Speeding down the track at 110 mph passing
cars going down the freeway paralleling the tracks as if they were standing
still puts the world in a different perspective. The foreground is a streak of different
shades of green and the background is an evolving panorama of beautiful
scenery; meadows, lakes, forest, cattle, corn fields, rivers and many more
variety of plantations. From the point
of view of the train, it seems like 90% of farming is corn and the other 10% is
soybeans. There is corn everywhere.
One of the interesting scenes was a large
gaggle of geese and a large flock of wild turkeys, about 40 birds in all,
feasting on a field of recently harvested wheat. It seemed like a race of who could eat the
most in the shortest time. Another was a
scene of a group of deer entering the edge of a corn filed probably with
anticipation of doing some serious eating.
It reminded me of a scene from the movie Planet of the Apes (1960s
version) when Taylor and his team come across a group of humans raiding the
ape's cornfield. From the vantage of the
high seats of the train you can see the full splendor of the water lilies
covering the ponds and the ducks and geese swimming in the open areas.
Through
Detroit
An interesting contrast was to see the
urban decay of Detroit with the stop before and after the Detroit station;
Royal Oak and Dearborn. These two
stations were nice clean and well manicured There seem to have been pride in
maintaining them "presentable."
The houses near the train line were well maintained with flowering
gardens, fresh coats of paint and none of them with old shingles. Detroit on the other hand was a scene of
decay reflecting years of neglect and lack of money to maintain them. There are many reasons for this of course;
the urban flight of the 1960s and 1970s began the loss of the tax base. The flight of industry to the suburbs was
another nail in the coffin of lost tax revenues. The globalization of the auto industry -
moving production to lower labor areas throughout the world, following the
flight of population and industry in the 1960s and 1970s was another nail in
the coffin. But the final nail, I
believe, was the legal decision to allow city workers to live outside the city. Not only did Detroit lose the tax base of the
70+% of the city workers that moved out of the city, they ended up not only
leaving a void in the city’s tax base, through their pay they took city funds
out of the city and spent them in the suburbs – a double economic whammy. The State had no incentive to support the
city and, I imagine, seeing an opportunity to break and a Democratic stronghold,
opted to go after bankruptcy and privatization instead of finding and promoting
equitable solutions where society and the State win. It is kind of like the parents abandoning the poor children and then coming back to punish them because they have not kept up the property.
From the vantage of the high train seat you
can see many burned homes where it was obvious that no attempt was ever made to
save them and restore them. The view as
the train made its way through the city were residential plots overgrown and in
total decay, hundreds of industrial buildings vacated and laying in waste,
parking lots were late model cars had been taken and stripped were sitting on
blocks. Street after street in need of
repair a sad and terrible scene that made one want to cry.
Typical scene of Detroit from the train
Chicago
Chicago Is such a huge contrast from
Detroit, the downtown is alive with businesses and tourism, it is a functioning
city. Unlike Detroit, Chicago, with its
financial sector and markets at the core of the economy, is very diversified
and would never suffer the type of economic downturn that could happen to a
one-product town – Detroit’s auto industry. Gary, Indiana, on the other hand, also shows
the remnants of the decline of the steel industry over 30 years ago. Some of the foundries are still standing
collecting rust.
Abandoned Steel Plant in Gary, Indiana
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