The thoughts and ideas expressed below are exclusively those of Jack Straley and www.justplaintalkwithjack.com.  We may agree, and that’s fine, or we may disagree, that’s okay too.  My sole purpose is to encourage others to think, study, and become involved. Exercise your freedom and above all, when presented the opportunity, please vote.

Today I want to look back on some things that are changing.  Maybe a lighthearted look at what was, what is and what may be.  Our world is changing and I wonder if it’s really a good thing.  I have just returned from a trip from Alabama, through Mississippi, through Tennessee, through Arkansas, through Texas, through New Mexico and finally arriving in Arizona.  For future reference, late July is not the ideal time to go to Arizona.  Some of the changes I saw were big and important while others could easily be overlooked.

Almost immediately after leaving home I noticed one plant that appears to be resistant to drought conditions, Kudzu.  While the long tendons of the plant make interesting designs on guide wires attached to utility poles it continues to alter the appearance of the area around. You can actually watch and hear it grow.   It was imported to halt erosion of the soil but now it takes over the land, trees, utility poles and abandoned structures.  It creates its own eerie sleepy hollow conditions.

There was a time I lived in a house bordering Highway 281 in central Texas, before the creation of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System.  On hot summer afternoons I would watch cars speeding by while listening to the whine of tires on the hot pavement.  Our world has now changed, people travel, far and wide.  Cars were crowded onto the interstate jockeying for position as they raced along.  Big tractor trailers hauling goods from one coast to another sped by, or we sped by them.  Some rigs with as many as twelve axles or forty-six tires hauled equipment of every design.  Trains loaded with containers could hypnotize as they rolled across the open country usually with two engines pulling and two engines pushing.

We had power plants generating electricity on rivers and coal or gas fired generators supplementing them.  Our power source has changed.  We now have nuclear power plants and ungodly solar farms and wind generators.  Little does the public accept the fact that these new systems cause more pollution than the hydroelectric or coal and gas fired generating plants ever did.  The highways and byways are seeing new modes of transportation, electric cars, some driverless.  Electric and driverless trucks are being tested in Arizona today.  Trains of today are mostly diesel generated electric behemoths.  150 long strings of cars are not unusual.

Passing through the booming metropolis of No Trees, Texas, one thing has not changed.  There are still no trees for as far as you can see.  The sandy farm fields around Pecos, Texas still grow tasty cantaloupes.  The oil fields still reek of money with the noxious odor of Permian Basin Oil.

You can always see more trains going both east and west but they are not spewing the huge plume of black smoke they once were known for.  Controls for these snakes of steel are now computerized and the number of personnel to operate them has been reduced as has the number of Hobos riding for free.

For entertainment we once listened to AM radio stations with all their static.  Every so many miles we would work trying to find another station with good reception.  Later came AM-FM radios, then 8-Track players offered more music, ad free.  8 track players were replaced with cassette players offering lots of music on a small tape.  Entertainment then passed to CD and DVD discs.  We had music and movies in our cars.  Now we have progressed SirusXM for news, weather, sports, and music.  Even the train engineers can listen to the music on discs.

I said earlier July was not the ideal time to go to Arizona, I meant it.  The first time I traveled from Texas to California it was summer.  Our car had vents that we could open using a lever inside the car.  This would enable the car to be flooded with outside air, not cool.  We learned we could cool things down by placing blocks of ice, in tubs, in front of the outside air vents.  This was old time air-conditioning.  Now as we travel my wife wants the A/C turned down, she’s cold, it’s 108 outside.  Oh well, things change.

One of the biggest changes in our world concerns trains.  As a youngster I had a model train set, when laid out, the tracks formed a figure eight.  Always it circled the Christmas tree in December.  It had an engine, four cars, and a red caboose.  As we drove along we spotted train after train.  The engines were dirty and graffiti covered every car and they were long.  Going fast or slow, we knew they were keeping the world moving.  However, I looked at train after train, going both ways, and couldn’t help but get a little sad.  I never saw one that was complete.  As our world changed, so did the trains, they lost their caboose.  It should be a crime, there is no way a train can be what it should be or do what it should do without a bright red caboose as the last car.