By Mike VanBuren
From the Late March 2014 edition of The North Woods Call
Now that the strenuous winter of 2013-14 is drawing to an unceremonious close, we’re relieved to see some traditional signs of spring.
Robins have been spotted scurrying across icy mounds of snow. Blue skies and bright sunshine have regularly been peeking through the dark, gray clouds that have dominated our local environment for the past four months. And a season-long collection of sharp icicles has all but disappeared from the eaves of our house.
Perhaps even more noteworthy, the spring edition of the Cabela’s catalog has arrived in our mailbox. Heck, the wildflowers and skunk cabbage should be along any day now—if the still-deep snow ever melts and uncovers the ground.
There will be rain, of course, and plenty more cool days, but the rebirth of springtime never fails to bolster my spirit and get me in the mood for warm-weather adventure—and maybe a couple of long-overdue road trips.
Road trips?
Sure, spring is a perfect time to break the chains of the homebound and point the automobile down a stretch of blacktop.
I don’t have to go very far, or use a lot of gasoline. Just let me go someplace—anyplace—where I can pitch a tent, hike a wooded trail, explore a museum, or visit friends and relatives. It’s time to thaw the frozen mind and clear the cooped-up senses.
But don’t force me to look at a lot of outdoor advertising—specifically highway billboards—on the way.
Not that I have anything against advertising. In fact, I’d like to attract more of it to The North Woods Call to help ensure a more stable future.
But there’s something about the landscape-blocking intrusion of giant signs that interferes with my thoughts and interrupts my peace of mind.
Even Phineas T. Barnum—the so-called “Shakespeare of advertising” and “greatest showman on earth”—apparently had his limits. Barnum, who is credited with placing the first billboards in New York City, said there is an appropriate time and place for such attention-grabbing salesmanship.
“No man ought to advertise in the midst of landscapes or scenery in such a way as to destroy or injure their beauty by introducing totally incongruous and relatively vulgar associations,” Barnum said in his 1866 book, “The Humbugs of the World.” “Too many transactions of the sort have been perpetrated in our own country.”
Barnum said it is “outrageously selfish to destroy the pleasure of thousands for the sake of additional gain.”
No less a salesman, albeit in a much different way, U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson had a similar outlook.
“There is a part of America which was here long before we arrived and will be here—if we preserve it—long after we depart,” Johnson said when signing the Highway Beautification Act of 1965—probably at the urging of the First Lady. “The forests and the flowers, the open prairies and the slope of the hills, the tall mountains, the granite, the limestone, the caliche, the unmarked trails, the winding little streams. This is the America that no amount of science or skill can ever re-create or actually ever duplicate.
“In recent years, I think America has sadly neglected this part of [its] national heritage. We have placed a wall of civilization between us and between the beauty of our land, and of our countryside. In our eagerness to expand and to improve, we have relegated nature to a weekend role and we have banished it from our daily lives.”
I’m not sure how much of what ol’ LBJ believed that I would agree with today—I was too young in the mid-1960s to have had many public policy ideas myself—but I think I could have gotten on board with these sentiments.
I’ve had similar thoughts whenever I’ve driven the George Washington Memorial Parkway leading into the nation’s capital—or traveled the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia and the Natchez Trace Parkway in Tennessee. Even the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive through northern Michigan’s Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore reminds me of the stark contrast between most public highways and those where the natural vistas have been carefully preserved.
It’s probably not practical to think that all roads could be constructed in such a way. After all, America runs on commerce and creative advertising is key to the nation’s success. But it would be nice to at least consider these possibilities before we cut thoroughfares through mountains, across prairies and along seashores, then line them with gargantuan consumer messages that assault the natural landscape.
Not everything should be for sale, especially shared public spaces that would look and feel much better without all the clutter.
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