Some things never change

From iRailroad Fever: Songs, Jokes Train Lore/i (1998) by Wayne Erbsen of Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, N.C.:blockquoteOperating on the premise that “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” many communities in the early days of railroading forbad trains from running through town for fear that the soot from passing locomotives would foul windows. Special teams of horses stood ready to tow trains past the city limits./blockquoteThis sounds a lot like the anti-truck ordinances in many towns today: no engine brakes, no truck parking, no truck idling, no trucks leaving the highway, etc. And all these towns are just as dependent on trucks as those 19th-century towns were on railroads — however “clean” the city leaders may have considered themselves.div class=”blogger-post-footer”Channel 19 is the blog version of the column of the same name featured in Overdrive: The Voice of the American Trucker. Todd Dills ([email protected]) is its author./div