Electric cars, health care and the arts

We have a son in Atlanta who plans to buy an electric car.  He’s not sure which one, but he is going to do it.  He’s convinced.  I’m not.  Harry Truman is credited with saying the only really new ideas can be found in the history we are unaware of.   This brings to mind William Morrison, an inventor from Des Moines who was making electric cars in 1887.  He understood batteries, modified them, worked with charging methods and new materials.  By 1890 he was making cars capable of traveling 100 miles without a recharge.  They also looked good.    

This exciting new idea, the electric car, was cruising the streets of Des Moines 122 years ago.   It didn’t work out.  Now, after a century of experimenting, I’m not convinced today’s models are going to fare any better.             

On an unrelated matter, I had a chat a few days ago with our family doctor.  He’s been practicing medicine for several decades.  During that time he’s formed opinions.  He voiced one I found insightful.  The federal government, he says, will not do any of the numerous things that could be done to reduce the cost of health care.  Instead their actions more often lead to increases.  It is not, he maintains, the cost that government is concerned about. Their interest is in who pays. To control who pays they must control the system.  For better or worse, I suspect he’s right.  

On yet another unrelated matter, I was searching the yellow pages the other day and encountered a curious advertisement. A town not far from here recently opened a Theatre for the Performing Arts.  That’s how the ad reads. My reaction was positive.  Red Oak has the Wilson Performing Arts Center, a fine site for life-enriching cultural, artistic and educational events.  Now, I thought, a little town to our southwest has done likewise.  Then I noticed the fine print.  This art theatre suggests patrons B.Y.O.B.  On weekends they are open from 5 p.m. until 4 a.m.  Perhaps not so cultural after all?                      

Finally, a word about a recent column on watermelons.  If you missed it I called, for that article, Willie Joe Watts.  Watts grew the black diamond that was crowned grand champion at a watermelon festival last year in Texas.  The melon sold at auction for $10,300.  I had a nice chat with the 82-year-old Watts, learned a few things about watermelons, thanked him and was ending the conversation when he interrupted: “Wait!  Hold the phone!  You been asking me all these questions, now let me ask you one.”  I told him to fire away.  “Who,” he wanted to know, “are you going to vote for in November?”  

I found this remarkable.  I’ve never met Willie Joe Watts.  We’d spoken on the phone for only a few minutes, about watermelons, and yet he posed a question I would not ask my brother.  

I gave an evasive answer.  There was nothing evasive in what he said next.  Willie Joe can raise more than watermelons.  He let me know that anyone waffling at this point hasn’t been paying attention.  There has never in his lifetime, he said, been a presidential election as critical as the next one.  

Passion like this, and we’re still weeks away from conventions.  I’m putting Willie Joe on speed dial.             

Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.