Open Writing

America’s incredible history of land and infrastructure development will remain unique. It can never be repeated anywhere else in the world. In the space of little more than four hundred years, a huge continent has been explored, mapped, fought over, populated and yes, exploited. Expediency, unfettered entrepreneurialism, greed, and the desire to be free are among the forces contributing to this phenomenon.

It would be hard to propose which of these driving forces has been paramount, but it could be argued that expediency was the oil that lubricated the machine. For most of the USA’s history, over-regulation has blessedly been kept on the back burner. Of course, such freedom has its negative side, and the free for all era is substantially over, appropriately so in many cases.

The first time I visited America, my flight arrived just after sunset. Long before I landed I had been eagerly peering through the plane window, trying to discern what I could of the country I was planning to settle in. Three sights struck me as remarkable. The first was the tiny specs of light surrounded by millions of acres of darkness. Another was the occasional crossroads in the middle of nowhere, lit by a single streetlamp; such lonely sight. The third impression was of the dazzling brilliance of the larger cities.

On the ground, it was plain to see how these three, different, but linked phenomena came to be – pole mounted power lines. Everywhere I looked, power lines looped and radiated like gigantic spider webs, but not nearly as symmetrical, or as pretty. They seemed such a blight on the landscape to my, still English, eyes.

The lines drape all across the urban sprawl and into the suburbs, with occasionally a single thread detaching its self from the main swath and heading for the hills, seemingly on the way to nowhere. But I would later come to know that at its end would be a farmhouse or the home of an individual who valued his or her privacy.

Cross any hilly or mountainous region in America by plane and you will see the cleared power line rights of way criss-crossing the terrain, bringing electricity to remote hamlets and farms. One can only imagine the stultifying impact on America’s progress if regulations had mandated that all the low voltage service lines be buried in the ground.

The fabric of the railroads offers a similar impression. In many parts of the country there is still an air of the “Wild West” about the ramshackle station buildings and the often neglected rail beds. The impressive engineering feats required to complete this huge transportation network are often at odds with some of the unfenced tracks, rickety trestle bridges and highway crossings, many of the latter marked only by a post. The overall feeling is of “can do,” rather than “know how to do.”

Inexpensive and readily available power and transportation were two of the elements that allowed the mass of the population to settle almost anywhere, and in so doing facilitated rapid development. The third was water. Of the three houses I have owned in America, two relied on well water. When this emerges in conversations with the English and Europeans I meet, I see a look of incredulity cross their faces.

I can almost see the picture they have in their minds of an isolated log cabin with a ruddy faced maiden, wooden yolk across her shoulders, carrying two buckets of water. Alternatively, if they have seen enough western movies, they may be imagining the ranch pump with a hung-over cowboy cranking the handle to splash away his thick head. In truth, I have hardly been aware that I had a well. If I was reminded of the fact at all, it was only by the sparklingly clear, chemical free water I drink.

Most domestic wells consist of a tube around 6 inches in diameter that is sunk into a hole anywhere from a hundred to five hundred feet deep. An electric submersible pump at the bottom of the well brings water to a pressurized tank in the house. A pressure switch signals the pump when to start and stop. A good well will continue to deliver water without the owner paying it any heed, other than to replace the pump every twenty or thirty years.

Like the above-ground power lines, wells have allowed people to live just about anywhere they please. Had new communities been forced to wait for municipal water, the population would have been concentrated in or close by the cities, forcing up the price of land. Much of the visual evidence of expediency at work in America isn’t pretty. For me, it is still difficult to accept, other than when I think of the millions of immigrants who would not have found haven here, had it not been for the “can do” era.

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