America's Declining Infrastructure

I remember America before we had the Eisenhower-Autobahn network, when we drove through rural Ohio looking at the Burma Shave signs coming up, each with a line of a little ditty advertising that product, farms and cows etc. floating by

I remember when the Indiana Interstate was new and how it rolled across the Northern part of the state, and the other road they built that linked Chicago with Detroit (a thriving place then)

I remember being in Los Angeles before the freeways were built (even then there was a little smog at mid day sometimes)

My father was a railroad buff, and bemoaned the destruction of that Transportation system

I remember looking at the miles and miles of fencing and thinking " somewhere, there is someone making a fortune with a factory that is turning out an incredible amount of storm fencing to line all these interstates"

It never occurred to me that that factory would someday be somewhere outside of the United States, and the profits offshore somewhere 

Lastly, I remember when the I 95 bridge collapsed in part of Greenwich, CT,  ( the dumb inspector ran back and tried to falsify his inspection entry and got caught at it...and then we were told over the years how all these bridges such as the Pulaski Skyway in New Jersey were on the verge of collapse)

Today, they have pretty much replaced the Bay Bridge in San Francisco and of course their is the Tappan Zee Bridge project ( someone should write a book about the mess of the Tappan Zee project)

Living in NYC, a place of bridges and tunnels, not to mention the subway tunnels etc., we are still reeling from the flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy and the corrosion caused by salt water ( the results of the flooding have hastened the collapse of all this infrastructure, making the Sandy flooding "the gift that keeps on giving" in the words of one wag

America is at the crossroads on the Infrastructure issue now, but nobody talks about it much ( instead we are preoccupied with illegal immigrants, or as another wag said "future Democrats") 

You will not hear it mentioned much in any of the Presidential primary debates, that's for sure

Such is Life in these United States