I enjoyed the hospitality of hundreds of rural folk during my 1985 horse and buggy trip celebrating electric cooperatives.

In 1985, I traveled for six months with horse and buggy in order to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification Administration (REA). At the time I was in the midst of an 8-year term as a director on Cherryland Electric Cooperative’s Board and had quit my job as an air traffic controller in order to try to point out the good works accomplished by rural electric cooperatives. Equally, I wanted to point out how a democratically-elected electric utility could provide excellent electric service in a nonprofit fashion.

Twenty years later I decided to retrace my 1,350-mile-long journey to see what had changed, this time in a red Saturn SUV, and this time with a professional video camera and cameraman. For 10 days we used the same 20-year-old road atlas and retraced the very back roads that my horse, Carter, and I had traveled in 1985.

For the six months of that first journey, I would set off in the morning and not know which route I would be taking except for an ultimate southward direction, trying to get from northern Michigan to Tennessee, via the Upper Peninsula. I would rarely know where I would spend the night. Obviously, in such a mode of travel, the vast majority of people I met were strangers. Yet, without exception, I was treated with kindness and often invited inside the homes for dinner and sometimes to spend the night.

During my 1985 trip, I had been trying to look at how things had changed in the 50 years since the REA had been launched in rural America. Rural electrification was mostly accomplished, thanks to electric cooperatives. Farming had been changing from the family farm to international megafarming. Wristwatches had evolved to include a mix of digital faces instead of analog dials, and parents were concerned that their kids had grown up with Velcro closures and couldn’t tie their string shoelaces.

During my September 2005, retracing journey, gasoline had spiked about 50 percent higher per gallon in only a few months. Since 1985 there had been the first war in Iraq, the madness of Sept. 11, 2001, the ongoing war in Iraq, and, most recently, Hurricane Katrina. There had also been the proliferation of computers, e-mail and the Internet, outsourcing to China and other developing countries, the continuing perfection of retail business most visibly represented by Wal-Mart, cell phones, and the introduction of hybrid cars. Technology was bringing changes
faster and faster.

Electric cooperatives had also made changes and improvements. SCADA systems were common so that efficiencies in the generation and distribution of electricity were evident. Because electricity is a “second” tier of energy, that is, other fuels and methods of generation come first, and due to the nature of purchasing to include long-term contracts, electricity was relatively stable in cost. Some things didn’t change so much. When storms came, it was—and is—the job of the lineman to repair the problems.

The human side didn’t change too much, either, except when time stepped in. More than a few of my friends in 1985 had died. Too often I would start the day with an Internet search for people and addresses and phone numbers, only to find the search name in an obituary. But mostly my luck held and I was able to find many of the good people I had first met in 1985. It was truly like being with an old best friend, nothing having changed, after 20 years. Many people made the comment that they never expected to ever see me again. Children and grandchildren had been born to make up for those lost.

Parents who had left me, a stranger, with their children way back then had now had time to reflect on their actions and it was invariably they who brought up the subject. For 20 years I have also marveled at the goodness of people who I had met and have been ever-thankful for the trust I had been given. The purpose of the new journey was to try and gather opinions from the source, from the people, about how things had changed, and not changed. The answer was that goodness remains and trust is present in this fast and seemingly impersonal world. There remain people and places that do not lock their doors at night and who leave the keys in their cars—and SUVs. Energy, including electricity, remains important to our way of life, to our economy, and to how peace is achieved or lost in the world.

I reflected, too, on the nature of energy. It is a prime aspect of how money is defined. Electricity is a commodity. Gasoline and diesel fuel are commodities. Public power, such as rural electric cooperatives, provide the commodity of electricity without tacking on the surcharge of profit. These electric utilities are democratically-based, formed on the values of local control and self-ownership. Not ownership by the government, but partnership with government for the good of all. Will electric cooperatives exist in 20 or 50 years? Will neighbors continue to show love and kindness to neighbors and strangers alike? Only time will tell, but what the future holds is in the hands of the people. I hope to be around in 20 more years to try to reflect on such a changing—and unchanged world.