Friday, May 05, 2006

Blame AC (not Austin Carr)

On the way to hear Dick Pogue speak at a Neosa event last night I saw a bumper sticker on a car on 24th and Payne that said “Who is John Galt?”

Of course, that’s the expression used in Ayn Rand’s classic “Atlas Shrugged.” Great to see something like that on a car instead of the usual “If you’re rich, I’m single” tripe.

Mr. Pogue gave kind of a history lesson starting before his arrival in town in 1957. One thing he said I had never considered before. We all know that in 1950 Cleveland was the 6th largest city with a million people. What I didn’t realize was that the proliferation and economy of air conditioning made it possible for a lot of our manufacturing jobs to move to the South and West. Before AC those climates were just too hot for a lot of the work that we did up here.

Of course there are numerous other reasons we started to slide but that’s one component that was new to me.

1 comment:

John Ettorre said...

Danny,
Point taken, but just be careful about how much literal stock you put in the Dick Pogue version of the world, cause it sure has more than its share of easily observable diversions from reality.