The Mexican Revolution

This is one of those posts that start off and then sit around as a draft for a very long time.  Looking at this, I started the post, or just the topic really, in 2012, and here it's 2015 and I'm writing on it again.

Anyhow, what motivated me to write it is the excellent photos posted this week on the theme of the Mexican Revolution on the Old Picture Of The Day blog.  Or, rather, it was the comments that caused me to revive the post.  The reason being is that people really don't grasp the Mexican Revolution at all.

 

Mexican refugee entering the United States.  In spite of the caption, his wealth is probably all on this horse.

For one thing, people seem to think that the revolution was something like the Villistas against the Federales.  Not hardly, or at least that's not the whole story by a long shot.  So, let's take a look at what really happened, as its a significant story, and the long range impacts of it still very much impact us today.

Mexico has had an entire series of revolutions, as is well known, but they are not all of the same character.  I don't intend to list each and every one, as that would be a book in and of itself, but it's important to realize that revolutions have been part of the Mexican story in a way that they have not been in regards to the United States.  We had one revolution, or arguably two if you regard the Civil War as one, but in each instance ours had the feature of having the revolutionary side not even conceive of itself as being in rebellion, and featuring a democratic government.  It would have been perfectly possible for a soldier to serve, for example, in a New York state militia during the Revolutionary War and not conceive of himself as being in rebellion against anything.  Likewise, the Civil War, while a species of rebellion, wasn't quite regarded that way by either side that fought it.

Mexico's revolutions, however, have been real revolutions.  They didn't arise with the concept of protecting a set of liberties and rights from trespass, but sought to overthrow a rule or government entirely.

The first successful revolution was against Spain, of course, and it set the pattern for a large number of them that came thereafter in that they were really revolutions by Spanish aristocracy in Mexico against, at first, Spain and then later against each other.  The Mexican people had very little stake in them.  It wasn't really until Juarez rebelled against the French and their installed Austrian Emperor that a different type of revolution, that being the people against an perceived oppressor, arrived in Mexico.  Unfortunately for Mexico, and the Unites States, by that time a very pronounced political culture of having Caudillos, strong men, was well established, and in spite of a people's rebellion, it really couldn't be broken.

Caudillos, or strong men, aren't unique to Hispanic cultures by any means, and its worth noting that they almost seem to be the global rule, rather than the exception. They're the exception to us largely because we're heirs to English culture, where strongmen have not been appreciated very much.  Indeed, perhaps the biggest single example of an English language strongman can be found in that of Oliver Cromwell.  While the Lord Protector was a force during his life, not all that long after it the English Restoration occurred and Cromwell was posthumously sentenced to death, which required his body to be exhumed and beheaded.

A culture which feels so strongly about dictators that it'd dig one up to behead him isn't going to have very many.

In contrast, the example of a strongman whose is both a dictator while simultaneously being given as an example of the will of the people is surprisingly common in many cultures.  In our view, this is always negative, but in some cultures we can still find examples of such a person being heroically viewed.  Napoleon gives perhaps the best example. We think of him as a megalomaniac, but in France, and in much of the Latin world, he's viewed as a liberal hero.  In order to do that you have to separate his actions from his declared values, to some extent, but then he actually was a liberalizing force while also being a dictator, an odd combination.  That model is one which Maximilian I of Mexico, the unwelcome French installed Austrian "emperor" of Mexico himself sought to emulate.

In Mexico's case, pretty much every  revolutionary leader prior to the rebellion against France was a Cauldillo or Caudillo wannabe from the Spanish aristocracy, with very little concern being exhibited for the average Mexican. About the only exception was Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla who lead a revolution from 1809 to 1811, and whom was a Catholic priest.  He lead a rebellion against Spain, which failed, and which resulted in his execution, but he clearly sought to give voice to the peasantry and the onset of his revolution is today celebrated as the Mexican independence day, even though it didn't result in it.  Subsequent rebellion against Spain was not such an egalitarian affair and following revolutions in Mexico were, for many years, simply power struggles between the landed military Spanish elite.  It was not until Indian Benito Juarez successfully rebelled against Emperor Maximilian, the Austrian nobleman that France had installed as Mexican emperor, that a leader rose up through rebellion who was a member of the peasant class.  Even then, oddly enough, Maximilian was himself a species of liberal Cauldillo, espousing the liberal views of the French Revolution even while acting as a foreign born emperor in Mexico, while Juarez would not always strictly adhere to democratic values.  In essence, Maximilian was a foreign liberal dictator, much in the mold of Napoleon, while Juarez really started off as a liberal peasant rebel.

 

 Benito Juarez, Mexico's first president of Indian ancestry.

Juarez died in 1872, and from there things descended into confusion.  As I don't intend to do a history of Mexican politics, I won't, but rather I'll simply note that one of Juarez's electoral opponents was Porfirio Diaz, who had been a member of Juarez's army.  He entered politics thereafter, but rebelled against Diaz's successor, and like seemingly all failed Mexican revolutionaries, he took refuge for a time in the United States.  Returning to Mexico he secured election to the presidency and evolved into a dictator, occupying that position for thirty years.  He was another enigmatic figure in that he was a dictator, but a type of liberal, both repressing democracy and seemingly dedicated to the advancement of liberal ideas. Business did very well under his regime in Mexico, and he differed from prior liberal Mexican dictators in that he did not oppress the Catholic Church, which liberals often did in a seeming desire to crush the institution that the Mexican populace held closely. He also neither aided nor repressed the common population, something that was an unusual middle ground.

 

Porfirio Diaz in full military costume.

A person simply cannot rule for thirty years without being an autocrat, even accidentally, and at some point a revolution would become inevitable.  But the way it came about was particularly odd.  He gave an interview in an American magazine.

 

 Porfirio Diaz in Pearson's Magazine

By the first decade of the 20th Century Mexico had seemingly settled into a comfortable business oriented dictatorship.  Diaz was firmly installed in that role, and he ruled under the thesis that the Mexican people wanted him there, which some no doubt did.  His downfall came, oddly enough, when he expressed the opinion that Mexico was a real democracy in an interview given to the American Pearson's magazine.  That was in 1908.  In that interview he stated that if the Mexican people wanted to replace him in an election, they could do it.

That an interview in an American magazine would spark a Mexican revolution is fairly amazing, but perhaps it shows how interconnected the world was, even then.  That interview brought in Francisco Madero, one of the least likely Mexican revolutionaries a person could imagine to the forefront.  Madero was an odd character, to say the least.  Highly idealistic, he was very much given over to the spiritualism movement that was gaining ground at the time, and he believed he was in direct contact with the spirit of Benito Juarez.  Taking Diaz at his word, he challenged him for election in the campaign of 1910.  The Diaz regime, in the meantime, drew itself closer to the United States, with Diaz meeting with President William Howard Taft in a meeting in which he emphasized his role in boosting Mexican business and American business in Mexico.  Ultimately Diaz had Madero arrested, but, given leave to move about the city of Monterrey, he escaped and fled to the United States, a move common for almost all Mexican revolutionaries.

Unlikely looking revolutionaries, the Maderos.  Maderos entire family became involved in his efforts to bring about democratic reform in Mexico.

This sparked the revolution.  Madero, not willing to give up, raised an Army and crossed back into Mexico.  His supporters in other regions of the country rose up.  Colorful figures like Emiliano Zapata and Francisco "Poncho" Villa appeared on the scene as Maderoistas.

 

More typically imagined in a sombrero, General Francico Villa.  The colorful, erratic, and perhaps somewhat mentally unstable Villa would attempt to retire to a ranch he acquired after his surrender to Obregon and Carranza, but he ended up being assassinated under cloudy circumstances in 1923.  His killer would live into the 1950s and declare at the end of his life that he'd rid the world of a "monster".

 Emiliano Zapata and his staff.  Zapata was an agrarian and looked the part, which we in turn tend to confuse with the look of the Mexican Revolution.  As with many leaders of the Mexican Revolution, Zapata was assassinated, although unlike Villa he still commanded an army in the field at the time of his death.

That revolution sought to install Madero as the rightful democratic president of Mexico, and it was opposed by Diaz's government and its conservative backers.  While it didn't have the expressed support of the United States, it had the implicit support of the US in that the local, highly conservative, American mission to Mexico viewed Madero as a species of dangerous radical, something akin to a socialist, and they feared both his movement and what it would mean for American business interest in Mexico.  Nonetheless, Modero's forces prevailed and Diaz surrendered in May, 1911, agreeing to go into exile.  Madero became the president of Mexico.

 

American soldiers observing the Battle of Juarez from the El Paso side of the border.

If only Madero could have been idealistic enough, and naive enough, to take on Diaz and win, he was also singularly unsuited to rule Mexico.  Having just overthrown very entrenched interests, he seemed to believe that he could take over the mechanisms of government and simply rule.  He therefore left the defeated Mexican army in place.  Diaz's army had little interest in the liberal ideas of Madero, and the result was virtually inevitable.  Moreover, Madero soon faced rebellions by his own former lieutenants, and a newly freed Mexican press exercised its voice for the first time in critizing Madero.  Soon Madero was faced with a plethora of rebellions from the right and the left, and had to rely both upon those forces which remained loyal to him, and the Mexican federal army.

In 1913 Victoriano Huerta, a Mexican Federal general whom had been successful in putting down revolts against Modero, launched one of his own with the support of remaining Diaz supporters and the support of American Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, who distrusted Madero.  H. L. Wilson was not to be long in his role, as at that time Woodrow  Wilson was already elected to the Presidency and coming in, so his actions not only were improper, but they came at the very time in which he was going out and a more progressive administration coming in.

Henry Lane Wilson, whose views proved to be a discredit to the United States and which did damage to Mexico.

Huerta was successful in his uprising against Madero and ultimately the victors acted to have Madero killed.  Huerta was the new Mexican strongman.

 

Huerta looked every inch of the part he was to play in the Mexican Revolution.  He died of natural causes in an American jail after being arrested for plotting to involve Germany and Mexico in a war with the United States.

Almost immediately significant figures in Madero's forces, including Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata rose up in rebellion against Huerta, and in many ways the revolution we typically think of as being the Mexican Revolution, which was really its third act, got started.

 American soldiers of fortune in Mexico, serving in Villa's Division del Norte.

On this go around, revolutionary forces ultimately sort of coalesced around Venustiano Carranza, a Mexican revolutionary who was a rancher and a true radical.  Carranza never had the level of support that Madero had, and his views were to the left of Madero's.  In Carranza, the opponents of revolution in Mexico were faced with a man whom, while much weaker in support, was really much more of the man that they feared.  With the various revolutionary factions supporting him, Carranza managed to quickly defeat Huerta, who went into exile in 1914.  Ultimately, like deposed and losing Mexican forces and personalities seemed to do, he entered the United States in 1915, where he was cheeky enough to negotiate with German agents and Mexican revolutionaries in an effort to bring Mexico into a war with the United States.  Arrested, he died in an American jail of unknown causes.

 

 Revolutionary, intellectual, and radical. General Carranza.  His government fought Villa and Zapata successfully, but he'd go down in a coup lead by his own general, Obregon.

Before that could occur, however, the United States intervened, sort of, in the Mexican Revolution in the Tampico Affair.  Woodrow Wilson, justifiably horrified by the actions of Henry Lane Wilson, declared Huerta to be an illegal occupant of the office and enacted a blockade, of sorts on Mexican ports, preventing them from receiving foreign arms. Soon enough, an American sailors and Marines ended up having to land, and fight, in Vera Cruz, where their superior numbers guaranteed their success in the landing.

 

 Tower damaged by Naval gunfire in the Battle of Vera Cruz.

 

 

 Sailor searches Mexican man in Vera Cruz.

Indicative of things to come, perhaps, Huerta was defeated and fled while the United States occupied Vera Cruz, but he was no more pleased about the American presence there than a disgruntled Huerta was, who went on to plot with German agents to bring Mexico into war with the United States, as noted.  American forces withdrew in November 1914, but they'd be back, as we'll see, in a different location only shortly thereafter.  The intervention at Vera Cruz, however, did prevent the Germans from supplying a shipment of arms to Huerta, which may or may not have had an impact on the Mexican Revolution.  Ironically, the arms were actually American made as the Germans, in 1914, were not in a position to export arms to Mexico.

Carranza soon found himself fighting the two main stars of the Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa and Emiliano  Zapata. Zapata, while he receives less attention, is by far the most interesting of the two as he had a real political vision for Mexico, that being a distributist agrarian state.   Villa was more of a peasant free agent, with less defined goals. Suffice it to say, however, both had been highly successful revolutionaries and a betting man would have bet against Carranza at that point.

However, Carranza was a radical as well, and that position allowed him to undercut support for a war weary Mexican population in the south.  This began to undercut support for the agrarian Zapata, and he began to face supply problems and accordingly set backs in the field.  Nonetheless Zapata was still in the field in 1919 when he was lured into a trap in an effort to secure supplies and assassinated.

In the north, Pancho Villa, who had been a very successful natural cavalry commander, found himself unable to adapt to the changes in battlefield tactics that were also being used in Europe.  Constantly in battle against Carranzaista commander Alvaro Obregon, who used barbed wire and trenches, his fortunes rapidly declined.

 

Alvaro Obregon, whose competence and study of military tactics lead to the defeat of Pancho Villa and his Division del Norte.  He'd ultimately become present of Mexico following his coup against Carranza.  Obregon would serve one term as president of Mexico, and was elected to a second term to follow his successor Calles, but he was assassinated prior to taking office.

But before they did, Carranza, in spite of a dislike of the United States, approached the Wilson administration about transporting troops through Texas by rail to be used against Villa.  Wilson had been horrified by H L. Wilson's actions in bringing about Madero's downfall, and he deeply desired to see an end to the fighting in Mexico.  Deciding to recognize Carranza as the legitimate ruler of the country, he granted permission for this to be done in 1915. Traveling under arms, they were used against Villa.  Villa retaliated against the United States for its entering the conflict in this fashion by raiding Columbus New Mexico on March 9, 1916.

 

The raid on Columbus has seemingly baffled American historians ever since, but the reasons for it couldn't be more apparent.  Villa was a fairly simply man, not a diplomat, and he had been attacked by Carranza's forces after they'd crossed the United States by rail.  By doing that, the US had taken a position in the war, which indeed it had whether President Wilson recognized that or not.  Indeed, Wilson had been warned by those knowledgeable not to support Carranza, who deeply disliked the US, and when it wasn't clear who was going to win the civil war.  Wilson's actions did nothing to engender love from Carranza but it did inspire Villa to retaliate against the US.

 

U.S. Army ambulances headed south as part of the Punitive Expedition.

This resulted in what's known to history as the Punitive Expedition, in which the United States briefly became a participating, again, in a Mexican Revolution. Designed only to punish, and perhaps capture, Pancho Villa, the United States ended up basically mobilizing its military infrastructure in order to send a force into Mexico, and in order to be prepared for war with Mexico, which seemed likely to break out any minute.  An expedition under the command of General John J. Pershing was in the field in Mexico for nearly a year, penetrating ever deeper into northern Mexico, but never being able to catch up with Villa. The entire time relationships with Carranza's government deteriorated, and Carranza never viewed the US. as an ally in his fight against Villa.  By the end of the expedition American forces had exchanged gunfire with Carranza's troops and it was unclear to the men in the field who the enemy was.  As a purely accidental benefit, however, the expedition caused the United States to mobilize its military establishment prior to its entry into World War One and the Army had dusted out its cobwebs, used the National Guard on the border and conducted large unit maneuvers in field conditions for the fist time since the Spanish American War.  March 9, 1916, was arguably the start of American participation in the Great War.

 

These soldiers are probably National Guardsmen. Their campaign hats are the previous type, not the M1911 campaign hat, which had just come into service and which went to Regulars first.  Nearly the entire National Guard rotated to the border on border service during this period, out of a genuine fear that a war with Mexico was right around the corner.

 New York National Guardsmen serving along the border.  These officers are (self) equipped with the new pattern of campaign hat.  Col. Wingate carries the newly adopted M1911 .45 ACP pistol, in the pattern of swivel holster adopted for cavalry. The officer on his left carries the prior pattern of revolver, probably a double action Colt .45, a pistol which came into emergency service due to the failure of the .38 during the Philippine Insurrection.

 American serviceman in Mexico, probably serving in the Quartermaster Corps. This soldier is mounted on a stock saddle, not a McClellan saddle, which was a standard saddle for packers and quartermasters, and which would shortly be given an official designation of M1917 Packers Saddle. The saddle, however, had been in use since about 1905.

After Carranza died, Obregon took over. And that death came in the way that the Mexican Revolution featured.  He was murdered in a conspiracy featuring one of his own general, Obregon.

 

Mexican civilians, potentially refugees, in U.S. Army camp in Mexico.

Obregon, in spite of his dispute with  Carranza, continued to take Mexico leftward.  He faced a rebellion in his single term as president, and then handed the reigns to Plutarco Calles, who likewise continued to head left.  Calles and Obregon were, moreover, opponents of the Catholic Church, reviving an anti clericism of the left which became massive in some regions of Mexico.  Ultimately at least one governor of a Mexican state was so far to the left as to be practically a communist, if not in name, and killings of clerics became a localized feature of Mexican rule.  Suppression of the church and churchmen occurred, including closing of seminaries and a prohibition on wearing religious clothing in public.  The Mexican revolutionary state had effectively gone to war against the church, and ultimately in 1926 another rebellion broke out.

 

Calles, unlike all of his predecessors going back to Madero, was not assassinated.  After Calles' assassination, he continued on in power and became increasingly authoritarian, and he began to flirt with fascism.  He was ultimately forced into exile in the United States in 1936 but was able to return in 1940.  Ironically, given his hostility to the church,in his old age he joined Madero as a spiritualist.

Called the Cristero War, this war is properly recognized as one of the many wars of the Mexican Revolution, with this one again featuring peasantry against the government. The revolution failed, but not before the Cristeros lost 30,000 men, the government 50,000 and 250,000 Mexicans fled to the United States. This formed the last peasant rebellion against the state, but attempted military coups would occur as late as 1938.  In the 1980s, Zapatista forces once again appeared on the scene, recalling the agrarian dreams of their founder and the Mexican army never was able to really put them down.  By that time, however, Mexico was transforming, finally, into a true democracy, which it is today.  Decades of rule by the PRI, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, dedicated to unending revolution, came to an end.

So, as we can see, the Mexican Revolution is something that, in at least the common American view, we don't quite recall accurately, which isn't to say t hat we get it all wrong.  But it was a much, much longer struggle than we imagine, and a much more modern political struggle than we generally allow.  It plays well, indeed, in the sense of an early 20th Century revolution, featuring forces of the right and the left, including the hard right and the hard left.  Even Distributism, which also made an appearance with the Greens in the Russian Revolution, appears in the Mexican Revolution, where it went down to defeat as well.

And as a North American tragedy it stands amongst the most prominent and long lasting, a tragedy which the United States is more than a little responsible for.  Our representation in Mexico during the Taft Administration proved to blinded by his own ideology and views not to see that a new day in Mexico had arrived, and indeed a new day was arriving in his own nation, and his closing act in his role was to be a participant in the overthrow of a democratic president who deserved our support.  Would that have prevented the Mexican Revolution from descending into the radical cycle of violence it did? We can't know that, but we could have tried to avoid it. And for that matter, President Woodrow Wilson's act in supporting Carranza through the extraordinary allowance of troop transmission across the US was amazingly inept.

The relationship between Mexico and the United States, never an ideal one, would descend to its depths in the decades immediately following the Mexican Revolution, and wouldn't really start to improve until Mexico declared war on the Axis during World War Two, something that we were not to sure that the Mexican government didn't feel the other way about at first.  Mexico itself, in spite of having a "revolutionary" government wouldn't be able to really address the needs of its impoverished people until it developed a true democracy, by which time a culture of conceiving of itself as poor was well entrenched.  Today, the majority of Mexicans, for the first time in Mexican history, are middle class and the economy of the country is fully modernizing.  Mexico itself is a true democracy, although violence now has resumed due to the crime wars between those seeking to have an orderly society and those seeking to export illegal drugs to the United States. Still, it is once again a new era, and a better one, for Mexico.

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Boer War Picture

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Boer War Picture

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Boer War picture two

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Boer War picture two

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Holy Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, Denver Co...

Churches of the West: Holy Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, Denver Co...:

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Types of Wood in Wagons

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Types of Wood in Wagons:

Very interesting, I wouldn't have guessed the wood was so varied, although in reading it, these various wood types make sense.

Lex Anteinternet: Standards of Dress. The police. A semi topical post

Quite a while ago, I posted this item on police uniforms:  Lex Anteinternet: Standards of Dress. The police. A semi topical post.

In that post, I trace that topic, and I touch upon the uniforms worn by sheriffs departments.

This turns out to be a currently popular human interest story around the nation, and as I just learned from some of my friends in Latin America, the story has spread overseas.  More specifically, the story of Sublette County Sheriff's Deputy Gene Bryson has received widespread distribution.  He's retiring over a disagreement with Sublette County Sheriff Stephen Haskell about uniforms.

Bryson is a 70 year old deputy.  That's way up there, and if he was a Federal law enforcement officer he would have had to retire a decade ago.  At one time at least law enforcement officers employed by the State of Wyoming also had to retire at that age, i.e., 60, but a lawsuit filed by a Game Warden some years ago resulted in that being changed by judicial fiat.  That's not really relevant to this story, however.  I'm just noting it.

What motivated Bryson to retire is that Haskell mandated a change in the Sublette County Sheriff Department's uniform and eliminated cowboy boots and cowboy hats in favor of duty boots and baseball caps.  Bryson, whose worn cowboy boots and hats his entire career, declined to go along with the change and opted to retire.

Frankly, he has a bit of a point, although Haskell has one too.

The point Haskell has is with the boots.  Cowboy boots make poor duty boots, and even though many sheriff's officers have worn them over the years, they're more appropriate as dress items for law enforcement officers and other agencies than they are as duty boots.  I wear them a fair amount (and there's a draft thread on them in the hopper that, like many draft threads here, has been there for eons), but as far as field use goes, they're only really a good item if you intend to ride a horse, or might have to. Even at that, "packers" are a better choice for a mounted service boot. Cowboy boots are slippery in wet or slick weather, they're difficult or at least unnatural to run in, and they don't provide much ankle protection to the wearer.  Duty boots, although usually law enforcement agencies choose the lightest doofiest ones going, are a better option.

Not baseball hats.

I own my fair share of baseball hats, but they're a crappy and sloppy looking uniform item.  Indeed, while they're convenient for many things, that's about all they are. They have no insulation value, they don't protect from the snow, rain and sun like a broad brimmed hat does.  And as a rule, when a uniformed officer is wearing one, he looks out of uniform.

Now, I do have my fair share of these, and some of them are pretty neat.  But I'm not arresting anyone either, and in spite of the fact that some lawyers now do, I don't wear them into the courthouse.  And if I'm in a role where I need outdoor protection from the elements, I go with a broad brimmed hat.

While on this, I'll note also that there's an interesting trend for law enforcement and fire personnel to be issued what we used to call "paratrooper pants", or more recently cargo pants.  At some point that too is more than a bit over done.

Trousers like that weren't even worn by any army anywhere up until World War Two, but the fluid nature of that war, combined with the need for some soldiers to be carry loads of items, i.e., paratroopers, lead to the adoption of cargo pants by the U.S. Army for paratroopers in the early 1940s.  In 1943 these were adopted for all soldiers in the European Theatre of Operations in the form of the M1943 combat pants, that were to be worn over the standard wool pants (any time you see a paratrooper, or other U.S. soldier in Europe with cargo pants, he almost certainly is wearing wool pants underneath them).  After the war, the M1943 pants were retained, with new designations, as field pants, replacing other patterns still in use, and during the Vietnam War the same pattern was adopted for the Tropical Combat Uniform.  When the Army adopted the Battle Dress Uniform in the early 80s, they became the standard cotton trouser for soldiers, and Marines, and have remained so ever since in varying forms. For some reason, police departments have gone to them too, even though most police patrolmen are motorized and really don't need a lot of pockets. Sheriff's offices have started using them, and even fire departments do. It's probably a bit much.

Anyhow, I will note that Haskell's actions aren't wholly without logic, regarding the caps, as most officers are vehicle patrolmen now days, and a cowboy hat is inconvenient in a vehicle. And this follows a recent tread of services, including the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, British Army and Australian Army, of issuing baseball caps for patrol caps. So, even though they lack insulation value and don't do anything other than provide a visor, I somewhat get it.  But, countering that, a fair number of law enforcement agencies, to include the Wyoming Highway Patrol, have gone the other way in recent years and noted the value of brimmed hats.  The WYHP, for example, went from wheelhouse caps, which it had worn since its inception, to "smokey bear", or M1911 style campaign hats, so they can be used even by a highly motorized agency.

Words of endurance: Roumanian Diary | 1870 to 1918

Words of endurance: Roumanian Diary | 1870 to 1918

Happy Birthday Governor B.B. Brooks! | Wyoming Postscripts

Happy Birthday Governor B.B. Brooks! | Wyoming Postscripts

Movies In History: The Grand Budapest Hotel

It may seem odd to some to see this film listed here, but it shouldn't.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is an Academy Award nominated film that was a bit of a surprise hit last year.  At least its a surprise to me, as it's the sort of unusual "small" story that we don't see get much attention anymore. The film itself almost recalls movies of the 1930s, during which it is set, more than contemporary movies.  And perhaps its a bit of a tribute to those films really.

It's masterfully done as well. Set in a fictional Eastern European country that we're lead to believe must have been part of the defunct Austro Hungarian Empire prior to its World War One collapse, the movies does a surprisingly good job of capturing the feel of those countries which had only lately entered into independence.  The Austro Hungarian Empire being multinational in nature, the mixed culture of those countries and those in its influence and orbit, such as Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and so on, is very well captured.  The film features a fair amount of the use of the German language. French shows up as well.  Last names are Slavic, German and perhaps Turkish.  The depiction of the cities is appropriately ornate.  The uniformed services shown in the film are also appropriately late Austrian in appearance. 

This film is in many ways truly odd, and very well done.  It is funny, but some of the humor is really off color and not appropriate for younger audiences. That comment would also apply to some of the things depicted in the film. But an American film pitched at a modern audience which features an Eastern European theme, set in the very early 1930s, is a real surprise, and that it did well is an even bigger surprise.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The best-laid schemes o' mice an...

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The best-laid schemes o' mice an...:   Small rig, in mine, 1972.  A type that's change a lot. Lex Anteinternet: The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men: Lex An...

The past couple of years the campgrounds at the Wyoming State Fairgrounds have been really packed, in part because the decision was wisely made to allow those campgrounds to be partially used year around by oilfield workers.  It made a lot of sense, the facilities were there, but most of the year weren't used that much. Why not relieve the housing shortage in Converse County and maximize the return on the facility?

Last week the Tribune ran an article that now a lot of those campers have cleared out and others are contemplating doing so.  Oilfield workers hauling off their trailers and going home.  Another, very real, sign of the decline.

Today the Tribune reported that the Legislature proposes to take a $200M payment to the "rainy day fund" and apply it to the budget, to make up for a projected revenue shortfall.  Also a sign of the decline in drilling.

And yet, we're still at the denial stage in some quarters, although that's gone from "it's not happening" to "it'll be short".  I don't think the industry is saying that however.

Mid Week At Work: The USS New York and the USS Texas at night.

Movies In History: Black Hawk Down

I realized that I hadn't discussed this film yet, although I did mention it the other day in my item on American Sniper.

This film centers of the horrific events of a failed raid into Mogadishu Somalia during that period of time in which U.S. forces were part of the international commitment there.  It's a shocking film which is, in my view the single greatest and most accurate depiction of urban combat, and modern combat, ever made.  The title comes about because of the crash of a Black Hawk helicopter during the event and the doomed effort to rescue the crews that came about as a result, but the film depicts far more than that, detailing the raid itself.

Generally everything is accurate about the film, including the depiction of combat.  It depicts real events, and it used a couple of the actual Special Forces soldiers who were in the battle as advisers.  Its not for the faint of heart, to be sure, as what it depicts is truly horrifying, but it is masterfully done.

Old Picture of the Day: Massive Logs

Old Picture of the Day: Massive Logs: Today's picture shows an Old Timers cabin made from some pretty massive logs. I guess you build with what you have, and this guy ha...

Random Snippets. Even I know better than that. . .

I don't watch football much. Prior to being married, in my adult life I'd normally not even catch one game in an average year.  Since being married, I tend to catch the Super Bowl, as my wife likes the game.

So I saw last night's.

Now, while I don't watch football much, I have seen football, and I can recall watching quite a few games or parts of games when I was young, as my father liked football a lot.

And I well recall teams being down by one touchdown down near the end zone, in the last minute of the game, running plays as rapidly as they could without even huddling.

Which is why I was stunned even before they blew it, when the Seahawks didn't do that in the last 50 seconds of the game.  Geez, if even I know that, what were they thinking?

Engines of the Red Army in WW2 - Rail Transport in the Persian Corridor

Engines of the Red Army in WW2 - Rail Transport in the Persian Corridor

And a look at rail in the Persian corridor during World War Two.

Engines of the Red Army in WW2 - Russian Rail Overview

Engines of the Red Army in WW2 - Russian Rail Overview

Really interesting look at the Rail of the Soviet Union during World War Two.  The USSR was extremely rail dependent. Everyone was, of course, but they were to a greater extent than most, although the Germans very
much were as well.

Buffalo Soldiers in Wyoming and the West | WyoHistory.org

Buffalo Soldiers in Wyoming and the West | WyoHistory.org

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Great War Memorials

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Great War Memorials

Air Travel then and now. . .I'm not nostalgic about it, it's gotten better

 

The Missouri River, note the barges.

As noted, I fly quite a bit.  And I have a long history with air travel too. I first boarded a commercial airliner as a baby, and I can recall flying out of Casper on Western Airlines and Frontier Airlines, in jet airliners, as a boy still in grade school.  By the time I was junior high I'd flown on Western, Frontier, Air Canada, and others I can't recall.  I can well recall when you could still get a flight on a 707 from Casper to Billings Montana.

Given that, I have experience with the "glory days" of jet travel that people are nostalgic about now.

I'm not.  Air travel is a lot better now.  Shoot, it's better than it was ten years ago.

The current jets are so fast that a lot of the nostalgia that people place in old time air travel is really misplaced.  I can well recall when you received multiple drinks and food on flights.  That's because those flights were really slow.  Now, they're so much faster it isn't even funny.

This first became apparent to me on a flight some years ago to Oakland.  I'd flown to California before and was amazed when we were boarded on a "regional airliner", probably some sort of Canadair jet.  That jet zipped to the destination so fast I was stunned.  The week before last I flew to Toronto, which I've done before, on a direct connection from Denver.  Sure, it took over three hours, again on a regional jet liner, but that isn't too bad really.  This past week I flew from Tampa to Denver on an airbus that flew so high that we flew over satellites (okay, not really, but it flew high) and it was as smooth as a bus.  Very comfortable, and really nice plane. The Dreamliner is even more comfortable.

These planes are just super, and speedy.  They get you where you need to go very quickly, and if there isn't endless warmed up meals form the galley, well so be it.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Mother of God Catholic Church, Denver Colorado

Churches of the West: Mother of God Catholic Church, Denver Colorado:



This small Roman Catholic Church is just off downtown Denver. A remarkable thing about this church is it's fairly close proximity, in modern terms, with other Catholic Churches in downtown Denver, however, this one is on the border between the business and residential districts.

This church was built as a Protestant church in about 1900 and saw use by various denominations until the 1940s, when the Archdiocese of Denver purchased it.

Movies In History: American Sniper

Given that it probably seems to those who stop in here that I see every "war movie" going, it will probably come as a surprise that: 1) I don't, and 2) I wasn't particularly inclined to see this one, but I don't really know why.  It may be because I've known a couple of men, one particularly well, who had been snipers and they were profoundly unlikely to discuss it, which makes me feel just slightly odd about one who does. That isn't intended as a criticism, it's just a comment.

But I did see it last night, and because my wife wanted to, which is even more of a surprise.  She recently read Chris Kyle's book, another surprise, and like it.  I haven't read the book. Because she read the book, she wanted to see the movie.

Because I haven't read the book, I can't comment at all on how accurately the film depicts the events of the book.  And I'm also not going to comment much on the surprising amount of controversy this film is generating, and from surprising quarters.  I will say, however, that some of the criticism strikes me as very "parlor" in nature, i.e., the sort of slightly leftist commentary that comes from people whose view of conflict is very antiseptic. War is nasty, and that's just the way it.  To depict that honestly, and to write about it, isn't something that deserves criticism.  Nor does a person deserve criticism because they took an active part in it, which seems to be the basis of at least some criticism.  It's interesting, indeed, how we're now at a point where that sort of criticism is not too uncommon in some quarters, when in earlier eras that would have been regarded as rather dishonorable.

Anyhow, what I will note is that this film, which depicts a lot of urban comment, is correct in material details, which it should be.  It's pretty darned graphic, but not grossly over the top for the most part.  Equipment appears to be generally correct with perhaps a few minor errors.

It depicts urban combat in a very gritty fashion, and it reminded me to a slight extent of Black Hawk Down, which in my view is the most accurate combat movie ever filmed.  It's not Black Hawk Down, but it does a nice job with this story.

Blog Mirror: Engines of the Red Army in WW2, and Engines of the Wehrmacht

Engines of the Red Army in WW2

Interesting site featuring the owner's depictions of World War Two Red Army vehicles.

And "Engines of the Wehrmacht"


I fear that accurately listing every vehicle used by the German army would require listing every vehicle that existed in the 1910 to 1945 time frame, no matter where made.

And if you were the History Channel, you'd have to have a special category for "Secret Vehicles of the Wehrmacht", or "Alien Automobiles of the Wehrmacht".

As an aide, and its a complete aside, the author of this blog notes the correct name for the  Red Army on his site, which is the first time I've ever seen what the correct name was.  And, fwiw, I'd note that the meaning of "Wehrmacht" is commonly misunderstood, even by historians who should know better. The Wehrmacht were the German armed forces, not the Army. The German Army was (and is) the "Heer".  The Wehrmacht included all of the German armed forces; including the Heer (Army), the Luftwaffe (the air force), the Kreigsmarine (the navy) and the Waffen SS (the "armed" SS).  On that last group, the Waffen SS, the SS is an organization that's so complicated that its really difficult to actually define it other than that it was the uniformed branch of the Nazi party.  Not all SS, however, were Waffen SS.  The Waffen SS was essentially a rival armed force to the Heer, made up of volunteers (until the very end, when some were conscripted or transferred into the SS, but that was at the very end of the war), with the privso that if they were German (by culture), they had to be members of the Nazi party. That criteria would seem self evident, but there were also SS units made up of foreign Nazis, such as the Wiking (viking) division, which was made up of Norwegian volunteers, or SS units that were made up of odd cultures here and there that the Germans took into service, such as, ultimately, Cossacks serving with the Germans, in part, who were not members of the Nazi party but who were incorporated into the German armed forces (Wehrmacht) in SS formations.

That all leaves aside, of course, SS units that were basically interior Nazi elements, or the entire nasty subject of camp guards, which were also SS units. 

Senate File 108 and the addressing of the unnecessary.

While I'm sure the Legislature gets more heat than it deserves, it is occasionally really hard not to cringe at certain legislative acts.  

Indeed, it's hard not to cringe at certain legislative commentary.  This year, for example, the local paper has been really upset by a couple of bills that seek to carve out a freedom of conscience defense for people who feel that they cannot perform services at same gender weddings, in spite of that having already been proven to be an issue in other states, but there's been no commentary in the paper, as far as I'm aware (and due to business travel, I may have missed it) seeking to restrict the Game and Fish from doing what it already cannot do.  

That bill, Senate File 108, seeks to prevent Game Wardens from entering private lands without the permission of the landowners.  In other words, it seeks to restrict what already can't be done.  The draft bill states.

What motivates this is unclear, but a law enforcement officer already can't just walk onto private lands, so this bill is wholly unnecessary.   Why somebody was worked up enough about this to write a bill preventing what's already prevented is not clear to me, but by taking this step, the law actually would preclude a Game Warden from entering any private land, such as Walmart for example, or the local sporting goods store. Clearly, that isn't what was meant, but the law in seeking to address a situation that doesn't need to be addressed, by extension could be acting to create a legal oddity that's a bit absurd.

Hopefully this bill will fail.

Just because its free, doesn't mean you have to take it (but then there's no harm in doing so).

More on air travel.

 

It's always been the case that when you fly in a plane, they give you the chance to have something to drink.

They used to also give you something to eat, if only peanuts. Truly.

Of course, flights used to be really long. The air time between Casper and Denver is now 35 minutes. Really short.  When you had to take a prop aircraft, it was at least an hour.   Even Denver to Tampa is just four hours, not really all that long.

Now, on a four hour flight, offering you something to drink makes a lot of sense.  On a 35 minute flight, it really doesn't, but they do it anyhow.  And as an observer of people, I notice that a very large percentage of people take it.  I'm not really sure why, as they attendant barely has time to give you the drink, for you to drink it, and then to pick up the refuse.  Indeed, on at least one occasion I've seen the drink distribution run into the final approach, to be followed, therefore by an immediate pick up.

Surely, you don't really normally need something to drink on a flight that short.  It's really short.  But probably over half the passengers on a plane take something to drink, no matter how short, or rough, the flight is. A person barely has enough time to get their drink, drink it, and have the attendant pick it up.  And on a rough flight, and I've been on a few, more than a few people seem too dazed to notice that their drink is about to go flying on to their neighbor at any one time.

On the other hand, it's harmless too, usually, and probably a remnant of that day when air travel was slower, and you always got something to eat.  Some people look back on that fondly, but frankly I'm so impressed by the modern speed of aircraft its not even funny.  Casper to Denver in 35 minutes?  Wow. And even a trip from Denver to Tampa or Toronto just doesn't take that long anymore.  That's truly amazing.

Update: Today In Wyoming's History: January 30

Today In Wyoming's History: January 30: 2015  The Federal government announced the sale of the Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Center grounds, formerly the Teapot Dome Naval Petroleum Reserve, to Standard Oil Resources Corporation. Teapot Dome, of course, is famously known in most places of the scandal that occurred during Warren G. Harding's administration.

The Window Seat

When you book a flight, you get to choose your seat, unless you book too late and end up getting simply what's left. When that occurs, you almost invariably get an aisle seat, or if the plane is big enough, a middle seat.

Which raises this question, why do people who book window seats close their windows so they don't have to look out them?

I hate flying.  I like airplanes, but I do not like riding in them.  Nonetheless, I do a fair amount, and when I do, if I can, I book a window seat.  That's because I'm fascinated by terrain and geology, and you get to see a lot of that from the air.

But this view isn't universally shared, however, and I've noticed of late a fair number of people will rapidly shut their windows so they don't have to look out them, which then means that the trip has all the joy of traveling in a can.

Oddly, the window seat is otherwise one of the most uncomfortable seats.  It's hard to get in and out of.  the aisle seat is the easiest.  If you don't want to see something, why not take that one?

Indeed, I've noticed some people can be aggressive about this.  Recently I was on a really long flight and got up to use the facilities (it was hours and hours long).  When I got back to my seat, the guy in the aisle, who was a really fussy traveler anyhow, had mostly closed my window. As I try not to be rude, I just looked out the remaining 1/5th that was available.

Anyhow, commercial air travel is a really grim experience, by and large, but getting to look out the window is neat.  If you don't like doing that, leave the window for somebody who does.

President Obama's Community College Proposal

Note:  I started this post before the recent State of the Union Address. That means that the tax aspects of that speech, which are really another topic, had not been made yet.  As its hard to discuss this topic, without discussing that one, I thought I'd note that.
 ____________________________________________________________________________________

 

 Casper College Geomorphology class, field trip, 1983.

As everyone surely knows, the President recently proposed that the Federal government should fund two years at a community college for every American.  I imagine that this will have some qualifiers, such as you need to be qualified by having a high school degree or a GED, and you can't be 51 years old, but that's the general idea.

As folks here know, or no doubt suspect, I read things quickly which means I can read a lot, and of the things I've been reading a lot of is criticism of this idea.  I've frankly been surprised by some of the quarters I've seen that criticism coming from.  I understand a general conservative opposition to it, based on the view that Federal funding of many things is out of control and needs to be reigned in, but I've also been surprised, for example, in reading the comments by people who are what I'd regard as religious conservatives, or social conservatives, who are, in some cases, extremely worked up about this, as I'd otherwise suspect that this proposal fits in with their greater social views.

Well, let me note that where I live it basically doesn't matter, as here in Republican Wyoming, bastion of conservatism and free enterprise, we already fund college and even university for our resident high school graduates.  On this one, we're as socialist as can be.  Drag out the red banner Wyoming!

Now, I'm not criticizing my native land, which I truly love.  I think this is a good thing.  I only note that as if this fails, it doesn't impact the people I know. We're already on board with this one, here.

But I also point it out because, living in a state that's adopted this, to use some of our oil largess (which is now declining, of course) I've seen it up close and personal.  This didn't exist back in when I was a young college student.  At that time, there was only one state institution that was funding college education, and that state entity was:

Me, in 1986.  I'd just graduated from University when this photo was taken in South Korea. Being in the Guard meant that I qualified for tuition assistance, and they even sometimes paid for my books.

The National Guard.

Yes, the Wyoming Army National Guard and Air National Guard provided tuition assistance to its troops, and if well funded, they even provided funds for books.  And of course, you also got a monthly paycheck.

Of course, you had to do something in return, which was agree to be shot at, if need be. But, I did it, and I frankly really liked it.  One of the big mistakes I've made in my life was dropping out of the Guard when my enlistment was up.  I wish I hadn't, and had kept on and done twenty. But that's water under the bridge now.

Now, of course, a person who was looking for college cash wouldn't need to consider the Guard as Wyoming will pay.  

Okay, well so what? Well, frankly, the state helping to educate its young is one of the best things that this state does.  Our economy is cyclical, and we're heading into a bust. When the photo above was taken, I was a Sergeant in the Army National Guard.  I was also the holder of a Bachelor in Science in geology and couldn't find a job as we were in a bust.  You could argue that I'd panned unwisely, but I"d also note that my Guard unit was full of men who were unemployed from the oilfield.  Their life was tougher, as their jobs were gone, and the Guard was helping them hold on.  Indeed, at that time our Guard unit was a collection of middle aged Vietnam veterans, a tough, intelligent, and lively bunch of men who, in some instances, had fallen on hard times.  If we had to fight, it was comforting to know that a lot of those men had indeed fought before, and they were pretty experienced fellows.

Point being, however, is that even back in 1986 having an education at least got you somewhere, in a state that was having a depression.  I went on to law school, and after graduating in 1990, I've never been out of work.  I'm not rich, and I never will be, but without my education, I'd be in a hard spot for sure.  I'd probably have had to leave the state in the 80s to look for work elsewhere, which many people did.  And right now, many people are probably about to do.

The big difference between then and now, quite frankly, is that in 1986 there were still jobs in the US for men who had just a high school degree. Getting into the Army was pretty easy in 86, as we had a big Army, and Navy, and Air Force.  You could get into police work with an Army discharge.  You could work for the Fire Department with a high school diploma, if you could get in. And nationwide there were still jobs that didn't require much more than a high school diploma.  Here, in town, you could work for one of the three refineries we then had, for example.

Well, those jobs have really evaporated for the most part, the recent batch of oilfield jobs notwithstanding.  Now, in this country, without some post high school education, you're going to work a service job and that's the way it is.  And it's not going to pay well.

Indeed, even all the old jobs that remain, that didn't require post high school training, now do.  There's certification for everything. And even jobs like the police department's now require at least a two year degree.  You need an education, young man (or woman) if you don't want to be stuck working at the convenience store. 

Our international competitors already know this.  In Canada, the government already funds what amounts to two years of post high school study.  A German college of mine keeps urging my son to look at Germany as a place to study, as four years, he says, would be gratis.    We live in a competitive world, and we have to decide if we want a first world workforce, or a third world one.  And I mean third world.  Already the third world is coming up, and education to the high school level isn't a rare thing there anymore.

So this is a direction I feel we should go in, and we probably need to.  Yes, I know its expensive, as much as $60,000,000,000 over a decade, but then I also know that this fiscal year the United States will spend $337,000,000 on our small fleet of F35 fighters.  The two are not, of course, analogous, and we are constantly in debt, but a nation that feels that it can spend the way we do on all sort of things, can invest presumably in education.

But if we do so, and we should, there are of course some things to keep in mind.

The nature of Community Colleges.

It's important to keep in mind here that the proposal isn't to fund "a college education", but rather to fund two years at community college.  It's easy for some to confuse the two, and they tend to get confused.

The Tom Hanks op ed linked in below does a really good job of describing community college, and what community colleges are about. Colleges aren't universities, for one thing, and that's important to keep in mind.  Indeed, universities are technically made up of colleges, such as the College of Arts and Sciences or the College of Education, or the College of Engineering, or the College of Law.  Good community colleges (and there are good and bad) typically have the first two years for most widely held bachelors degrees, so you can go on to a four year school from there, but they also have a lot of programs that have taken the place of trade schools.  Casper College, for example, has a welding program, a truck driving program and a diesel mechanics program, none of which the University of Wyoming do.

That's significant, as it means that a person who isn't really seeking a four year degree can still get the certification that is necessary for them to pursue a decent job, which might otherwise be difficult to get, particularly once they're out of school and wish to start working.

But frankly another aspect of the community college is that it flat out allows a lot of people to get a start who just couldn't otherwise, and that too is very significant. 

It's a really popular idea in our culture to speak of people "leaving for college" as if that's a right of passage.  Even movies tap into it, such as American Graffiti.  But that model is a bit obsolete and was never fully accurate.  The truth is that the first few years after high school can be really tough.  By and large, a lot of people have no idea what they are going to do in life, and they have a vague sense that going to university will give them direction.  Often it really doesn't.  The story of somebody going to school and failing nearly immediately is a pretty common one.  A lot of those people never make it back.  Community colleges do a much better job with many people in this stage of their lives than universities do.

To include me.

I hadn't intended to go to Casper College, like I did.  I had intended to go to the University of Wyoming and I enrolled there.  I changed my mind when I went down to UW for an orientation and looked around and felt so out of sorts, I just gave up on that plan then and there.

I had planned on going to UW as they had a good geology department, my intended (and actual) major, and they had college ROTC.  At that point in time, I had a vague plan of taking ROTC and getting a commission in the Army, serving as an officer for a couple of years, and then deciding what I would do post that. 

As it happened, I came back and enrolled in Casper College, and its a good thing I did.

For one thing, at CC I found that I had to make up nearly an entire high school career in mathematics that I'd managed to get through high school without taking.  I did that in less than a semester, but I doubt very much that if I'd gone to UW I would have been successful at that crash remedial work.  And living at home while I was going to CC for two years let me really get into college, which I wasn't too sure about at first. 

Indeed, that two years stands as two of the best of my life in some ways.  I lived at home and had low expenses but worked at CC at the same time, and I'd joined the Guard (to make up for my delay in entering ROTC).  I had enough cash, therefore, to get by, without really needing much.  I liked the course work and when I wasn't in school or studying I was hunting.  I was sort of living the life, and knew it.

 One of the geology classrooms at the University of Wyoming, in the 1980s.

I did end up going to UW after graduating from Casper College, and even at that my introduction to US's geology department was really a smooth one, but I did fine.  I doubt, however, that I would have made it had I just went straight to US.  I never did enter ROTC, finding that my time as a NCO in the Guard answered the questions I had about service life, or maybe just satisfied my curiosity about the Army, or maybe the combined experience in general told me something about myself, so I lost interest in doing that.

At any rate, that worked for me.

One thing, however, I do want to note is that I"m not saying, and would not say, that going to college means you'll have a happy life.  I also think that too often education is confused with happiness.  Indeed, I think people confuse monetary success with happiness, and they aren't the same.  A good education, if truly a good one, does broaden a person's perspective and that makes a difference,  but all too often modern educations really aren't all that broad.  And some of those educations aren't useful, which is a problem in and of itself.  As university educations have become increasingly common, they've become devalued by becoming easier in some instances, and some majors are, frankly, worthless.  So poor planning and unrealistic goals can lead to an expensive four years that doesn't translate into anything.

Which isn't to say that for most people, some college isn't a good thing.

And in the modern world, most nations recognize that and do something about it. We have to too, if we wish to continue to be competitive.  That doesn't mean that everyone needs a four year degree, or that even everyone should avail themselves of the two year opportunity.  But making it available may be something that becomes increasingly critical in the world of the very near future.

Mid Week At Work: Guard Duty. February 1917.

New York Naval Militia, February 5, 1917.

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Cheyenne - Dog Soldiers of Wyoming

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Cheyenne - Dog Soldiers of Wyoming

UW College of Law Dean Finalists Plan Public Presentations | News | University of Wyoming

UW College of Law Dean Finalists Plan Public Presentations | News | University of Wyoming

The candidates are Klint Alexander, lecturer in international law at the Vanderbilt University Law School; Donald Judges, associate dean and professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law; Rodney Smolla, visiting professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, former president of Furman University and former dean of the Washington and Lee University School of Law; and Andrew Strauss, associate dean and international law professor at the Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, Del.

 Jacquelyn Bridgeman has been acting as the Interim Dean, and I was really hoping would become the dean.  Obviously that won't be the case.

Automotive Transportation I: Trucks and Lorries

Truck Train, May 1920.

We have, in this continuing series on transportation, looked at trains, planes, ships, and shoe leather.  We're going to start looking at the type of transportation now that's just part of the regular background of our lives, for most of us.  Automobiles.

In doing this, I've broken the topic up into two, and perhaps oddly, I've started with trucks and lorries.  That probably seems backwards, but for what we're doing it really isn't. Transportation by truck has been a major change in the basic distribution system for the nation.

First of all, we probably better get some basic definitions down.  I've used, in the caption to this entry, terms that are somewhat unique to differently localities.  A "truck" is to Americans and Canadians what a "lorry" is to the English.  I don't know why, but they are.  And that's sort of illustrative of what we're trying to address here, which is the commercial vehicle.  A unique hauling vehicle designed to move objects and operated by people, rather than an automobile designed to haul principally people.  We'll get to cars, or sedans, later.

Trucks are as old as the internal combustion engine, which itself dates to basically the second half of the 19th Century. The history of the internal combustion engine is surprisingly convoluted and long, and there are different early engines that could compete for the claim of being the very first such engine. Suffice it to say, for our purposes, the introduction of the internal combustion engine had its way paved by a different type of engine, really, that being the steam engine. And in fact, the steam engine, along with electric motors, competed with early internal combustion engines for the role of individual vehicle power plant for quite some time.  As early as the 1870s, at any rate, such familiar names as Benz and Daimler were introducing internal combustion engines that would be recognizable as ancestors to the current ones.  Rudolph Diesel had designed the early variants of the engine that bears his name by 1893.  Even such theoretically advanced engine features such as the supercharger were 19th Century inventions.

So the early engines were around in the late 19th Century, but what it took to really get the vehicles up and rolling, so to speak as viable alternatives to horse and locomotive was cheap fuel, which oddly enough is rapidly reaching the pinnacle of its cheapness in our very own era.  And that took petroleum exploration.  As this isn't a history of petroleum exploration, we'll forgo looking into that in this thread.  Perhaps we'll look at it at some time in the future.  What it also took, however, was an affordable set of vehicles.

Trucks came in, therefore, quite early, but as practical machines they really began to make their appearance felt just prior to World War One.  By that time, there were some really stout industrial trucks chugging around, and that's basically what they were doing, around American cities.  They were the competitor to draft horses pulling wagons and carts.

They did not all operate exactly the same way that modern trucks do. Some did, with engine and transmission, but others were chain driven, like motorcycles were (and some still are).  But as heavy as they were, they tended to be pretty prone to maintenance problems and they were, in some ways, more comparable to industrial machines than to the modern trucks we have today.

They also didn't stray much into the sticks. They didn't have the range for it, and they were too expensive for many rural users.  Nonetheless, they began to come into military use just prior to World War One.  The U.S. First Aero Squadron was the first fully motorized unit of the U.S. Army and saw deployment in the Punitive Expedition, where its trucks proved as great of value, if not greater, than its aircraft.

U.S. Army Truck Company 28.  Punitive Expedition.

Trucks went on to see widespread use by every army during the Great War and while they did not displace the horse in any role, they were basically proven by the end of the war.  This was so much the case that the United States Army, as part of a grand experiment, ordered a convoy of various types of trucks and vehicles then its possession to cross the United States in 1919, just one year after the conclusion of the war.

 British brewery truck, an early example of a truck directly replacing a role generally filled by horses, in use here to haul cannon parts.

 Light trucks in use by the U.S. Army, World War One.

That convoy proved to be an epic ordeal, which served as much as anything to demonstrate that American roads were really all local, and in some cases nearly impassable, affairs.  But the fact that the trucks did make it proved a point, and it wasn't all that long thereafter when a true interstate  highway system was put into the works.  Indeed, the it already was as Congress had first entered the picture legislatively in 1916, with the Federal Road Aid Act of 1916.  In 1921 Congress passed a new act, the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921 which provided matching funds for highway construction and acted to have the Army target highways that were vital to national defense.  Therefore, contrary to the general supposition that this first occurred under the Eisenhower Administration, in fact the Army became involved in highway construction, in a fashion, in 1921.  In 1922 the Army had identified 20,000 miles of road that it considered vital.

Road construction boomed in the 1920s, and by the 1930s thousands of miles of paved, or concrete, roads had been put in and the road age had really arrived.  Many of the old dirt public roads, which could really only serve local purposes, and which took hours of travel in order to go even modest distances, were replaced with paved roads that greatly increased the speed of travel.  Small stores and gas stations, in turn, popped up everywhere, as vehicles of the era really only  held a modest amount of gasoline.  With the increase in roads everywhere, an increase in truck traffic came in as well.
 

Fairly typical commercial trucks, 1940.

At first, and for a very long time, most truck traffic really remained only local.  However, even by the 1930s tractor trailers had become relatively common, having made their appearance some time before. So the beginning of longer hauls were there.  These trucks were somewhat modest in size compared to the ones we see now, but they were there and they were used, although more often for intrastate hauls or relatively short hauls, by modern standards.

 

Tractor trailer combinations, 1930.

 Trucks delivering tucks, 1931.

At the same time, the pickup truck very much made its appearance.  At first most pickups were converted cars, with conversions of Model Ts being quite common. But as the type proved so utilitarian soon major automobile manufacturers began to offer them, and they became a staple for small businesses, farms and ranches.  All were two wheel drive at this point.

 Very early example of a truck that would come to be thought of as the pickup truck.

 Pickup truck in farm use, 1930s.

Truck and trailer, late 1930s.

None of which is to say or suggest that trucks supplanted horse and mule drawn wagons by this point. They were starting too, quite clearly, but horse and mules remained very much in evidence the entire time.

Also contrary to widely held belief, the post Great War period, followed by the Twenties and the Great Depression did not see the  Army supplant horses entirely by any means, but it did see the artillery branch, specifically the field artillery, take a huge interest in trucks.

Various nations artillery branches has started to use trucks as "artillery tractors" during World War One, with every major army using some. The heavier the piece, the more likely that an army was using an artillery tractor to tow it.  Following World War One, the U.S. Army in particular had an enormous interest in trucks.  Indeed, the artillery was arguably more interested in trucks than any other branch of the Army.

What the artillery branch found was that there really weren't any artillery tractors of the type that it wanted, and that it new could be built.  Available trucks, for the most part, were two axle, two wheel drive, low geared trucks.  All wheel drive trucks did start coming in during this period, but they were very heavy indeed, and mostly used for very rugged rural enterprises, such as logging. The artillery wanted a truck that was all wheel drive, but still capable of effective road use. As there wasn't such a vehicle, it set out inventing one.

And it was successful, which oddly put the Federal government, for awhile, in the truck manufacturing business.  While these 6x6 artillery tractors proved to be immediately successful, they also proved to be very expensive, and in a nation with such a massive automobile industry, it soon came to be the case that nobody could see a really good reason why the Federal government should be operating a truck company, so this line of truck, during the 1930s, was contracted out as a type to various civilian manufacturers.

 

Marines riding in heavy 4x4 truck early in World War Two. This type would soon be supplanted by 6x6 trucks.

Right about the same time, the Army, having seen the utility of 6x6 trucks, began to desire 4x4 trucks as well, and these were also contracted for.   Just prior to the United States entering World War Two the Army had adopted and was purchasing, therefore, a wide range of all wheel drive trucks, ranging from the newly adopted and very small 1/4 ton truck, the Jeep, to 4x4s and 6x6s.  Other armies were likewise experimenting with fall wheel drive vehicles but no other nation did to the same extent as the U.S, which by the wars end was at any rate supplying at least some trucks to every Allied army.

 

World War Two era Dodge 4x4 truck.  With very little in the way of change, this model would go into civilian production immediately after World War Two.

Four wheel drive trucks brought about a revolution in transportation in rural quarters that has already been addressed by this blog, so we won't go back into it, other than that to say after World War Two every major U.S. automobile manufacturer, and there were more major ones at that time, had experience in building 4x4s.  And as they were offered to civilians, they slowly came to be a major automobile type were today, they are very common.  In my region of the country it's so rare as to see a 2x4 pickup truck that its actually a bit surprising now when a newer one is encountered.  They aren't something you see much, and most automobile lots have only 4x4s for sale here, as a rule.  This hasn't always been the case, but it certainly is the case now.

Following the Second World War the U.S. saw a rising expansion of over the road trucking.  By the late 1950s the US was, additionally, overhauling its Interstate highway system via the Defense Department's budget with new "defense" highways, which were much improved compared to the old Interstate highway system.  With the greatly improved roads, by the 1960s, interstate long haul trucking was in an advance state of supplanting the railroads for a lot of American freighting.  At the same time, the diesel engine supplanted the gasoline engine for semi tractors.  A very uncommon engine for motor vehicles in the United States prior to the 1950s, diesels started coming in somewhere in that period and by the 1960s they'd completely replaced gasoline engines for over the road semi tractors.  Now, of course, diesels have become fairly common for heavy pickups as well, and are even starting to appear in the U.S. in light pickup trucks in spite of the higher cost of diesel fuel.

 

 Mack tractor, 1942.

The change was dramatic, although few people can probably fully appreciate that now, as we are so acclimated to trucking.  Thousands of trucks supplanted thousands of rail cars, and entire industries that were once served only by rail came to be served by truck.  The shipping of livestock, for example, which was nearly exclusively a railroad enterprise up into the 1950s is now done entirely by truck, a change which had remarkable impacts as rail shipping required driving the livestock to the railhead, whereas with the trucks they are simply scheduled to arrive at a ranch at a particular time.  Likewise, businesses that at one time located themselves near rail lines, so that they could receive their heavy products by rail, no longer do, as they receive those items by trucks.  For example, pipeyards, once always near a railhead, are not always today.

Not that the railroads have disappeared.  Indeed, in recent years they've once again been expanding, as they're very cost efficient and even more "green" than trucking, as they point out.  But trucks have, in the past 60 years, gone from something that was really for short hauls, for the most part, to something that is now common for long hauls, and indeed the bulk of American shipping is now done by truck.  Trucks have an advantage in being able to go more selectively and directly from "port to port", and the surface on which they travel is of course, put in by the public, making it a partially subsidized industry.  So they aren't going away soon, in spite of a revitalized rail industry.

And trucks have became part of the American vehicular fleet in a way that would have been hardly imaginable even 50 years ago.  As they've become more comfortable to drive, and easier to drive, they've been a common family vehicle, which is not what they once were.  Pickup trucks used to be pretty much only owned by people who had some need of them, even if that need was recreational.  Now, they're common everywhere.  Indeed, the Ford F150, Ford's 1/2 ton pickup truck, has been the best selling vehicle, that's vehicle, not truck, for the past 32 years.  So, so common have trucks become in the United States that one model of 1/2 tone truck is the number one single high selling model of vehicle.  Pretty amazing for a vehicle that started off as utilitarian and industrial.

On This Day in Wyoming History… 1915: The Wyoming State Bar Association Created | Wyoming Postscripts

On This Day in Wyoming History… 1915: The Wyoming State Bar Association Created | Wyoming Postscripts

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Unidentified, Denver Colorado

Churches of the West: Unidentified, Denver Colorado:

Central Denver has a large number of traditional styled churches, of which this is one. Taken from my pickup truck window while stopped at an intersection, I was unable to identify it.

The return of a perennial bad idea, the transfer of Federal lands to the state.

Every few years Wyoming and the other western states get the idea that the Federal government ought to hand over the Federal domain to the states.  The states don't propose to buy, please note, but just get it.

For those who aren't aware, starting really in the 1860s with the Homestead Act the Federal government started taking a different approach to vast tracks of land it acquired by the surrender, acquisition or simply the theft, of lands held by aboriginal title. Aboriginal title was that title held by the native inhabitants, i.e., the Indians.  The Federal government recognized that title, as the Crown had also, but regarded it as a subservient, less perfect, form of title.  Basically, it was inferior as people who lived a wild, aboriginal life, weren't regarded as civilized, and therefore they couldn't have a civilized title.   The concept sort of was that they didn't really know what they had or how they had it, but they did have something.

From very early in the country's history it was the law that only the Federal government, heir to the rights of the Crown, could dispose of aboriginal title.  States and territories couldn't do it.  Up until the Homestead Act, the Federal government generally handed over most of the land it had to the new state upon statehood, but not all of it.  The land it kept were "reservations", and not just of the "Indian Reservation" type.  Washington D. C., which it acquired by donation, is one such Federal Reservation, or was, in spite of its ceaseless nonsensical whining about wanting to become the only city state in the country, thereby elevating a bad idea to statehood level.

Starting with the Homestead Act, however, the Federal government decided that it would keep much of the Federal domain and allow farmers to acquire it directly from the Federal government. This was done in order to encourage the settlement of lands otherwise regarded by most people as wastelands.  The thesis was that by making the land free, or darned near free, people would be encouraged to give farming or livestock raising on it a go.  The Homestead Act was followed by the Mining Law of 1872, which did the same for mining, with mining given a preferential place over everything else.

This was the system for most of the West until the Taylor Grazing Act when Congress recognized that the Dust Bowl conditions in the West then in play, combined with darned near full homesteading, was wrecking everything.  So, it operated to prevent further homesteading entries and to lease the land to agricultural interests.  A law that provided for leasing of oil and gas rights was already in existence. Finally, in the 1980s (I believe) the Mining Law of 1872 was altered to prevent further land patenting.

This system has worked really well. The  Federal government has been a really good steward of the land and the fact that it belongs to all of us has meant that its been open to agriculture, hunting, fishing, and recreation.

So why would the state's have a problem with that?

Well, they do.  Partly that's because the state's see the Federal domain as a source of income, and partially its because local interests always naively imagine the land ending up in their hands.  People who depend on the Federal domain often have a problem sharing it, and they somehow imagine that if it went to the state, it'd go to them, and they'd own it.

And that's why this is a hideously bad idea.

In reality, allowing Wyoming to own the Federal domain would mean, sooner or later, that it would sell it into private hands.  Those backing the bill in the legislature to support this concept deny that, but that is what would happen.  Local pressure from local interest would scream and cry for this until hit happened. And then they'd be stunned when the land all went to big monied interest elsewhere.

For those who support agriculture, mineral extraction and recreation in this state, which is darned near everyone who lives here, there's no better way to mess that up than to support transferring the Federal domain to Wyoming.  Wyoming is always selling little bits and pieces of what it does own, and sooner or later, it'd do that with all the land it owns.  And at that point, locals would basically own nothing, and be able to go nowhere.

This idea is terrible.  The legislature will almost surely pass it.  Let's hope that Congress doesn't support it.  If it were ever to get through, however, this would be the time.  If that's the case, when the day comes when you can't go anywhere on what the Federal government once owned, remember the names of those who proposed this idea and ask them what they were thinking, unless of course you support the concept, and then you can ask yourself.

Postscript

This bill has now been amended such that the proposal is no longer to study the transfer of the lands, but rather transfer the management of them.

That's certainly a much more reasonable, sort of, prospective, but this too is a poor idea.  After all, if the Federal government is paying for the management of the lands, why opt to take on the expense and burden of that task? The answer would no doubt be that there would be more local control, which is true, and which is why the state has chosen to administer such things that it can, such as the Occupational Health and Safety regulations.  Nonetheless, taking on this burden here, which is well done by the Federal government, seem to be a rather poor idea.

Lex Anteinternet: A legal Gerontocracy?

Like a vampire from a movie, the topic I wrote about last legislative session here, is back again:

Lex Anteinternet: A legal Gerontocracy?: There's a bill pending in Wyoming's legislature which proposes to remove the mandatory retirement age for the judiciary, whic...

All my original comments apply to this still bad idea.  Just like last year, the concept of changing the retirement age for judges from 70 years to 75 is still a bad idea.

When legislators backing this concept were interviewed by the Tribune this go around, one of them made the comment that "people are living longer", which is frequently the ill thought out excuse for such things.  People are not, of course, living longer, they aren't dying as young, which isn't quite the same thing.

While it is good that people aren't dying as young, what the impact of that has been, in undeniable part, is that a lot more people are living with dementia than they used to.  This is something that backers of this sort of thing have got to face.  And this isn't an abstraction to me.  My own mother, God bless her, is now well over 75, but she lives with this, and as an impact of that, so do I.  Dementia strikes different people, who are afflicted with it, at different ages, and a lot of people are afflicted with it. By pushing the envelope on the ages of judges, we're pretty much guaranteeing that some will be so impacted while on the bench. When that happens, what do we do, impeach them?  That's not a very dignified end of their service.

And, while I hesitate to say it, perhaps its time to note that at some point the Baby Boomer Generation has to loosen its grip on absolutely everything.  Prior generations did, allowing them to step up to the plate, but as a generation they are remarkably reluctant to.  Recent changes in Social Security eligibility, for example, have not impacted them.  Our current crop of Presidential candidates are all Boomer retreads, or seem to be, again.

This is not to take a shot at the generation, but it's notable that now that they are the generation principally occupying the bench, a Legislature which probably is principally made up of the same generation, now thinks it'd be a good idea to have judges in eyesight of 80 years old, thereby effectively keeping their own generation on the bench.  At some point, things have to go to the young, and even as it is right now that would mean that there'd be a lot of lawyers in this state in their 40s, which isn't exactly young, who'd never get  the chance to serve.

This is a terrible idea. At age 70, a person ought to be able to go on to something else in life.  If they still want to work, they can.  If they don't, they shouldn't have to. But if they're in a public office in the judiciary, by that age they're well outside of the generational cohort they're judging, and it's time to turn it over to somebody younger.

To Our Glorious Dead. A commentary about an uniformed comment I hear fairly frequenlty

On our Some Gave All blog, I have posted an entry on  the All Wars Memorial Toronto Ontario Old City Hall and York County Courthouse Memorial, Toronto Canada.

The reason I further note this here is best reflected by the commentary one of my teachers, an English teacher, made to the class back when my son had her in middle school, that comment being that Canada never has fought a war.

What a moronic comment.

This memorial, as the link above discusses, is in honor of the Canadians who lost their life in World War One (which the Canadians were in much longer than we were), World War Two (which the Canadians were in much longer than we were) and the Korean War.  Just because Canada didn't fight in the Vietnam War doesn't mean it's never been in any wars.  Not by a long shot.

Memorials like this one aren't unique to Toronto.  I have to presume that the people who make such comments have never been to Canada, and haven't ever read any history either.

The changing interior of a city.

Churches of the West: Anglican Church of the Holy Trinity, Toronto Ontario

Every once in a while you'll see something that really demonstrates how a town has changed over the decades. This is one such scene.

This is an Anglican church in Toronto, and its an old one.  Probably because I was seeking to take the photo of the church, you can't tell really how its surrounded on all sides, and I mean all with big tall buildings.  It's right in the middle of them. An artifact of a less built up town.

 

From what my relatives tell me, Toronto has indeed changed a great deal.  It was, at one time, a very English city, but no more.  It's a huge city, and very vibrant. Things are being built all over, and the town has a very cosmopolitan international feel to it.

Lex Anteinternet: $40/barrel? The layoffs continue

Lex Anteinternet: $40/barrel?:   Driven by Saudi Arabian efforts, the price of petroleum oil is falling through the floor.  When I last checked, it was down under $70...

Just recently it was announced that Schlumberger was engaging in substantial layoffs.  Now the news comes that Halliburton is laying off 1,000 employees, and Baker Hughes, which Halliburton is buying, is laying off an additional 7,000.

Layoffs of this level are pretty hard to ignore, and at some point the slowdown becomes more than that, due to its own inertia.

Today In Wyoming's History: Lost Hitler albums

Today In Wyoming's History: Lost Hitler albums: Lost Hitler albums

Today In Wyoming's History: Joel Hurt – Sheepman - Mayor- Senator – Murderer

Today In Wyoming's History: Joel Hurt – Sheepman - Mayor- Senator – Murderer:

Joel Hurt – Sheepman - Mayor- Senator – Murderer

Note that the amount of the initial investment in the sheep ranch, $200,000, was truly a huge sum, if the effects of inflation areconsidered. Well into the millions in today's money.

This is telling in that we often get the idea that homestead was "free", which it wasn't.  Even quite a few modest homesteads reflected years and years of savings being invested in a very small start up enterprise.  But beyond that, there were large outfits like this, that absolutely enormous initial investments.

TM 9-1575 Ordnance Maintenance: Wrist Watches, ...

TM 9-1575 Ordnance Maintenance: Wrist Watches, ...