1985 Kansas Trip Revisited

Since my last issue I have been thinking a good deal about a project I had started then, dealing with our trip to Kansas City in 1985. My intention is to copy into my computer a selection of slides and prints of the pictures I took during our trip and prepare a series of some 5 narrated slide shows with a Photo Story program from Microsoft.

That means I have been avoiding current events more than usual partly because here so near Vancouver, everything including newscasts has centred totally on the Winter Olympics, for which the opening ceremonies are to begin this weekend. I have discussed in a previous issue my lack of enthusiasm for the whole idea of the Olympic movement and though I hope for a good outcome, it is impossible for me to adopt the enthusiasm for it now evident all around me. It also means I will try one more issue on the subject of that 1985 trip across the great western plains and mountains of the United States.

The daily papers I picked up at some of our stopovers for a flavour of opinion in the local areas stayed in storage for lo these many years and now become a reminder of those times. Ronald Reagan was just five or six months into his second term after a resounding victory in 1984. By June Reagan was having trouble getting his budget through Congress, reports were abroad about a White House connection to both overt and covert support for the Nicaraguan contra rebels, columnist George Wills, who 25 years later is still a talking head on television, was writing about trouble with the liquidity of some of America’s Savings and Loan institutions. He pointed out the complexities of the banking system requiring the populace to trust the bank system mostly on faith and surprisingly for one on the right side of the political spectrum, he said “modern society requires government that looks over the shoulder of, and occasionally nags, the makers of the many networks of institutions on which we depend.”

Weather was hot during the whole of four weeks on the road. Our car, a diesel, was not air conditioned and most of our driving days were long. On May 22^nd we drove some ten hours from Yakima, Washington to Boise in Idaho, much of it following the path of the old pioneer Oregon Trail. In my journal that evening in Boise I remarked,

“Another thing that impressed us was the mile after mile of arid, semi-desert country so well connected up with super highways. The few places that are tamed for human use are really only oases in a vast desert.

It strikes me too, in driving those many desolate miles today, how narrow is the margin between life sustaining growth and extinction of our kind. Amazing as it is to see what wealth has been wrought by our technological exploitation of available resources, we are always near the brink. There seems no security to our existence. In this arid country fantastic quantities of food are produced in the few tamed oases where water from the rivers and deep basins can be used for irrigation. But imagine how quickly this would all turn to dust if the taps were turned off. All it would take is one serious interruption of power sources to stop the pumps and the flow of water. That is only one example. ”

It took us three more days across the emptiness of Wyoming and Nebraska to reach Kansas City and our reservations for the Rotary International Convention. Vice president, George H. W. Bush, was scheduled to speak for ten minutes to the last plenary session, and though we had arranged an alternative tour to follow that afternoon, I was totally astounded with the vast amount of security abroad all that morning in preparation for his short attendance. It irritated me to be stopped and checked repeatedly to get into the hall and by the obvious cost of all the staff and equipment to enable him to make what I suspect was nothing more than a political gesture on behalf of then Senate Majority leader, Robert Dole, of Kansas.

We left the convention on the morning of May 31 and took another couple of weeks to get back home via visits in Kansas, several days in Salt Lake City and stops across Nevada and California along the coast through the redwoods to Portland and home. It was a memorable journey for us in many ways but we soon settled back into our stay-at-home ways.

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