Adios American Pie

In Detroit, a rustbelt city busy waving bye-bye to the auto industry, there are plans to split the burg into a collection of small urban centers separated from each other by countryside. This reverse-supersizing is already well on the way to implementation in Flint, Michigan.

I remember touring some Mayan ruins several years ago. A pyramid and a few other impressive stone structures stood restored surrounded by neatly trimmed lawn. I climbed to the top of the pyramid and peered out over the jungle. The guidebook described how the city originally spread for miles in every direction. But for reasons unknown to us, the Mayans abandoned it, giving the entwining vines the only opening they needed to take back what had been theirs.

I imagine some day archeologists will explore the area we now call “Detroit” and conclude that at one time a large, vibrant people group—future anthropologists will call them something like Factory Workers Americanus—had inhabited a vast area but apparently abandoned the land for some reason which, by then, will be lost to history.

The day after I started working on this blog, I came across another item that does not portend well for this nation. WWMT in Kalamazoo, Michigan reports, “More than 20 of the state's 83 counties have reverted deteriorating paved roads to gravel in the last few years, according to the County Road Association of Michigan.” It only costs about $10,000 per mile to grind up old pavement and replace the road surface with gravel. To repave costs $100,000 per mile. This phenomena isn’t isolated in Michigan. According to WWMT, although the trend is biggest in Michigan, it is happening in other states as well.

When Charles Erwin Wilson, then GM president, was on his way to being President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Defense, he told the Senate, “…for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa." Certainly Michigan’s troubles can be directly traced to the failing auto industry. Was Wilson speaking a truth perhaps bigger than even he thought at the time?

The American automobile has been the icon of the good life in the United States for the last 60+ years. It enabled the invention of something called “suburbia” which set the stage for modern America, the America that became the leader of the free world.

But now the automotive heartland is plowing itself under and letting its roads revert to ruts. Can the rest of the nation be far behind?