My trips to Las Vegas over the past forty years have not been for sightseeing; but this time was different, and my eyes were opened.
Recently, with two grand children in tow, my wife and I drove from LA to Sin City to do the tourist thing.
There are actually plenty of attractions on and off the "Strip" for people of all ages, and we hit many of them.
The number one item on our list was a visit to Hoover Dam.
This monumental project was designed to harness the Colorado River, which flooded the low-lying lands when the snows melted and went almost dry in the summer, by providing year-round water and hydro-electric power to the southwest.
Spearheaded by, Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of the Interior, planning began in 1922.
This phase took nine years and required the agreement of the seven states to be served as well as approval by the US Congress, neither of which was easy to accomplish.
Construction of Boulder Dam, as it was called then, began in 1931 and it was completed in 1935.
A total of 16,000 workers were involved, 3,500 at any given time.
Three eight hour shifts labored, in extreme heat and cold, day and night to finish the dam two years ahead of schedule and significantly under budget.
It's incomprehensible that this could happen today with the rules and regulations congress or government agencies would impose, thus adding time and money to the project.
Want more reasons why tackling this kind of project is difficult today? The average wage of the dam worker was $4 per day, pretty good by comparison to what people were earning during the Great Depression.
But, they worked seven days a week with only two days off a year.
In the beginning they lived in tents until make-shift housing for families and barracks for singles could be built.
And, while only ninety-six site deaths were recorded, those who died in local hospitals or later from toxic fumes and various injuries were not included in this number.
OSHA would have a field day with this project today and the unions would certainly get their hands into the hourly rates, safety, work schedules, health insurance, living conditions, vacations and a lot more.
Since shovel-ready projects have not been started and more stimulus spending is being considered, our representatives in Washington might be well served to consider Hoover Dam as a model for some of today's projects.
That goes for state and local governments as well.
We must remember this is the country that completed scores of public and private projects during the depression, WWII, and later built the interstate road system.
Certainly this same kind of American ingenuity and hard work can be teamed up with the available dollars, so we can build something that will be good for all of us not just some local politicians pet project designed to get him or her re-elected.
Come on you pre-boomers, you're the "Can-do Generation;" and, although you may not be part of the workforce right now, together, our collective voices will be heard.
Let's call for an end of partisanship and a return to good citizenship by doing the right things to get our beloved country back on the right track.