My Free-Range Family: Madonna of the Trail

(photo by WG Finely, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License) During my senior class of college I took a History/American Studies course called "The American Highway." It was essentially a work of the account and cultural implications of (wait for it) the American highway, from the former years of dirt roads to the closing of the Interstate system.

As I mentioned in a former post, I had kept almost all of my books from college. I likewise mentioned that I wound up parting with most of them this summer when I finally cleared out our bookshelves. There were, however, a few that I kept. One of those is a word I was assigned to translate in my American Highway class: Uneasy Rider: The Interstate Way of Knowledge the class. (I take this with knowledge that I'm going to post a connection to this situation to the professor who taught the class. Hi, Stu! I got partway through, then my very important life (read: baseball games) got in the way. But I ever meant to go backward and understand it, and now I am. We're near to set out on the road, so why not show up on it? The author's premise is that, unlike other writers who wait for the "authentic" America on the backroads, he can see it on the Interstate. I could spell a whole treatise on that theory (and did, for the class), but that's not the point of this post, so I'll save you. The word is filled mostly with the author's ego, and likewise with a fantastic number of tedious minutiae. It is also, though, speckled with incredibly interesting nuggets of information, which is what keeps me reading it. I observed one of those nuggets yesterday: The Mary of the Trail. The Mary of the Lead is an homage to the pioneering spirit of the women who accompanied their men into the western frontier. As you can see from the picture above, the Madonna holds a child in one arm and has a child clinging to her leg. I can relate. (She also carries a rifle, which I don't, but feel almost obligated to do now that I'm a Texan. There are 12 such Madonnas installed in as many states on the National Old Trails Road by the Daughters of the American Revolution. They were all consecrated in the later 1920s, and were partly of a pet project by future president Harry Truman. As an American history nerd, I was excited to have "observed" these statues, but also regretted that I hadn't known of them before. When I take the number of where these statues are located I almost literally kicked myself. The westernmost statue stands at the box of Foothill Blvd. and Euclid Ave. in Upland, California, less than 5 miles from where I went to college. I can't say you how many scores of times I passed through that intersection. I still recall being stopped at that intersection many times because there is likewise a Euclid Avenue in my hometown-area of Cleveland, and apparently I was too busy reminiscing to notice the 18-foot-tall monument on the corner. I do take to doubt the relevancy of fix the statue in Upland. Yes, the highway passed through the city (Foothill Blvd. is also piece of the old Route 66), but beyond that, it seems like a stretch. I acknowledge that my store of westward expansion is rusty, but I don't recall pioneers flocking in their covered wagons to Upland. It's the thought that counts, though. For a piece now I have planned on winning the house on a mini-roadtrip up to that area. One of the original Wigwam Motels still exists in San Bernardino, a fact a friend and I observed one sleepless college night while searching in vain for a midnight snack. Now I get another point to add to that trip, and a renewed hope to go.