manpower « Josh First's Blog

↓ Archives ↓

Posts Tagged → manpower

July 20th, 2026

I-81, the 1950s relic

While making an epic deep-South deep-dive last week, I had the interesting experience of driving on a great long stretch of the I-81 interstate. Holy Moses. I have returned alive and in one piece to report back on this journey-by-traffic, and to ask a basic government policy question.

Originally started in 1957 to connect northeastern Pennsylvania to Upstate New York and southern Canada, for moose hunters, one presumes, today I-81 connects Upstate New York/ Canada with Tennessee, and in doing so it transverses New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, and penetrates deeply into Tennessee, where I-81 ends and I-40 then seamlessly takes up the west-ward flow of vehicles and young men.

In its day, it seems that much of our 1950s built infrastructure was considered grand, even sometimes grandiose. Sure, back then, the idea of paving hundreds and hundreds of miles of highway with bazillions of tons of mined quarry aggregate and petroleum tar probably seemed an achievement just short of landing on the moon. And indeed, building modern highways is still a real achievement of science and technology, as well as physical manpower.

After all, a road is nothing more than liquid rock, which was mined, picked, blasted, bulldozed, lifted, trucked, crushed, and re-constituted in heated form with tar that, when it all settles and dries, provides a comfortable high speed driving surface. It is nothing less than a miracle to remove millions of tons of rock from the ground, process it, then put it back on top of the ground so that humans can easily and smoothly travel.

Today, Americans take good roads, smooth roads, for granted. Probably like everything else in our lives, to be honest. But the harsh truth is that our road system is aging, and I-81 is a good example of both the old combination of muscle, modern science, and good government, in short a real miracle, meeting up with the harsh reality of fulfilling our dreams by failing to maintain the big investments of yesteryear.

What did not follow in I-81’s wake, in either functional or miraculous form, was the simple funding necessary to operate and maintain this and all of the other incredible roads that make up our interstate system.

The I-81 experience today of driving at modern posted speeds of 60-70 miles per hour, on a crumbling two-lane roadway, that is chock full of bumper-to-bumper traffic, sucks mightily. Such a wild experience begs the question: Why the hell is 2026-level traffic expected to safely transit from Canada to Tennessee on a crowded two-track?

Why the hell is I-81 almost entirely two lanes in each direction, for hundreds and hundreds of miles, with only a few three-lane passing zones on steep hills thrown in helter skelter? It is a study in modern combat driving. It is a study in strange political choices, funding priorities.

The same can be said for the two-lane I-78, which brings New Yorkers and New Jerseyites westward into Pennsylvania, where, after fleeing their fouled nests back east, they settle here and begin voting for the same damned failed policies and ideologies that fouled their nests and drove them out in the first place.

Come to think of it, keep I-78 at two lanes.

And now come to think of it, while remembering a couple of the conversations I had with locals in the middle of rural southern Tennessee farmland on the Mississippi border, maybe this is the reason why I-81 remains a two-track the entire damned way: Keeping the damned Yankees out!

And with that in mind, now I understand: The narrow road and the local Southern attitude are both relics of the 1950s. Yep, now it all makes sense.

I-81 in both directions is packed with high speed traffic

Not to be confused with Harrisburg, PA, but it happens anyhow

First and only Stars-and-Bars I saw the whole trip, and this in central VA. None in rural TN, where I saw they dominated the American flag forty years ago.