OUR AMERICAN CROSSROADS

[Music] the city of today is a junction where people are always on the move one crossroad creates a meeting place and a thousand crossroads bring travelers from all directions of the compass the growth of this fine city is an outstanding example of what has happened in so many communities in this age of personal mobility the freedom which the automobile has given us to move from place to place has helped to free our minds sleepy villages have become dynamic centers of industry and commerce of education and culture basically the automobile aids the traveler and in so doing has brought about many far-reaching results more than just a means of transportation it is also a real tool of communication communication spreads knowledge and knowledge is the builder of change but change is not easily achieved often it is a cycle of events fired by a single idea one important idea of this century was the application of the internal combustion engine to the automobile in chicago there's an exhibit at the museum of science and industry it portrays the changes in the american crossroads as well as anything in the history books changes primarily due to the automobile let's drop in and look back over the years [Music] [Applause] yes sir i recollect when the 20th century checked in at pleasant corners looked mighty like the 19th century some folks they said you couldn't naturally expect much new anymore but it turns out some folks weren't any great shakes at prophesying even now they don't seem to appreciate what's happened happen to thousands of pleasant corners all over this land of ours i recollect just like tragicity that afternoon when the parcel of us boys we was lazing on the front stoop of adam hill's store nothing better to do and we was passing a few remarks maybe sizing up this new man teddy roosevelt or maybe just wishing springfield wasn't such a fur piece away and i recollect too how we was watching young betsy mcpherson she was old doc mcpherson's young one and adam's boy pete building themselves a mud dam out in the puddles when down the pike springfield way we see this contraption are coming a genuine heartless carriage well in pete they begin jumping up and down real excited like and right off the boys they start yelling need a horse mister and the like of that well sir well sure it couldn't have happened more comical that buggy just sets down in its traces right in front of jim barnes blacksmith shop wouldn't budge an inch jim he come running out but he don't know beans about engines full of driving he knows less and the upshot is danged if he don't have to get a horse all of us felt right sorry for that fella wasting his money on a full device like that well sir it must have been long about 1908 that them horseless buggies they began bounding by so often maybe two in the same day that jim barnes he went and built himself a garage and started tinkering with engines regular never could make one goal though well in 1914 the state surfaced the springfield pike you'd be surprised after that how townsfolk started nosing out our way following year they built the steel bridge and fixed up the smithtown road and if some city fella didn't sell old john marshall the idea of putting up some citified uh what do you call them uh bungalows bungalows on his land all of us felt mighty sorry for old john least ways we did until townsfolk started buying the darn things know john built his new barn no how was we to know that city folks had that crazy notion of working one place and sleeping tether that meat market next to hill's store adam put that up for his son pete he figured pete and betsy maybe could someday make a nice living out of it and i guess they would have too excepting for pete's enlisting going right off to france well that was the year we got a post office and then that telegram about pete come from the war department as if that wasn't trouble enough for poor betsy old doc mcpherson he caught the flu real bad too wouldn't stay down no more in a cowlick and finally betsy she had to carry her dad off to the mountains one lucky thing though was she managed to sell the old macpherson place to john craig and his banker friends well old doc died the summer they built another room on school after a bit betsy came back to pleasant corners but it wasn't the same betsy first thing we knew she up married a queer duck named harris we all felt sorry for her especially when we got news about pete only being a prisoner but she went right ahead trying to make a go of a marriage even put up a little lunch room for harris down the pike with what was left of her money seems like though he'd rather drive the county gravel truck when he could work at all so she pitched in and run the lunchroom herself she always was a plucky one good sinnery stuff in pleasant corners and it only needed that crazy one-lung buggy to bring it out when you sized up 1920 against that sleepy crossroads of 1900 you realize that we'd come a long way maybe it didn't stack up much alongside of big towns with factories and such but you can bet the activity of all the pleasant corners in the country that meant a lot of orders placed in chicago and st louis new york of course john craig over the first national he said when the country got back to normalcy you couldn't look for things changing near so fast he said 1920 motor cars was just about as good as engineers could make it's pretty too and that with so many already on the road why it was foolish to expect people to keep on buying a lot of new ones you know i just sort of wish old john craig he could have stayed around to see what happened though i expect he'd still be croaking the same tune well sir things really started popping just after he died long about 25 that was a rash of new houses in marshall heights a new school and the county's first four-lane highway adam hill he sold out his emporium and meat market long in uh oh 27 after he finally give up waiting for his boy pete to come home take over pete hill they say he's done right smart for himself in the big town starting in with wholesale supplies and working up to a string of his own restaurants hills milestone houses he calls them in 1928 the state put in the concrete bridge across mott creek so the buses could run springfield that's the new bus station alongside a jim barnes garage well the depression hit pleasant corners like any other place of course we got a fancy new post office and a town hall but alice hill she lost old adam's money and she had to start that farmer's market and betsy mcpherson or rather harris she would have lost the lunch wagon if that no account husband of hers hadn't run his car into the creek about that time of course all of us were sorry for her sake but as a matter of fact as soon as she didn't have all their myous raining down on her why betsy she began putting some money away and it wasn't long before she bought a hills milestone house franchise and the siesta motel down the pike there those milestone house restaurants they're popular as a melon patch in august so betsy she's hoeing an easier row now and what's more the big boss of the milestone house chain pete hill that is he dropped over between planes last week to inspect his newest place must be a long time between planes because he's still here sort of well just sort of hanging around you know it wouldn't surprise me one bit if betsy and pete hill got married after all well that that about brings us up to date on pleasant corners they went and rebuilt the theater and we got our own police department now standing over there by the traffic light facing jim barnes new service station and showroom of course we still have our john craig's and i guess it's surprising that i ain't one of them at my age but you know i still figure tomorrow is bound to be a lot better than today it may not be men and motors or men and airplanes or men and atoms but it will be men and something our country still has its ability to create and work and build it's just now gathering itself together for its next spring forward and boy i'd sure like to be here to see that jump [Music] in 1939 the tomorrow which is now today was portrayed by the original futurama exhibit at the world's fair it's interesting to look back at the forecast made more than a quarter of a century ago and find that the dreamers of yesterday had painted a surprisingly accurate picture of our cities and highways as we know them today [Music] imagine the wonderful world of tomorrow if the creators of futurama 2 at the 1964 world's fair are as accurate in their forecast they said we would have thriving villages and cities in the land of the arctic and antarctic crossroads of progress in areas that were once steaming jungles and towns and motels located far under the sea even as we're talking here the moon has become a target of exploration can this be the pleasant corners of tomorrow anything is possible when we look beyond the contemporary and imagine things as we would like them to be after all our future begins with our imagination and our inventiveness as dusk softens the silhouettes of towers in our great cities we see the full-scale reality of what far-sighted dreamers envisioned in miniature models only a generation ago the automobile has immeasurably helped shape the way we live today many other new ideas are bound to help advance the world of tomorrow whether they come from a single individual or teams of professionals one thing for sure man is continually striving to make the world a better place in which to live and there is every reason to believe that our progress over the past few decades will be even more accelerated and exciting in the years to come [Music] you