Dave Barry - Dave Barry Slept Here

Nevertheless, the West was gradually being settled. The federal government had acquired assorted western territories like Utah through treaties with the Native American inhabitants under which the united States got the land and the Native Americans got a full thirty minutes’ head start before the army came after them. In 1889 the U.S. government opened up the Oklahoma territory, which resulted in the famous “Oklahoma land rush” as thousands of would-be settlers came racing in to look around, resulting in the famous “rush to get the hell back out of Oklahoma.”

Another important acquisition was made in 1867, when Secretary of State Seward Folly purchased Alaska for $7 million, which at the time seemed like a lot of money but which today we recognize as being about one third the cost of a hotel breakfast in Anchorage. Alaska was originally a large place located way the hell up past Canada, but this proved to be highly inconvenient for mapmakers, who in 1873 voted to make it smaller and put it in a little box next to Hawaii right off the coast of California, which is where it is today.

While all this expansion was going on, presidents were continuing to be elected right on schedule in 1868, 1872, 1876, and so on, and we’re pretty sure that at least one of them was named Rutherford. Also during this era the large eastern cities began to experiment with a new form of government, favored by newspaper cartoonists, called the Easily Caricatured Corrupt Spherical Bosses Weighing a Minimum of 400 Pounds system. This system was very unpopular, because it resulted in an unresponsive government filled with overpaid drones and hacks who, no matter how little they did or how badly they did it, could be removed from their jobs only by the unelected bosses. The result of this discontent, the Reform Movement, produced the modern “Civil Service” system, under which drones and hacks can be removed only by nuclear weapons.

In 1880 the voters elected a president named Chester, and in 1884 they elected one named Grover. We now think this might have been caused by a comet. Also there was a hideous hassle involving William Jennings Bryan and something called the “gold standard,” but every time anybody tries to explain it to us we get a terrible headache. We have the same problem with the concept of “second cousins.”

1. Can you name another famous person for whom a service plaza is named?

(Hint: Vince Lombardi.)

2. What is “rip-snortin’,” anyway? Do you think it should be legal?

3. Do you have any second cousins? So what?

By 1890 the west had been tamed and could even obey simple commands such as “Sit!” Now the United States was no longer an infant nation but a mighty young colossus, bestriding (Unless there is no such word.) the continent—in the words of Mark Twain—”like some kind of mighty young colossus or something.” America was the Land of Opportunity, and its symbol was the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the French that had been dedicated in 1886 in a spectacular ceremony featuring a thousand John Philip Sousa impersonators. The statue was placed in New York Harbor, where its raised torch served as a welcoming beacon of hope andfreedom to millions of oppressed and downtrodden fish. Then somebody came up with the idea of taking it out of the water and putting it on an island, and from that day on it was a major tourist attraction for European immigrants, who flocked to America by the millions, drawn by the promise expressed in the stirring poem by Emma Lazerus:

Give me your low-income individuals Tired of these dense tempest-tost huddles Yearning to get the hell off the boat And retch all over the teeming shore

And so they came—the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Germans, the Greeks, the Klingons, the Marcoses—lured by tales of good jobs and streets paved with gold and plenty of closet space. But what they found was quite different. What they found was New York City—a frantic, bustling place; a giant (to use Mark Twain’s phrase) “fondue pot” in which people from many nationalities, crowded together by necessity, gradually began to realize that despite their differences in language, custom, and religion, they all, in the end, hated each other. Also the Americans who already lived here, except for Emma Lazarus, were not exactly crazy about immigrants either. And so the new citizens formed neighborhoods, and they moved into cramped tenement apartments, and a lot of them still live there. They don’t move out even when they die, because New York apartments are too valuable to give up.

As New York City grew and prospered, it began to form corporations, enormous “super-companies” whose vast resources enabled them to do something that smaller firms could only dream of: transfer people. This created a demand for new Cities, which soon flourished in places such as Minneapolis, Chicago, and even, for a brief period, Cleveland.

But perhaps the most important new industrial area was Detroit, founded by Henry Ford I, who also invented the Ford, forerunner to today’s Isuzu. The key to Ford’s success as an industrialist was his discovery of the assembly line, which worked on a simple principle: Instead of having the workers move from place to place to assemble the cars , he had the cars move from place to place to assemble the workers. For some reason this proved to be extremely efficient, and in 1913 the Ford Motor Company began cranking out thousands of the famous “Model T.” By modern automotive standards, the Model T was very primitive: It had no electric starter, no radio, no heater, no air conditioner, no brakes, no transmission, no engine, and no wheels. The only way to get it to actually move was to have four or five burly men pick it up and stagger down the street. But it was affordable, and people bought it like crazy. “What the hell,” they said. “There’S nowhere to go anyway, here in 1913.”

Meanwhile, another historic transportation development was taking place in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, a desolate spit of sand where two young bicycle mechanics named Wilbur and Orville Wright Brothers had gone to escape from people who teased them about their first names. Also they were interested in heavier-than-air flight. They used to sit on the dunes for hours, studying the soaring sea gulls, hoping to learn the aerodynamic secret that kept them aloft. And then one historic day, a shout rang out: “I’ve got it, Wilbur! They’re using propellers driven by gasoline engines!” And then another shout: “I’m not Wilbur! You’re Wilbur!” This was after many days on the dunes.

Nevertheless they went ahead and built their “flying machine,” and on October 8, they were ready for their first flight. Unfortunately, it had to be canceled because of equipment problems at O’Hare, but they persevered, and finally came the historic moment when Wilbur, or possibly Orville, managed to get the frail, odd-looking craft airborne as far as Atlanta, where he changed to a connecting flight (Daily except Sunday; featuring “snack” service.), thus successfully launching the Aviation Age, although his luggage was never found.

This new spirit of soaring optimism could also be detected in the arts, most notably in the work of Horatio Alger, who wrote a series of very popular “rags to riches” stories in which a poor but intelligent young man is able, through hard work and honesty, to locate the Wizard of Oz. A number of talented American painters whose names escape us at the moment sprang up and created a number of important paintings that we probably still cherish today. The same thing happened with sculpture, not to mention women and minority groups, who continued to make gigantic contributions despite continuing to have no more legal rights than gravel. All in all, the turn of the century was an exciting, boisterous time for America, a raucous cacophony of energy and invention, idealism and hucksterism—in short, to repeat the words of the brilliant poet and chocolate manufacturer Walt Whitman, it was “loud.” This caused imperialism to wake up.