From the Editor

In just a couple of months, hundreds of cars taking part in the Lincoln Highway Centennial will pass through Sidney on their way to Kearney.

Yep—as it turns out, the Nebraska town happens occupy a tract of land 1,771 miles from New York and San Francisco. Drivers will depart from both coasts and meet in the middle in celebration of the nation’s first coast to coast highway.

Of course, in 1913, the road resembled rutted ranchland in many places. Military vehicles led by Dwight D. Eisenhower along the route in 1919 often bogged down. Yet the passageway marked the emergence of the automobile, the invention that gave industrial age expression to the motion and yearning for individual pursuits that defined this nation for so many years.

Recent polls suggest a nation in the midst of great recession recoil. In one study, 65 percent believe the middle class has less job and financial security than expected in their parents’ generation. In another, just over half—51 percent—felt no confidence they would raise the money to afford retirement.

Of course, in the internal combustion heyday of the Lincoln Highway, the Bankhead Highway, the Dixie Highway, Route 66 and the venerable National Road, voices like Steinbeck told of a different form of movement, more desperate and searching than those who first set out along this nation’s old wagon trails.

The old “Main Streets of America” have seen recession and depression. The Army of the Potomac tramped along the National Road on the way to the bloody 1862 Battle of Antietam, the federal victory that allowed Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. George Washington’s Continental Army moved along the Post Road that once connected colonial cities and now exists as Highway 1, strewn with Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s franchises. Lee Harvey Oswald traversed the Bankhead Highway before and after that tragic moment in 1963 in Dallas.

I love old American roads. They tell the story of this country as it emerged from isolation to global leadership, from the founding era to civil rights. I have walked along the same roads made famous by Lexington and Concord and Paul Revere, as well as the road connecting Birmingham, Selma and the American soul.

These strips of asphalt peel away layers of this nation’s past. Along the routes you see remnants of bus stations where troops gathered on their way to duty in Normandy or Guadalcanal. You find faded “colored only” signs or bullet riddled shrines from the Civil War. Along two lane stretches, ’57 Chevys and Hemi Cudas roared, trailing the rebellious sound of rock and roll from pushbutton radios.

Capitalism rides on the roads—not only in the form of big rigs, but also in the roadscape sprouting alongside. In Sidney you recognize the strip of time honored buildings along Illinois Street, lining the old Lincoln Highway. Up on the hill, a cluster of chain restaurants, gas stations and big box stores grew alongside I-80.

The Interstate system was the brainchild of Eisenhower, who remembered his grueling 1919 trek across Nebraska and the rest of the Lincoln Highway and compared it to the sleek, fast, four lane Autobahn he discovered in the rubble of Nazi Germany in 1945.

Roads speak of the past. They expose our present and sometimes warn of the future.

In the tail end of the long, lingering recession, many Americans are pessimistic about the future. In the age of sequester, bridges are crumbling and highways subject to patchwork repair.

So I look forward to train of vehicles scheduled to pass through Sidney at the end of June on their way to the Kearney celebration of the Lincoln Highway. Those who undertake the journey will witness America in past and present, see signs of growth and despair, decency and weariness.

This nation exists, reminisces and looks forward on the old open road.