America past.

Americans had just been jolted out of their isolationism courtesy of Pearl Harbor when Esther Henderson took this magnificent image in Prescott, Arizona.

Prescott, Arizona. 1943.

Amazingly, some 40% of the nation, seemingly determined to vote for a candidate who is clearly missing several screws, still believes in the quixotic idea of economic and military isolationism. Mercifully, that candidate’s chances of soiling the Oval Office are even more remote than those of my Border Terrier coming back from the ashes.

But just look at that image of Henderson’s. Autumn leaves are burning – you can almost smell them – and the locals are chatting with the postman on the first of his two daily runs. The air is crisp and somewhere far away the greatest nation there has ever been is fighting mightily on two continents to provide peace and freedom for you and for me.

Prescott today? Forget it. Discovered long ago it is now so zooed as to be uninhabitable, like most places.