The D&M Don't Come Here No More

I didn't know that about the electric streetcars in Cheboygan, but they did have passenger rail service until about 1960, and they kept freight trains going until 1990 when the paper mill closed down. The Detroit and Mackinac Railroad never went to Detroit or Mackinac City, but its founders must have believed that it would someday or they wouldn't have named it that. I think the longest it ever ran was from Bay City to Cheboygan. Some towns along that run have preserved sections of the track and make occasional excursion runs for the tourists, but not Cheboygan. All the track around here was pulled out shortly after the trains stopped using it, and the right of way was converted to snowmobile trails. They let people walk and ride bicycles on it in the summer, but no wheeled motor vehicles are allowed. Greyhound busses used to come here too, but I don't remember when they discontinued, probably in the 70s or 80s.

While it's true that, if the automobile had never been invented, we would probably still have public transportation, that doesn't mean it would go every place that people wanted to go, because it never did in the past. People who lived in the country didn't go to town very often and, when they did, it took them all day to get there and back. Even after cars became popular, their owners would drain the radiators and put their cars up on blocks for the winter because the roads, barely usable in the summer, became impassable when the snow came. There was a local company that invented a type of  snowplow, but it was a horse drawn contraption that was used to grade and pack the snow to make it easier for other horses pulling sleighs the traverse the roads. When the snowpack got soft in the spring, everybody just stayed home until it finished melting.

We perceived the Vietnam War to be about us versus them, but I don't think the people of Indo-China perceived it that way. Those people were fighting among themselves before the French took over, and they went right back to it after the Americans pulled out. I don't remember when they began to settle down, or if they ever did. We don't hear much about them anymore. We never used to hear much about the Middle East either until they re-established Israel there in 1948. Too bad they didn't put Israel in North America instead. There are more Jews here than there are in Israel, and it seems like they would be happier among their own people.