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Forced Perspective

Back when paved roads were new and travel by car across the country was a spectacular adventure, various organizations printed detailed maps and travel guides to assist the driver in his quest.

One such guide was the Mohawk-Hobbs Travel Guide. This guide provides the intricate details of the "Victory Highway" which is today known as Highway 80. This highway crosses the Sierra Nevada mountains, the Nevada and Utah deserts and cross the rockies into the great plains.

The guide,(available online here) is an interesting read for anyone who has ever made the trip across country by car. It gives you a perspetive that has been lost on the nature of the people living at the time.

It must've been something to see that road back in the day. All two lanes and gravel shoulders, no signs, snowplows, tow trucks, buses to casinos or a McDonalds every 10 miles. Every town different from the next, every garage noted with detail for the help they could provide that you would most surely need. Those of you who tinker with old cars and say nostalgically that "They dont make them like that anymore!" rarely hear the answer from those of us who have sat beside the road with the said same "they dont make them like that " car rendered useless because of some mechanical oversight, often at the worst possible time in the worst possible conditions;

"And Thank God for THAT!"

I dont hold much nostalgia for cars of the past. I like the way they looked, but the idea of going back to an era of "points, plugs and condensers" every 3,000 miles vs. electronic ignition, compression ratios and maintenance schedules of the modern engine and I'll take todays engines any day of the week against anything produced in the past.

Travel guides are relics of the past. Today you zoom along at 80+ miles an hour in air conditioned comfort, listening to hours of MP3's or satellite radio under the watchful guidance of GPS, telling you of every gas station, restaurant along the way, all the while knowing that if anything were to wrong the Cellphone is there to help you out of your trouble. A written guide telling you theres a mechanic in the next town? ("just one"? you say.) Whats the sense? every town is the same as the next, there's the McDonalds, the gas station on every corner, the Wal-Mart and so on. You drive on radial tires that go 40,000 miles betweeen replacement, a feat in the old days of "re-cap" tires was simply unheard of. You have no idea what "vulcanization" is much less understand why the Mohawk-Hobbs guide tells you if there is someone who can do it in every town along the way. "It must be important" you say, but its lost on you as to what it is or why they cared so much about it.

Occasionally today you see the past expressed along the side of the road with a the sign that stares back at you like a mute ghost baring silent testimony to a world that no longer exists. For example, the sign "RADIATOR WATER" as you drive up the Grapevine from the valley floor up Tejon pass on California I-5 harkens back to a time before pressurized radiators, when any water would do and to car engines that had barely enough power to pull the bulk of the cars of that age, over that pass.( again, look great, generally drove like hell, no power steering, no power brakes, and ahem... no power!)

Today, even the smallest economy car flies right over the pass with nary a thought of the regular travails of those who stood at the side of the road, radiator cap in hand, to a fountain of hot steam being ejected from a too small radiator, temporarily scalded and stranded there on the roadside on the way to the promised land that was just over "the hill".

Every time I go over the Grapevine, I'm painfully aware of what it means. I smile as a fly over at 80 miles an hour with the engine temperature not even taking notice. The "RADIATOR WATER" sign passing on my right, marking the base camp on so many earlier summits of the great pass. I usually see someone in the side of the road, filling their late model beater car with water and I always say a quiet prayer for the poor bastards trying to force the last bit of work from the old piece of detroit iron. Another alumni from the school of "been there done that" trying to make do with what they have.

Deep from within the Mohawk-Hobbs travel guide for the old "Victory Highway", (printed between 1926 and 1936), I noticed the following entry for the road between Golden Colorado and Denver:

U.S. Veterans' Hospital. used mostly for gassed soldiers of the World War; about 4,000 patients. The largest of its kind in the country.

A simple entry. They might as well be describing the existence of the local Wal-Mart. There was no cure for victims of poison gas. This was, sadly, not much more than a warehouse for men to live out their days in some level of dignity that would be unattainable anywhere else. What stuck me most of all with this, is the mundane nature of the entry. From the perspective of their time, this was to be expected and was routine; it was simply a part of life, worth comment as an "aid to navigation" for the travelling public, but no emotional reaction was necessary or expected.

From my modern eyes and sensibilities, its evidence of a horror. The certain horror of mechanized industrial war.

Somewhere along a very rudimentary two lane road that streched from coast to coast called the "Victory Highway", thus named to denote a War fought far away, stood a Veterans Hospital. Built at a time when the surrounding community had less than 1,000 people, what was then known as Hospital 21 and later as Fitzsimons medical center.

Today, the facility is closed, its original use as a tuberculosis ward and a warehouse for men injured by the horror of poision gas, is thankfully, no longer necessary. Aurora Colorado is now a large population center with several hundred thousand people living in the area. The "two lane road" is now a true highway eight lanes across and all concrete, well marked and kept clear of snow all year long, and never smaller than two lanes in each direction across all three thousand miles of it.

None dare breathe the word "Victory" in the modern world, lest they be mocked by the intelligencia as nothing more than a country bumpkin. Might as well revert to its original Greek term "Nike" for all the use we give it.

Poison gas attacks and the victims they produce, seem to be made of the sticky web like threads of a bad dream. People tell you that such horrors exist, but you yourself have never seen anyone, much less ever known of anyone who experienced such a thing. The men who were once warehoused in this facility who were victims of poison gas attacks in the "World War", and the families who knew them, have all long since passed. Since their entry into the facility, no fewer than four major wars have occured with wounded far in excess of the 4,000 that were once housed here for one unique type of wound.

Weaponized Poison Gas. Once upon a time in the not too distant past there was a large government run hospital in far off Colorado, dedicated just for living victims of this terror. The dead of course, stayed in France; about 85,000 of them. Today, the area is probably on its way to becoming an IKEA where crappy swedish furniture made from sawdust and formadelhyde can be sold on the cheap. The history of the hospital and the lives and experiences of the men who once lived there, lost under the trolley wheels of so many shopping carts.

When I look back at history, I'm never quite too sure if we've come a long way, or if we have a long way to go. I suppose it all depends on your perspective, whether you are stranded on the side of the road, radiator cap in hand or zooming by at 80 miles an hour, whether you are a witness yourself to poison gas attacks and the effects that they cause or if you have no idea what that phrase really means.

The century which started with such promise, was in fact one long war, with an occasional armistice seemingly given only for the convienence of the combatants to reload their weapons. Peace, what there was of it, came only at the end of the century with the brevity and meaning of an afternoons daydream.

With the turn of the century came a new war, and with it a new perspective but a perspective forced from a view made without the council of those who faced the horrors of the past, like a driver broke down on the side of the road, stuck wondering and not really knowing if its going to be ok to take the radiator cap off the hot engine or not.

With that generations passage, the generation that knew trench warfare and "no mans land" and yes, "poison gas attacks" came the curse of ignorance to which we are in some ways, still afflicted. With that generations passage went the sure knowlege that comes from witnessing the horror of war to be replaced with the air conditioned comfort of ignorance.

Posted @ July 23, 2007 10:26 PM | Current Affairs