The "Am I Okay?" Trip

[XLFD]

Many may wonder why I haven't been very active on the Ludington Torch since late last week.  Sure, I did file a lawsuit on the local sheriff and published an expose on the pollution of Ludington's PM Lake Bayou in the middle of the week, but I then disappeared after Thursday.  I took to the road for a small vacation. 

Now, I don't often wax autobiographical in my articles, so I won't bore you with some of the minutia of the trip and those involved other than in the interest of making an overall point or for entertainment value.  This trip wasn't on par with Columbus first sailing west to travel to points east, nor even to Lewis and Clark charting out the vast western expanse of our country, yet still it was intrinsically important to me, so I developed a name for it, as you can find in the title.

This name developed from the fact that it was a trip from Michigan to Oklahoma (MI- OK) and that it featured a lot of cell phone inquiry from those concerned with myself or my travelling companion's (hereafter known as TC) welfare and progress on the way to and from that pan-handled state.  "Am I okay?  Yes, okay am I"

This wasn't the only cheap gag dealing with state initials we had on this trip.  Being that it was our first experience in Oklahoma, people asked us how we liked what they had there.  "I think it's OK", was our automatic first response, guaranteed to generate a sour look.  A traffic jam in Indiana had me remarking that we were finally part of the IN crowd. 

The trip itself was fairly uneventful, we had no problems staying on course even though I scribbled the route on a small scrap of paper for the way there and back (no GPS for us), nor did the motorized carriage have any malfunctions throughout.  Michigan was the only tough part going there and back, there really is no snow accumulated through the rest of the route.

By the time we were mostly through Missouri, passing the Uranus Fudge Factory and wading through all the puns that inspired, we were in cattle-grazing country and polishing up a comedy routine that we would use in Oklahoma fairly often, much to the dismay of some:

Me:  Look at that bunch of cows.

TC:  Herd.

Me:  Heard of what?

TC:  Herd of cows.

Me:  I pointed them out, of course I've heard of cows.

TC:  No, a cow herd.

Me:  What in heavens should I care what a cow heard, I don't keep secrets from cows.

TC:  No.  Herd:  A group of cows.

Me:  Sure have.  They go "Moo", particularly when there's a bunch of them.

And so you can once again start over.  Hey, it's a 900 mile trip that's around 14 hours if you share driving and make minimal stops. 

But despite the light-hearted fun and entertainment on the trip and in the three days around the Tulsa area with friends and family, I was still noticing things.  One of the things I noticed were some run-down neighborhoods in Tulsa and the surrounding cities of that area.  You can cruise into these cities and notice real blighted properties along the main thoroughfares, sometimes pervasive for large areas.  It's perhaps reminiscent of many parts of Detroit and Flint.  It was even pretty bad at an exit we took in Southern Illinois to get gas advertised on the blue highway signs.

I compared it to what we have here in Ludington, and found Ludington highly favorable.  Whichever way you come into town, you will be greeted with nice, well-tended houses as the norm.  You may find a couple houses that are a couple of years past when they should be painted or otherwise maintained, but you would be hard-pressed to find ones that are a few years past when they should have been demolished, like there was in Tulsa. 

So it made me rankle even more at the words of our Community Development Director and of some on our Planning Commission who have covertly snuck through our neighborhoods and used their subjective opinions on blighted properties in Ludington as noted here.   She freely admitted getting inspiration from what Detroit has done and is doing, while saying we have a major problem with blighted properties.  The solutions proposed by the CDD and her fellow officials is to get more government involvement into the process while building housing projects that few prefer to live in.

In Tulsa, Detroit, and many of the other communities that have major problems with actual blight, dysfunctional government involvement exacerbated the problem. 

Small, hands-off government, is the best way to cure blight.  If the government has the ultimate authority over what happens to one's house, then what good is owning it in the first place?  If something is yours, if something reflects on you, then you want that to be not only presentable, but better than your neighbors.

The government inherently punishes you for doing just that.  Your taxes go up, sometimes dramatically, and the owners who are negligent get that excess money in grant funds for their dilapidated hovels.  The concepts that naturally keep communities like ours with reputable housing being the norm, cannot be efficiently or fairly performed by a government.

As our local government keeps striving towards the Detroit model, remind yourself of how nice our community is in comparison to the cities who decided their political leaders were better in controlling the housing market.  Be sure to take pictures before they do, so you can remember how nice Ludington once was.

[Willy]

Funny cow conversation X. As for the cows I've herd of, one is the same as the udder. I've always said that Ludington has no blight. A few random housing problems does not make a blighted area. I hope your trip was fun. It's a trip I've made many times and I've always been partial to Tulsa as well as Oklahoma City. I also have relatives in Oklahoma, Norman to be exact.

[XLFD]

My destination was within Indian lands, and I didn't have a lot of time to explore the local scene, beyond a trip to the Woolaroc wildlife preserve and museum, northeast of Tulsa.  Neat museum with an amazing firearm and American Indian collections, and more than a few herd animals, including buffaloes and zorses (zebra-horse hybrids). 

Blight, like poverty, will always exist no matter what government is in place.  In both poverty and blight, government involvement can help (ideally, you wouldn't need it), but such involvement should not be to redistribute wealth, usurp property rights, or be overly coercive.   It must function seamlessly with human nature/free market concepts.  Few local governments want to fight blight right.  In Ludington, they want to create a blight narrative and create an avenue for receiving more grants from their sugar daddies in Lansing and Washington, while dissing our local homeowners already dealing with their high property assessments.

[Willy]

I agree completely with your last paragraph. As far as museums, if you get the chance, the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City is a must see.