American Highway allows KNLS listeners to travel America's back roads, highways, and byways.  You'll find some of this nation's most interesting people, places and events in the transcripts below.

Adopt A Wild Horse

Mike: If you ever find yourself in the small town of Cross Plains in north-central Tennessee, ask where they keep the wild horses. Each year, the United States government rounds up hundreds of wild horses from herds scattered throughout the western states. The horses are culled to keep their growing numbers from over-grazing the available open range. From there, the mustangs are shipped to holding centers throughout the U.S., where they are adopted by horse-lovers from town and country. If you can't make it to Cross Plains, government agent, Karen Malloy, maintains an adoption website at WWW.adoptahorse.blm.gov.

Karen Malloy: The program was started in 1998. We established a website with a homepage, and a gallery page. Then we also have requirements and information on the site as well. The gallery page is basically a checkerboard of photographs of between forty and fifty animals available for adoption. The application form is electronic, it's submitted online. People are called back and screened whenever that is received. They are given a bidder I.D. number, and they bid online, in real time, and on a certain day and time, the bidding is closed, and the high bidder has got the horse and must either meet us at that facility or in Cross Plains, TN to pick up the horse on an appointed date.

Mike: Adopting a legend of the American West…just another stop along the American Highway.

Would you like to return to the directory of American Highway transcripts, or would you like to go back to the list of all program transcripts?

End of the Trail Museum

Mike: Travel Interstate 5 headed out of Portland, Oregon, and you can visit 'the end of the trail'. Oregon City, just to the southeast of Portland, is considered 'the end of the trail' for one of America's historic western migrations. Rick Werzer, chief interpreter at The End of the Trail Museum, talks about the hardships these hearty pioneers faced.

Rick: Well, the immigrants, when they left, would leave their jumping off towns along the Missouri River in the springtime, and they are walking for 2000 miles, they are going to walk through a variety of weather, and they start out in the rain and the heavy mud. They get through that, the weather dries out a bit, and they get a few days of nice weather, it starts getting hotter and hotter, the mud turns to dust; they are sucking the dust, it's getting into their hair and eyes and their noses. They get onto the Great Plains, and there are thunderstorms and lightening and prairie fires. They are going to deal with millions and millions of buffalo, occasionally stampeding in front of where they want to travel and they have to wait, sometimes for an hour or more for the buffalo to go by and the dust to settle before they can travel. They get a little bit further and they're crossing rivers back and forth, and drowning is one of the leading causes of death on the Oregon Trail. Even a river that is not all that deep or wide can get into a flash flood out on the prairie, so they're having to deal with that. They get a little bit further and they are crossing the Rocky Mountains, and that's when the hard part starts. They are going through deserts, they are going through very steep mountains and where there is not a lot of game. They are getting less water, and what they do find is worse. They get further yet, and they start climbing the Blue Mountains and the Cascades in eastern Oregon. It's getting later in the year, and if they haven't made enough time, they're having to deal with snow, and rain again, now in the mountains, and they are very steep mountains. Nothing like they have ever seen before. Even crossing the Rockies was miniscule next to crossing the Blues and the Cascades.

Mike: The rigors endured by pilgrims trying to reach the end of the Oregon Trail. Just another stop along the American Highway.

Would you like to return to the directory of American Highway transcripts, or would you like to go back to the list of all program transcripts?

The U. S. Naval Academy

Naval Academy Photos:

• Officer's row on campus
• Administration building and dormitory
• John Paul Jones Crypt
• The Academy Chapel
• Campus tribute to submariners

Mike: America's future naval officers have been trained in Annapolis, Maryland at the U. S. Naval Academy for well over a century now, but local tour guide, Bill Walsh, says that wasn't always the case.

Mr. Walsh: Before the Naval Academy was established, the U.S. navy trained its officers on board sailing ships. The officer trainees lived in the middle of the ship. They ran messages back and forth and up and down. Because they lived in the middle of the ship, they were called 'mid-shipmen'. And that name has stuck 'til this day for the students at the naval academy. Men and women are all referred to as mid-shipmen from those early days on the sailing ships. In approximately 1800, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and others decided that the navy needed to train its new officers on land where they would all get the same training, because on sailing ships, there was a great difference in the training that these mid-shipmen were getting. It took until 1845 until the actual naval academy was established. In 1845, there was a 10 cannon fort on the Severn River. It was called Fort Severn and it was given to the U.S. navy to be used as the new naval academy. The first class in 1845 consisted on 50 mid-shipmen and 8 professors. Those 50 mid-shipmen were all men, naturally. The training wasn't a 4-year course like it is today, because they had a lot less to learn to be a good naval officer. But they graduate after 4 years with a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering. Many times, they go right on to a job with the fleet. Many of them go on to additional trainings. Some of them go on to graduate school, and some of them go to the post-graduate school in Monterey, California. Many of them go to Pensacola, Florida to become navy fliers or to other training to be on submarine or aircraft carriers. Roughly 100 of last year's graduates went into the United States' Marine Corp as Second Lieutenants. Those who enter the navy come in as ensigns. The four-year course here includes a great deal of training, and there is no such thing as a summer vacation. When the school closes down after the graduation in June and doesn't pick up again until August, those mid-shipmen go off and train with the fleet or go into some training associated with whatever specialty they hope to get into when they graduate, whether it's submarine duty, or navy seals or something else. That's where they will spend their summer. They don't become lifeguards or waiters.

Mike: The Naval Academy's buildings were designed to impress, and they do just that. The campus is one of the most beautiful in the nation. Mr. Walsh talks about the French architectural style seen all across the grounds.

Mr. Walsh: The architect who laid out the general plan for the academy in the 1890's was Ernest Flagg. He studied in France. He was a great admirer of the Beaux Arts School of Architecture, and it's very much in evidence. The buildings he built all have a very interesting mansard roof. You almost feel like you are looking at downtown Paris. Particularly interesting is the Bancroft Hall, the largest dormitory in the world. That is where the 4000 mid-shipmen live and have their dining hall, and all their facilities that they need to live. Their classrooms are outside the dormitory, and they are kept busy walking back and forth between the classrooms. The dormitory is completely there, and you could live there for the entire year without leaving if you didn't have anything else to do. We are standing across from Preble Hall, which is a beautiful granite building, named after a Commodore Preble, and it's the location of the Naval Academy's museum. The basement of Preble Hall holds the gallery of ships. Anyone who is interested in sailing ships and naval architecture and naval history would be most interested to visit this gallery of ships. The ground floor is rearranged periodically, and they currently have a chronological exhibit of World War II, of the U.S. Navy's portion of World War II which was mainly in the Pacific. And also there is the original table used for the signing of the Japanese surrender on board the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay in September, 1945. Also the pen used to sign the document is there and a lot of the description of how it came to be. The table, originally a huge oaken table was made specifically for that surrender, but after the events of August 6 and August 9, the war was ended much more quickly than anyone imagined, and the oaken table never made it to Japan. So Admiral Nimitz told them to bring up one of the mess hall tables, the best one they could find. They brought the table up, and draped a beautiful green cloth over it, and that is the table used to sign the Japanese surrender document.

Mike: Next, Mr. Walsh takes us to visit the chapel at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Mr. Walsh: That's the Naval Academy's carillon (you hear) located on the top of the chapel, which was built in approximately 1890. Under the front of the chapel, under the chapel dome, is the crypt of John Paul Jones, who was our greatest naval hero during the Revolutionary War. After the Revolutionary War, he went to work for King Louis XVI in France, and later for Empress Catherine the Great in Russia. He caught pneumonia in Russia, went back to France to recuperate, but he died in 1792 at the age of 45. The reason he was living in France was that after the Revolutionary War, the navy was made smaller, downsizing we call it today, and he was told to find a new job. That is why he went to Europe. When the chapel was built, the navy and the U. S. government decided to honor him by placing his sarcophagus in a crypt beneath the dome of the Naval Academy. The only problem was, no one knew where he was because he had been buried in a cemetery reserved for the French nobility, and after the French Revolution, the cemetery, the St. Louis cemetery, was sold and a department store was built on top of it. It actually took seven years before the U. S. ambassador in France was able to locate the cemetery, excavate beneath the department store, and retrieve his coffin. Fortunately, he was buried in a lead coffin filled with alcohol, so that when he was brought back, his body was in fairly good condition. So good, in fact, that they could perform an autopsy and determine that he had died of pneumonia. Today, he is still in his lead coffin, filled with fresh alcohol, in a marble sarcophagus. The marble was donated by the French. It is green Pyranees marble. He is in there, and he will not be opened up again. The honor and respect that we owe him is to let him rest in peace. And he's honored whenever the crypt is opened to the public, he is honored by the presence of a navy honor guard in the crypt.

Mike: Visiting the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland...just another stop along the American Highway.

Would you like to return to the directory of American Highway transcripts, or would you like to go back to the list of all program transcripts?

The New Life Station is pleased to provide transcripts online for a number of KNLS programs.  Please note that all scripts are the property of World Christian Broadcasting and/or SeedSower Productions.  They are provided here for your personal enjoyment only and may not be disseminated in any fashion without prior written permission.

                     KNLS International, © 2001 - Mike Osborne webmaster