The Need For SPEED - A Historical Short Story

There is just something thrilling about SPEED! Flying down the road with the wind in your hair, face freezing on a December day or smiling from the cooling breeze you are creating on a hot summer day!

Road Trip!!! There is just something about traveling, exploring new places, seeing what is beyond the next curve.  Taking the straight-away a little too fast.  That primeval need for speed and adventure!

The boy rode his first full sized bicycle on may road trips, exploring residential roads, a map in his back pocket just in case he ventured too far and was unsure of the route home.  He need not worry about losing his way, as long as he used the power lines running right in front of his house as his guide.  They ran for miles in a thin strip of land that everyone called "the woods," as large parts of the utility right-of-way had become overgrown with trees and bushes and tall grass that waved in the wind.  But in the middle of the most wooded area stretched a rocky path that curiously contained pieces of pavement.

Here, everything was level. Features were flat from rocky receding glaciers, reducing every variance in height, like gritty sandpaper smooths a plank of wood.  This is how the land was left where he lived.  Some parcels were perfect for potato planting while other spaces could support skyscrapers.

Speed required work. There were no hills where gravity could transform your potential energy to kinetic action. The boy found if he assumed a standing position he could more powerfully pump the pedals, pushing himself to peak propulsive pleasure.

One day as the boy biked home from a long trek along his standard route, he came upon some older kids selling lemonade on a road running parallel to the woods, so he stopped for a satisfying sip of tart sweetness.  The boy asked one of the vendors what he knew about the woods.  He pointed to the power lines and explained the utility of the space which was needed for access to the towers that supported the high tension wires which were strung to the horizon, arcing down due to gravity between each support point.  The boy stared at the power wires and noticed they looked like an ever shrinking set of mustaches like the man on the Pringles can sports. 

As the boy rode home, he thought about Electricity whizzing along wires at the speed of light to power our lights and refrigerators and electronic devices of all shapes and sizes.

Speed requires work.  Someone planned to put these power lines in this place, this thin strip of straight as an arrow land, so that the extremely useful electrons could light up our world at the speed of a flip of a switch.  But why were they put at this particular place, and what was up with the asphalt in the path?

On his next outing, the boy decided to venture along the rough road, the road less traveled, the barely passable overgrown path in the middle of the most wooded part of the woods.  Speed was impossible here.  Slowed by the sand, jarred by the gravel, turning to avoid  the random branches impeding his path, the boy had time to take in his surroundings, to see nature in the wild, only punctuated by that occasional patch of pavement.

Suddenly ahead, the boy saw an older man stooped down in the path, getting as close as he could to examine a piece of asphalt at his feet.  The boy stopped and asked the man what he was looking at.  The man told him that each piece of pavement he passed reminded him of fond childhood memories of when this path was something completely different from the degraded condition it was now in.  The boy replied that he did not understand, but would like to know more.

The man stood up straight and tall, his face brightened as he collected his thoughts, and then he told the boy the true story of the woods.

Listen boy, as I tell you a tale of mighty men in pursuit of blazing speed!  This place was not always an overgrown woods.  It is now reclaimed by nature, but once, men raced along a road here!

Speed required work.  Horses could only propel people carried in their carriages so fast.  Work was needed to perfect the new engines of transport.  The work of pulsating pumping pistons would move men faster than they had ever traveled.  It became sport to see who could build and race the fastest roadster.

Roadsters require roads, young man!  Did you think the streets your parents drive on were always here?  Once all that existed was paths, parallel ruts from wagon wheels worn as farmers took their crops to market and their families to church.  Rocky ruts with random dips are no place for an auto race!

Enter one young man who knew something about roads, coming from a wealthy family that made their fortune building railroads.  He was already an auto racer but saw the need for a smooth slightly raised limited access road with long stretches of straight-aways, so he built the world's first highway, right where I now stand!

Every year, for several years, this wealthy young man invited speed demons from all over the world to come and race their fastest contraptions on this beautifully engineered road that was built for speed.  You should have seen the excited crowds jumping and cheering at specially constructed grandstands along the route!  Can you just imagine the thrill of victory as the driver of the winning car joyously pumped one fist to the sky as he crossed the finish line!

A century of sand slid backwards through the hourglass of time, as the boy imagined all that had once been.

Finally the mystery was solved!  The boy lived adjacent to a once famous highway that also served as a raceway!  As he thanked the man and rode from the woods to the modern paved road next to it, he pumped faster than he had ever petaled, smiling and seeking the speed once experienced at the same place but in a different time.  He imagined himself winning an important race, and pumped his own fist toward the sky!  

The boy grew up to become a man, at least by external appearance.  But the boy was driving this life first; the man just jumped in and joined the journey.  The boy is still there, a full and equal co-navigator, as they travel together on this road trip called life.