To her admirers and her critics, this attention is justified; to them, Jackie has always represented more than herself. She was an ideal, a symbol, or a caricature, but never just another American woman. As far back as 1960, the media put her under the kind of scrutiny from which First Ladies are usually spared (or were, until Hillary Clinton). Even after her husband’s death and her departure from the White House the press continued to report and critique her movements, her clothing, her hairstyle, her work—anything to feed the abiding interest of her supporters and critics.

In 1967, journalist Alan Levy spent a week trying to understand this intense interest and “what it is like for a lively 37-year-old mother to live the life of a tourist attraction.” As he reported in his Post article “Jackie Kennedy: A View From the Crowd,” she was not hard to find. Levy saw her several times without too much effort. He was there when she appeared at an art exhibition:

Jackie Kennedy's Manhattan

There were more than a thousand people … and fully half of them were watching for the one we had come to watch. You could tell by the way they talked in rushed little phrases so that their eyes wouldn’t be diverted from the doorway. Repeated assurances of “She’s expected at nine” gave way to “She was expected at nine” and then, toward 10, to “Well, she didn’t swear she was coming.”

At 10:05 … our bartender declared, “There she is!” So did dozens of others, and the words seemed to hit Jacqueline Kennedy like the wail of an air-raid siren. She didn’t flinch: she froze. For … 30 seconds, she was absolutely rigid.

As [she] advanced into our room, her audience became her entourage. Some preceded her with a harrumphing fanfare of “Make way for Mrs. Kennedy!”

There were small flurries of applause. She acknowledged these with a smile. She could clearly have done without this $35-a-ticket ovation.

A waiter said, “She looks tired. She must have many appointments in a day.”

“She won’t stay long,” said another waiter. “She never stays long.” Both waiters spoke of her with more compassion than I’d heard all evening.

Levy was there at Kennedy airport, along with a crowd of reporters, waiting for Jackie and her children to arrive for a flight. When they appeared outside the terminal—

"By staying behind Jacqueline Kennedy, I was photographed with her numerous times ... and now a long-forgotten boyhood dream of mine came true: In Monday morning's photographic captions I was identified as a Secret Service man." Alan Levy, seen here on Jackie's left.

[John Jr.] waited for his mother, who wore a white coat, black scarf and the same frozen smile I had seen at the Madison Avenue art gallery. Little John, wearing shorts and little-boy bruises, reached for her hand, but one of the photographers barked, “Out of the way, kid!” and he obeyed.

So did his mother when a woman photographer called, “Look this way, Jackie!”

The little boy wandered away from the action [and played] with the treadle that operated the automatic door. Here John F. Kennedy Jr. achieved one moment of triumph. A photographer poised for an arty shot through the doorway, suddenly was hit in the face by the door when little John stepped off the treadle. The man exclaimed, “Jesus Christ, kiddo!”

After two minutes of picture-taking, Mrs. Kennedy switched off her smile and entered the terminal where she assembled the children for the march to the gate.

Little John, however, tarried at a poster advertising a movie. This momentary delay enabled the working press to scurry ahead and board the escalator first.

In case she wanted guidance, however, a loudspeaker on the mezzanine was blaring: “Mrs. K., Mrs. K., arriving Gate Three.” For the airline had more than a dozen employees scattered about the terminal to “protect” Mrs. Kennedy from the press that, in effect, the airline had invited. Thus was my quest coming full circle: I was watching an event become An Event.

But if he was dismayed by the throngs of reporters at the airport, he was reassured by the response of passing New Yorkers when she appeared on the sidewalk outside her apartment.

She was standing … and chatting with her brother-in-law, Robert F. Kennedy. He was freckled, sparkling and bushier-haired than any man of 41 has a right to be. Alongside Robert and Jacqueline Kennedy sat the blue convertible, motor purring, with the Secret Service man at the wheel.

Levy crossed the street to Central Park where he could study the reaction of other passersby.

The passing parade continued, but the Kennedys did have a silent grandstand of some 25 or 30 benchwarmers. Nothing was said, other than an occasional “That’s her.” A young father hoisted his baby girl onto his shoulders to watch she-knew-not-what. Seeing this, a couple of mothers struggled to afford their children equal opportunity.

More interesting to me were the reactions across the street. In my five minutes of Kennedy-watching, 11 people walked right past Jacqueline and Robert Kennedy. Three didn’t even notice. Two men and two women broke step but didn’t halt. A swarthy maintenance man in uniform came to a dead stop and doffed his cap with a proletarian flourish. Without a pause in his conversation, Senator Kennedy acknowledged him with a nod.

My favorite was a blowzy woman in a nurse’s uniform. She stopped in her tracks. Her face drooped. Her frame sagged. She seemed as limp and lifeless as a badly hung dress. Then her eyes perceived that Jacqueline Kennedy was smiling, and her ears perceived that Jacqueline Kennedy was cheerful. Slowly, like a sunrise, the woman came back to life. Her mouth unpuckered into a crescent smile. Her face beamed. As she straightened up, her hair seemed to catch the sun. She strode onward, restored and refreshed by what she had witnessed.

No one had mobbed her, or tried to grab her attention. No one sought an autograph or photo.

That much-abused folk ogre, The Typical New York Man-in-the-Street, had acquitted himself handsomely.

This was 1967, however. In June of 1968, Bobby Kennedy was shot, and Jackie had to reassess the risks to which her children were exposed. She became more reclusive, and soon married a billionaire who could give the security she wanted.

Which prompted another wave of Kennedy commentary.

Jacqueline and the young senator from Massachusetts.

Watching the Jackie Watchers The Saturday Evening Post

Louis J. Horowitz, a developer in the first decades of the 20th Century, embodied the spirit of towering achievement. Arriving in New York in 1892, he came to the States with little more than burning ambition. Beginning as an errand boy earning $3 a week, he would later go on to build New York’s Equitable Building and Waldorf Astoria hotel, and, in 1910, the Woolworth Building. For 20 years, this masterwork would remain the world’s tallest building at 792 feet and a then-astounding 57 stories.  Here is Horowitz’s story, as told in the pages of the Post in 1936:

For a while in that period, I could afford only two meals a day. For breakfast I would get coffee and two doughnuts—these cost only a nickel, but they filled me up. At night I would go to a restaurant where, for fifteen cents, I could get a dish of meat and potatoes and help myself to the bread that was placed on the table. I was always hungry, and I was becoming thinner with each day. I had been delicate for some years, so the wonder is that I lived. As winter came on, time after time, with teeth chattering, I would arise from beneath thin coverings to find that the water in the pitcher on the washstand had turned to ice.

Joseph Pennel's 1908 drawing of the Waldorf-Astoria.(Library of Congress)

By hard work and diligently saving for seven years, Horowitz scraped together $2,000. This, along with a loan for $7,000 enabled him to finance the construction of his first apartment, which he later sold for a profit of $5,000

His success and reputation for ethical work eventually helped him win contracts to build New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel and the Equitable Building (pictured above), which, in an event that would weirdly presage the later attack on the World Trade Center, was  struck by an errant missile in 1942. But his greatest achievement was the construction, in 1910, of the Woolworth Building, which remained the world’s tallest building for 20 years. At 792 feet, its 57 stories stretched so high above Manhattan that its upper floors were lost in clouds.

Its construction posed challenges that Horowitz never faced before.

I remember that the steel members were of such heavy weight that we had to survey the routes over which they were to be hauled to the site. We wanted no cave-ins! Below the surface of New York streets, there is a deep and complex mechanical jungle. Raw power in the form of electricity, steam, and gas, is channeled just under all the city’s [traffic]… likewise, down there is a root-like system of wires, pipes and larger tubes that provide means for the transport of everything from the human voice to the human body. We had to give thought to gigantic water mains, subterranean railroads, vaulted sewers… Some of that sub-surface structure lies almost as deep in the rock under New York as the Woolworth Building rises above it.
What we were going to do was to build into the air a structure of equal complexity. Our water supply was to be a vast fountain; our vertical sewer system as large as that of a small town; our railroads—the elevators—were vertical, too.
Scaffolds and hoisting engines of the kind we needed did not exist; we had to create them. Equipment had to be devised to lift loads which never before had been lifted, and to lift them to unprecedented heights. [We had to hoist] all material halfway and then relay it to a second hoisting machine to lift it higher.

Surprisingly, Horowitz was uncomfortable with the idea of skyscrapers, which he considered monuments to personal egos.

The Woolworth Building in 1912.(Library of Congress)

Throughout my career as a builder, I argued… the immorality of uncommonly big buildings. It should be obvious that an extraordinarily large building poaches sunlight and air from smaller neighbors. [Other cities] do not permit the construction of buildings so large that they would hog a disproportionate share of the water supply, sewers, sunlight, air, and transport.
Socially, the gigantic buildings are, to my way of thinking, quite wrong… it would be utterly impossible to cover [even 30%] of Manhattan with tall buildings. The streets could not take care of the traffic of such buildings. The water supply would be inadequate, and the sewers, too. The sidewalks would become a solid mass of suffocating humanity. Such a piece of foolishness is unthinkable, and, anyway, there are not enough people to serve as tenants.
No city was ever meant to contain the buildings of fabulous size—fifty, sixty, seventy stories and more—that have been attached like monstrous parasites to the veins and arteries of New York. Those who create such buildings, in my opinion, are taking an unfair advantage of their neighbors, of their fellow property owners, of their fellow citizens.

Horowitz couldn’t have foreseen how New York, and its population would continue to grow. Just as he couldn’t have imagined that skyscrapers would someday inspire fear and envy among fanatics.

But in the wake of 9/11, he wouldn’t have been surprised by the construction of the new One World Trade Center. When completed in 2013, it will be the world’s tallest office building (and able to withstand the impact of a 747). He probably would have been proud to see the beacon atop its spire, at 1776 feet, flashing out the city’s energy, resolve, and defiance to the world.

Recalling An Earlier ‘Twin Towers’ The Saturday Evening Post

On July 30, 1916, saboteurs working for the Imperial German Army blew up a munitions plant on the New Jersey shore, directly across from Liberty Island and Ellis Island. The blast, which was felt throughout New York, had the equivalent force of a 5.0 Richter-scale earthquake. It knocked sleepers out of their beds in Manhattan and rained debris for a two-mile radius. The shock of its force drove shrapnel into Miss Liberty’s gown and weakened the structure of her arm.

Incredibly, German agents caused this damage—estimated at half a billion dollars in 2010 currency—eight months before they were at war with the United States.

According to a 1940 article, the explosion on Black Tom peninsula might have served several purposes for the Central Powers. The author, Emanuel Voska, was a Czech spy living in New York who provided intelligence to the British government. In 1916, as he learned that German agents were tampering with munitions intended for Czarist Russia, which was then fighting for the Allies.

Cases labeled and listed as ammunition, but really containing scrap iron, old lead, or anything else heavy and useless, were being sent to Russia. This was not only sabotage but graft on a large scale. The men back of this were undoubtedly Russians collaborating with Germans. They made the Russian government pay for this junk as ammunition, and pocketed the money.

By the middle of July, thousands of cases of this stuff, together with enormous quantities of genuine ammunition, had piled up in warehouses, barges and freight cars at the Black Tom terminal of the Lehigh Valley Railroad.

This extraordinary accumulation of explosives worried me. It seemed like an invitation to the German dynamiters.

Allied Intelligence was already increasing the number of inspectors munitions factories. According to Voska, he ordered a dozen men specifically to guard the approaches to the Black Tom peninsula. He then informed the head of Russian intelligence in New York about his suspicions. Before any action could be taken, though, the saboteurs struck. Shortly after 2:00 AM, on July 30—

I woke in the small hours of the morning in terror. My stout brick house was shivering, my bed was swaying, the windows were rattling. I jumped up, fully awake, and ran to a window facing south. The distant skyscrapers rose black against a sky that seemed all aflame. My mind jumped to the explanation. The worst had happened! Someone had blown up Black Tom.

The phone rang. The jerky, excited voice of one of my guards on the Jersey shore reported, “Everything is blown up—everything! Black Tom is just one big flame!”…

I took the subway to South Ferry. The port of Manhattan Island, usually deserted at that hour, boiled with activity. Police reserves were pushing back crowds to make way for fire engines. My feet crunched on glass—the explosions seemed to have smashed every window around. Southward, huge geysers of flame showed where burning barges were loose from their moorings. Now and then, a dull explosion would precede the appearance of a gigantic moon in the southern sky. A sickening odor of burning chemicals filled the air.

I crowded onto a ferryboat for New Jersey. By enthusiastic shoving, I managed to land ahead of the others. For a fare amounting to a bribe, I got a taxicab. We made slow progress—all New Jersey seemed to be rushing toward Black Tom. When I posted my guards, I had selected a little all-night beer joint as a rendezvous. I found that although the explosion had smashed all its windows and blown its door off its hinges, the bartender was still doing business.

These live shells were salvaged by workers after most of the vast store of ammunitions at Black Tom had been destroyed in the blast.

Machachek, commander of our patrol on Black Tom, was waiting for me. He gave a quick account.

At a little before one o’clock in the morning a sudden fire broke out in a freight car. Near it were dozens of cars filled with shells and raw explosives. Sensibly and prudently, the watchmen gave an alarm and ran. At eight minutes past one, the barge, tied to a wharf more than a hundred yards from the fire, blew up. It was half an hour later before the fire in the freight car reached the other cars on the tracks, bringing the second explosion.

Only one detail of his story has any special interest after all these years. “The first explosion,” he said, “was on a barge tied up to the pier. A few minutes before the barge went up, I saw a rowboat approaching it. I could make out the figures of two men aboard. After that, everything blazed, bright as day. I saw no boat come away.”

By now, the German agents were not working in one tight organization, but in groups. Jealousy and the secretiveness of men engaged in a trade, which endangered their necks kept them from confiding in one another. Probably, the cause of the fire in the freight car was one of those time bombs, which the Germans had used to burn ships at sea. But the men in the boat? Machachek saw them approach the barge; he did not see them come away. It is possible that the directors of the plot worked a diabolical trick on their own dynamiters. This affair was so dangerous that they wished to take no chances with an operative who might be caught and confess. The man who ordered the job may have handed the perpetrators an apparatus which he described as a time bomb, but which, actually, would go off when it was set.

Ultimately, Germany accepted responsibility for the destruction and paid reparations to the United States. To Voska, though, the responsibility lay elsewhere.

As I went home that night, I kept repeating to myself, “It was the Russians—it was the Russians!” Even after all these years of reflection, I cannot get that thought out of my head.

He was convinced that Black Tom was destroyed by Russian double agents. They had accepted money from the Kaiser’s government to keep munitions from reaching the Russian army. They were also probably working for the Bolshevik forces who hoped a Russian defeat would speed the revolution (which it did). And they were lining their own pockets by selling the same withheld munitions time and again. And, most likely, they were directed by the head of Russian intelligence in New York—the same man Voska had informed of his suspicions.

For more information, you should check out the original Post article, “‘Canadian Invasion’ and Black Tom” [PDF], published in 1940.

Enemy Agents Strike New York—In 1916 The Saturday Evening Post

The national monuments of America carry a wealth of meaning. Visitors get a powerful sense of connection when they visit, or just see, the Lincoln Memorial, the Alamo, or the Iwo Jima memorial. But no monument carries more symbolic meaning than the Statue of Liberty. Yet she, too, had to accumulate meaning over many years.

When she was unveiled in 1886, “Liberty Enlightening The World” was a remarkable feat of engineering, and a powerful testament to the historic ties between France and the United States. But her future was uncertain. She survived by working as a tourist attraction and, more importantly, a light house.

She started to seriously represent the spirit of freedom as she became the first thing that the flood of post-1886 immigrants saw in the new world: America’s great, silent sentinel, rising up in the western waters.

For many GIs in the world wars, she was the last, memorable glimpse of the states. She became a powerful, almost haunting image of home and all it stood for. Seeing her again would be their assurance that they’d made it home.

Blake Ehrlich visited Miss Liberty for an article he wrote in 1948. There, he struck up a conversation with another tourist — a young Japanese-American veteran.

'Lighted by a system of incandescent and mercury vapor lamps, the torch is a beacon to approaching ships. Here a workman replaces a wind-smashed bulb.' - from 'The Lady We Can't Afford to Forget,' - January 17, 1948

“First visit to the statue?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I was here yesterday too. I’ve only got three days. Got to get back tomorrow.”

He was from Milwaukee, a student at Marquette. His outfit had been shipped to the New York zone for overseas embarkation.

“I thought that would be my chance to see the Statue of Liberty. We didn’t get out of camp into New York before we sailed, though, and when we shipped out, it was from down the bay somewhere, or maybe Brooklyn. Anyhow, there was a blackout and it was night, and we were kept below decks. Just didn’t have a chance.

“Well, when we got orders to come home from the ETO (European Theater of Operations), I thought sure this time I’d see the Statue of Liberty. I was really excited; it would have meant more this time. Because, you know, whether you’ve seen the statue or not, overseas you never forget about her. But the Army landed us at Norfolk. Then separation center and home and school. But I finally made it. I’ve had a good long look.”

I told him his story might be good for this article, and I asked his name.

“It’s Joe,” he said, and grinned. “Just put me down as Joe.”

During this visit, Ehrlich was dismayed at the condition of the island and the statue. It had been named a National Monument in 1924, but had been poorly maintained. The island was overgrown and cluttered with refuse from previous military use.

'Anna McManus removing lipsticked initials from the interior of the statue. A cage recently erected around the spiral stairway forestalls many scribbling initials.'- from 'The Lady We Can't Afford to Forget,' January 17, 1948

A visit to the statue may disappoint you today. Of the two acres not forbidden to the public, almost all the area is occupied by the base of the statue. What it doesn’t stand on, you can. The cluttered remainder of the island will continue to spoil the scene until $1,000,000 can be found to finish the plan.

There’s no indication that this particular $1,000,000, or any part of it, will be forthcoming from an economy-pledged Congress, which slashed the National Park budget by three fifths this year. If this were a commercial enterprise, improvement could be financed with profits, for earnings derived from concession licenses and elevator fares generally exceed its $65,000 share of the Park Service fund. But the Government maintains it isn’t in the business of making profits, and all collected moneys go to the Treasury’s General Fund, instead of reverting to the Park Service.

The service has scheduled the improvements in $5000 units, but since the cost of one unit is almost enough to pay unemployment benefits to five veterans for a year, the Government has remained unmoved by the embarrassed pleas of the statue’s superintendent.

The statue continued to get by with basic maintenance, but she was showing her age. Then, in 1983, a $62 million campaign was launched to give the her a major renovation. Over the next three years, workers cleaned the statue’s copper skin, replaced the torch flame, and removed the original metal ribs, replacing them with Teflon-coated pieces of stainless steel.

What is true for the Statue of Liberty is true for the Principle of Liberty. It is only after years of neglect, and the prospect of disaster, that Americans take action and preserve what they can never replace.

Post Script

Has there ever been a love-hate relationship like that between America and France?

We were blood brothers during the Revolutionary War, when they gave us the arms, money, training, and ships we needed to win our independence. But within 20 years, we were considering declaring war on them. Then, in 1812, they were our ally again. Then they were trying to establish an empire in Mexico, and we were trying to steal their global markets.

The world wars came, along with the American complaint “We liberated France and they’re not grateful enough.” (In fact, we only waged war when we felt Germany threatened us. America might never have raised a single rifle if the goal was simply to liberate France.)

The acrimony continues today. France, it seems, is an easy country for some Americans to dislike. It’s stubbornly foreign. Its people refuse to speak English. Its government won’t join in our wars. They’re arrogant. And they don’t like us, for some reason.

This weekend, if you think about “Liberty Enlightening The World,” remember that its concept, design, and creation all came from France. The statue was the tribute of the people of France, who wanted to proclaim their solidarity with the American republic and their admiration for the bloody cost we paid to end slavery.

France and America will always have differences. The Statue of Liberty, though, will endure.

Read “The Lady We Can’t Afford to Forget” [PDF].

Learning to Appreciate Liberty The Saturday Evening Post

Matty Simmons

Post contributing editor Matty Simmons is the creator of National Lampoon magazine and producer of many books and films, including Animal House and the Vacation series.

Whistle Stop The Saturday Evening Post

The evening sun tinged the smoke a reddish-gray as it curled up from Gary’s steel mills. Indiana corn fields, ragged with last year’s stubble and damp with winter runoff, awaited spring planting. In eastern Ohio, night came on and the land went black. Blinking red crossing gates, the sodium lamps of main streets, and the window glow of farmhouses streamed past the window. 
Intermodal freight trains—double stacked with scores of shipping 
containers—rushed by the opposite way. After Toledo, I went back to my coach seat, wrapped myself in a sports coat, and slept to Pittsburgh, the bump and sway of the rails a familiar balm.

In the previous year, I’d ridden 26,000 miles on Amtrak trains, 
researching a book on the future of passenger rail. This coach seat to 
New York was a freebie earned from 
all the miles racked up on my Amtrak 
Rewards card. I could have flown, 
as most Americans do on business trips, but I wanted “train time”: the 
opportunity to unwind, read news
papers, write on my laptop, and zone out on the landscape.

Only 2 percent of Americans have ridden an intercity passenger train, 
not a surprising statistic considering the median age of the population is 
37 and American railroads gave up 
passenger trains in 1971, when Amtrak was created by Congress. Since that time, Amtrak has provided only a 
bare-bones national network, so for most Americans, a train isn’t a travel option. Finally, that may be changing.

Railroads and passenger trains are poised to expand in ways unimaginable just a few years ago. The $4-per-gallon gas crisis in 2008; the meltdown of the domestic auto industry; jammed and crumbling highways; stressed airports; a renewed focus on infrastructure 
improvements; the drive for a greener, more efficient economy; and the awarding of billions in federal stimulus dollars for high-speed trains all bode well for rail transportation. Even the big freight railroads, who own nearly all the nation’s rail infrastructure, have signaled a new cooperative attitude 
regarding passenger trains. They know that when the Great Recession is over, business will bloom again, and they’ll need government help to expand the infrastructure—not just for passenger trains, but for the intermodal trains that are surely taking market share from the trucking industry.

Warren Buffett, perhaps the country’s most respected investor and one with an expansive time horizon, sees American railroads as an industry 
with a bright future. Last fall, he and his investment company, Berkshire Hathaway, plunked down $26.7 billion to acquire Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF), the nation’s second biggest railroad. It already owned about one-third of the company’s stock.

Buffet, the so-called Oracle of Omaha who promotes value investing, called the purchase “a huge bet on that company. It’s an all-in 
wager on the economic future of the United States.”

A rail renaissance is underway. “Last century was the 
automotive century. I think 
the 21st is fixing to be the 
railroad century,” says Gil 
Carmichael, a former federal railroad administrator and the founder of the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Denver.

Making it happen will 
require investment. Since the 1960s, the nation has lost nearly half of its rail infrastructure 
as railroads consolidated, 
removed tracks, and abandoned whole routes. Still, 150,000 miles remain, and these tracks run from city center to city center.

Carmichael and others are promoting Interstate II, or the Steel Interstate, a plan to double and triple track 20,000 to 30,000 miles of existing freight right of way. The tracks would be grade 
separated—meaning intersecting roads would run under or over rather than across the tracks. Intermodal freights could run 90 mph, passenger trains up to 125 mph, and heavy coal and grain trains could go their own slow speed. Initially, power would come from 
diesel locomotives, but eventually the corridors could be electrified, getting juice from greener sources, such as wind, solar, and biomass plants. 
Nuclear power is back in the mix, too.

“No leap in technology is needed to electrify trains. We know how to do that. The right of ways are already in place—we just need to expand them,” Carmichael tells me. “Putting billions into a rail corridor program would 
create jobs and build for the future.”

Some states are already ahead of the curve in this regard. In 2006, Amtrak and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation spent $145 million to lay welded rail, put in concrete ties, straighten curves, erect an electrical 
infrastructure, and create a high-speed service on what’s known as the 
Keystone Corridor.

But nationwide, improving transportation infrastructure—whether it’s a 
rail line, a canal, an airport, or a highway—seldom comes quickly, cheaply, or without controversy. Congress created the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission to recommend where the country should concentrate its resources in 
the coming decades. At first, the 
commission wasn’t going to consider rail, reasoning there wasn’t enough data to compare it to highways.

Then, Frank Busalacchi, a commission member and head of Wisconsin’s Department of Transportation, formed a separate “passenger rail working group.” He gathered experts, held 
public hearings, and even got some commissioners to board a train. In its final report issued in early 2008, the commission called for spending $225 billion annually on infrastructure, 
including $8 billion to $9 billion each year on intercity rail.

“Those commissioners who thought trains were old fashioned got their eyes opened. When you look out 50 years with perhaps 100 million more 
citizens, it’s clear you cannot meet the transportation requirements of this country with just air travel and highways,” says Busalacchi. There has to be investment and a shift to more mass transportation by rail.

Without rail, the study estimated, the country will need nine new airports the size of Denver’s and a doubling of the current 49,000-mile interstate highway system.

At 5 a.m., the Capitol Limited dropped me and a handful of passengers in downtown Pittsburgh, where we had a two-and-half-hour wait 
before boarding the Pennsylvanian to New York. The station was chilly; food came from vending machines, and 
outside, the city was still asleep. I walked a few blocks but failed to find a restaurant for coffee and breakfast.

If I’d been in Germany or a dozen other First-World countries running 
national rail systems, my connecting train would have waited across the platform or arrived within minutes. The station would be busy with people, restaurants, and newsstands.

It used to be that way in America. We had grand terminals and the best rail system in the world, built in the 
19th and early 20th centuries by privately owned railroads that were subsidized by government through land grants, easements, legislation, and generous loans. Railroads made modern life 
possible and knitted together a disparate people and sprawling geography, said John Hankey, a historian and 
former curator of the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad Museum.

“Good transportation is that important. By nature, we ought to be five 
different countries. The reason we aren’t is the railroad,” he says.

But railroads also were monopolies, big corporations wielded by tycoons and Wall Streeters. Their errant ways and fearsome reputation lead to heavy government regulation. When automobiles and cheap oil came along, federal and state governments saw no need to help the private railroads. Instead, they poured billions into subsidizing roads.

The decline in train ridership was well underway by World War II, 
when military research and development in aviation—again funded by government—led to the emergence of commercial aviation. But the stake 
in the heart of the privately run 
passenger train was the interstate highway system. Those wide, concrete swaths with nary an intersection or stoplight beckoned us to hit the roads in tens of millions of gas guzzlers churned out by Detroit.

For the average American, cars 
versus trains became a simple process of substitution, even an expression of freedom. No longer captive to a big 
organization like the railroad, we could go where we wanted, when we wanted.

“We’re Americans. We don’t like to be restricted. We embraced the automobile. It would have been denying our nature not to,” Hankey says.

At the time, trains seemed passé, 
a relic of another age. Abandoned 
by passengers, their freight business 
decimated by trucking, railroads 
were in terrible shape. In 1970, the 
nation’s largest railroad company, 
the Penn Central, went bankrupt and shook the country’s financial system. Other railroads would follow unless government acted.

To avoid nationalizing the industry, Congress came up with Amtrak, an 
entity that would relieve the railroads of their passenger trains. In return, the railroads agreed to give Amtrak priority over their routes, but even today 
passenger trains frequently are shunted to sidings to make way for freights. Sometimes, it’s because there’s just one track and not enough room for all the traffic out there. No surprise then that Amtrak has a long history of poor time performance and marginal service on shared right of ways.

The problems really go back to the beginning, when Congress gave Amtrak two mandates—run a nationwide 
system and create efficiencies that would turn a profit. Amtrak has never made a profit, and in its 39-year history has lurched from one financial crisis to another. To stay solvent, it’s needed about a billion dollars a year in subsidy.

In terms of government dollars going into the transportation modes, that’s 
a drop in the bucket. But more importantly, profitability of passenger trains was a ridiculous notion to begin with, says William Withuhn, former curator of Transportation at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

“We’ve been hearing since 1971 that if Amtrak was reformed, got new equipment, or got rid of certain trains and routes, it would make a profit. It’s all a crock,” he says. “Passenger trains do not make a profit. Neither do roads or airports. That’s not the purpose of transportation. It’s national cohesion; it’s about moving people where they need to be. The reason America doesn’t have a world-class passenger rail 
transportation system is because it hasn’t paid for it.”

When the Pennsylvanian left 
Pittsburgh shortly after dawn, it took nearly five hours to reach Harrisburg 
(2 hours longer than driving the Pennsylvania Turnpike), but finally I had breakfast and a couple of newspapers to read. And for the first time, I traveled over the famous Horseshoe curve near Altoona, which was built in the 1850s to climb the Alleghenies. At the state capital, the Pennsylvanian switched out its diesel for an electrical locomotive, shook off the doldrums and cranked up to 100 mph. It wasn’t like the TGV I’d ridden in France, but it was a fast train—a demonstration of what can happen with investment. Trains aren’t just rapid but regular on this corridor—14 times daily each way—and frequency is what builds ridership. It’s the mantra I heard from rail experts everywhere—dependable, frequent, and fast service on corridors 100 to 500 miles long 
(distances too close to fly and too 
inconvenient to drive) are the sweet spots for rail.

Like Pennsylvania, a few state DOTs subsidize Amtrak service between their major cities, even going as far to 
purchase their own trains 
because Amtrak is too cash strapped to provide equipment. Washington has put $100 million into the Amtrak Cascades corridor between Portland and Seattle. Wisconsin subsidizes the Hiawatha service between Milwaukee and Chicago and plans an 
extension to Madison. Illinois will soon have 110-mph-Amtrak service between Springfield and St. Louis.

California’s efforts dwarf all others. In the past 20 years, it has invested $2.2 billion in corridor trains and created a network of feeder buses and light rail that extends Amtrak 
service to 80 percent of its residents. In January 2010, it received $2 billion of stimulus money to begin building a 200-mph-train from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Florida received $1.25 billion for a high-speed train from Tampa to Orlando. Both will run on new right of ways separate from Amtrak and the freight railroads. If these investments between the states and federal government continue, America may see its first true bullet train in 10 years and an Amtrak system that fulfills its promise. There may even be an Interstate II.

In Philadelphia, I switched to the Acela, currently America’s fastest train. Capable of 200 mph, the Acela averages just 80 mph on the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, 
D.C., because of curves, a patchwork electrical system, and tunnels that go back to the Civil War. The corridor 
infrastructure needs billions in rehabilitation to make it truly high-speed.

Still, more than 100 trains move along it each day, and Amtrak captures half of the air/rail market between the big East Coast cities where trains never went entirely out of fashion.

My Acela crossed the Delaware River into New Jersey, ran through the gritty streets of Trenton, and blew by the auto traffic on I-95. In the Meadowlands, the Manhattan skyline and a bright, full moon rose up on the horizon.

It took 22 hours to cover the 900 miles from Chicago. In the 1930s, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Broadway Limited did the same run from Chicago to New York in 16 hours. And it didn’t arrive at a charmless, utilitarian Penn Station complex, but at Pennsylvania Station, a gem of Beaux-Arts style 
architecture, and truly one of the great buildings of New York.

They tore it down in 1964 in the name of urban renewal, another 
casualty of a country that allowed its passenger rail system to go to seed.

As the preservationists said then of Pennsylvania Station—never again.

Waiting on a Train The Saturday Evening Post

Graduation Day The Saturday Evening Post

Woodworking has been a lifelong hobby for 81-year-old Norman Riley. But it wasn’t until he had children that he really developed a passion for making wooden toys.

“It started about 58 years ago,” said Margaret Riley, Norman’s high-school sweetheart and wife of more than 61 years. “We were dairy farmers, and money wasn’t too plentiful in those days. Norm began making toys for our kids and just kept right on making them.”

Riley, a farmer for about four decades, uses maple, walnut, cherry, pine, and basswood for the toys in his collection that includes tractors, trucks, boats, airplanes, trains, doll cribs, highchairs, and pull toys.

“I’ve also made quite a few rocking horses, rocking cows, and even a rocking goat with a tin can in his mouth,” he said.

The woodworker’s heirloom-quality creations have stood the test of time and benefited more than just his now-grown children and grandchildren.

“Mr. Riley made my brother John a rocking horse for his fourth birthday,” recalls Nancy Potter Lewis, 52, whose father used to farm alongside Riley and who attends the same church as the woodworker and his wife. “It was painted white and had black ears made from rubber inner-tubing. It was my brother’s favorite toy at the time, and he used to ride it in his full cowboy getup. We have a lot of pictures of him on that horse.”

That was 45 years ago. Three generations of Potters, from John and Nancy to their children and now John’s grandchildren, have enjoyed the rocking horse. “It’s very special to us,” Lewis said. “They don’t make toys like this anymore.”

Once a gift-giving staple, wooden toys have been scarce since the introduction of more sophisticated, high-tech gadgets, but the popularity of wooden toys appears to be making a comeback.

Betsy Komes, associate publisher of Playthings magazine, a 105-year-old trade publication serving all aspects of the toy industry, is unaware of any group that specifically tracks the popularity of wooden toys, yet she and her associates have seen an increase in demand for these timeless classics.

Traditional wooden toys are among the top themes her company will focus on in 2009 as part of their move toward more eco-friendly toys to appeal to the environmentally conscious consumer. But Komes speculates the environment isn’t the only reason for the increased demand. Many parents are looking for toys that stimulate more creative play.

“In today’s market where toys are often computerized with a lot of lights and sounds, many parents feel the traditional wooden toys encourage children to be creative and imaginative,” Komes said. “And sometimes there’s a fear with electronic games that play is often too individualized and doesn’t encourage interaction with other children. Parents don’t want their kids sitting in front of a computer all day and are looking for toys—like wooden blocks, for example—that encourage group play.”

There is also a nostalgia factor: “Given everything going on in the world, there a lot of parents and grandparents right now who want toys for their children that are reminiscent of their own childhoods,” she said. “I think it’s their way of sharing the memories they have of a time when the world seemed less complicated.”

For whatever reason, Riley’s toys are in demand.

Gordon Tripp, 65, is co-owner of Owen Orchards, a 90-acre, family-run farm adjacent to Riley’s property that grows apples as well as a variety of fall vegetables. For nearly a decade, the woodworker has acted as a tour guide to school groups that visit the orchard and sells his wares in its roadside shop.

Tripp has known Riley his entire life and used to work for Riley and his brother Douglas at the farm the brothers operated together.

“He’s been a woodworker for as long as I can remember, and he does beautiful work,” Tripp said. “Last fall Norm brought in a six-foot-long train complete with tracks. It was so nice, we had two people come in on the same day wanting to buy it.”

Tripp said they sold the one in stock and then sent the other interested buyer to Riley, who made a second train.

“He sells out of the shop, but he also sells out of his home because everyone knows him and the work he does,” Tripp said.

One of the special aspects of Riley’s work is that it’s done mostly without using a pattern.

“A few years back, they were grading Norman’s road, and every time the grader went past his house, Norm went out and studied it. By the end of the day, he had produced an exact replica of it,” Tripp said. “He’s amazing.”

Although Riley enjoys making toys, his primary business is antique furniture repair. He also creates intricate collectible wooden replicas of tractors and other farm machinery.

“Farming has been such a big part of our lives,” Margaret Riley said.

Riley and his wife are often busy with the Ward W. O’Hara Agricultural Museum of Cayuga County. The museum features farm and home implements that revolutionized the American way of life. Riley’s been a commissioner there for more than 15 years and chaired the commission for ten. He’s been so instrumental at the museum that a section of it was named the Norman B. Riley Exhibit Hall.

When he’s not volunteering, he often can be found among the sawdust and wood shavings of his year-round home-away-from-home, which is adjacent to the couple’s house. The workshop is outfitted with a propane heater for cold New York winters and an air conditioner for summer.

“He’s always been someone who had to keep himself busy, and the word retirement is not in our vocabulary,” said Riley’s wife. “You keep active, you keep going. So usually—unless there’s something we have to do, he’s in there from about 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day except Sundays. As a farmer he always took Sundays off. Sunday was church day, and we didn’t work no matter what—if there was hay ready to work or not. But he does take time off to eat because we’ve always sat down at meals together. That’s something we’ve always done as a family.”

And that’s not the only thing they do together. The couple has collaborated on some creations.

“When our children and grandchildren were young, Norm would make the doll furniture, and I got the dolls,” Margaret Riley said.

She still fondly remembers a canopy bed her husband made for one of their daughter’s dolls. It was one of her favorites.

“We kept it and when the grandchildren came along, they played with it, too,” she said. “What my husband makes aren’t like a lot of today’s toys. His toys aren’t plastic and breakable: they’re keepers, heirlooms.”

Her husband has a little different perspective on his pastime.

“Woodworking is something I’ve always enjoyed doing, and I’ll do it for as long as I can,” Riley said. “I enjoy seeing the enjoyment people get out of my work. That makes it all worth it.”

“Woodworking is something I’ve always enjoyed doing, and I’ll do it for as long as I can.”

Toy Maker The Saturday Evening Post