead horse, pardon the rather descriptive terminology, and Barstow certainly isn’t dead, maybe not even on life-support, but it’s not break-dancing either, so there you have it.

I was thinking about Barstow’s heyday, back in the 50’s, when I was an adolescent, and suppose I had lived there at that time instead of Tacoma.  I would have become aware of that city at a fairly exciting time in its history, travelers coming through that town constantly during the summer, new faces, new businesses opening, an air of excitement for sure.  And as I got older, and the city got older, would I have noticed the subtle changes? Would I have noticed businesses slowly fading, shuttering, decaying? Change happens slowly in most cases, it seems to me, and those who witness those changes really don’t notice the day-to-day alterations to their way of life . . . it’s more like noticing in a reflective time, looking back a decade, or two, that’s when you really notice the monumental changes which have occurred around you.  Right?  Or am I losing my sanity completely?

I guess what I’m saying is the old-timers in Barstow, and other cities like it, would not have noticed what was happening to their city until things had gotten so bad it was time for debriding, way beyond the point of quick fixes, time for amputations and rebirth.

Looking back with the dispassionate eye of a historian, it’s easy to see what caused major changes, and that view from the cheap seats makes it very easy to point out what should have been done . . . but when you are knee-deep in it all, day-to-day, life isn’t nearly so crystal clear, now is it?