Jan 9, 2005 published as a Guest Editorial in The Bloomington
Herald Times
http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2005/01/09/digitalcity.0109-SH-D5_RSZ23050.sto?lin
Give Evansville their Interstate to the Capital.
Build it faster and cheaper. by James Alexander Thom
Being in the majority should never make us insensitive to the needs of
the minority. Compassion is the word.
We, the overwhelming majority who believe a new-terrain Interstate 69
route from Evansville to Indianapolis is the most outrageously stupid
and wasteful project imaginable, have perhaps not considered the
desperate isolation of poor Evansville, way down there in the very tip
toe of Indiana. We don't appreciate the brave Evansville business
speculators and lobbyists who have finagled for years to run a
superhighway over our lives so they can get to Indianapolis a few
minutes quicker.
But poor Evansville is so shut off from the rest of the world! Look at
their utter lack of transportation arteries for travel and commerce.
All they have is:
• Interstate 64 from St. Louis right past Evansville to Louisville (and
on to the Atlantic coast);
• U.S. 41 from Chicago through Evansville to Nashville (and on to
Atlanta and Miami);
• various railroads, and
• the navigable Ohio River (from pittsburgh to the Mississippi and thus
to anyplace in mid-America, to New Orleans — yes, even to Mexico, the
Eldorado of NAFTA, which is where I-69 would take them if their dreams
did come true).
So you see, those poor Evansvilleans can hardly get out of their little
cul-de-sac to go anywhere — especially to Indianapolis, where the
Statehouse is. Would you want to do the kind of commute an Evansville
lobbyist has to make? To hear him tell it, he has to trek through a
southwestern Indiana wilderness by deerpath over hills and wetlands and
through gloomy forests, running over possums and Amish buggies all
along the way!
I say, have pity for such as he. It's just a shame that the state
capital didn't stay where it was originally, in Corydon. If it had, an
Evansville wheeler-dealer could have sped east on I-64 after breakfast,
stroked a politician, and returned home in time for an afternoon in the
golf cart.
Being sympathetic to the plight of any poor Evansvillean who might need
to go to a state capital, I have tried to imagine some way to help —
some way more satisfactory and less costly than paving the loveliest
segment of Indiana, where I was born and raised and expect to be buried
eventually under something other than an exit ramp or a fast-food
restaurant. Those poor Evansvilleans are so far from Indianapolis that
they might as well be in Kentucky.
A little ink on the road atlas is so much easier and cheaper
than a $2-billion highway with all its destruction of environment and
disruption of the lives of us natives.
The car trip from Evansville to Frankfort (which would then be their
state capital) is only 160 miles, all Interstate 64, compared with the
186 miles of wilderness trail to Indianapolis — which isn't nearly as
pretty a city as Frankfort anyway.
Instead of remaining the woebegone, forgotten outpost of Indiana,
Evansville would be welcomed as a proud new metropolis of Kentucky — in
fact, its greatest city west of Louisville!
And then we could all live happily ever after, without fear of being
obliterated by highway bulldozers. Anti-I-69 activists could retire to
hugging the trees they will have saved, instead of spending all their
time dreaming up ways to embarrass Indiana governors and INDOT
bureaucrats. This is such a splendid situation, in fact, that My Man
Mitch will probably want to renew my Sagamoreship, which is rather
faded after 27 years.
And I couldn't have come up with this modest and wonderful solution if
I hadn't been sensitive to the plight of those poor, isolated
Evansvilleans. I'm glad God made me a Compassionate Conservationis
COUNT US! recommends that you read a James
Alexander
Thom's book. You must, in order to be a real educated Hoosier.
"Warrior Woman" (his latest work written with wife Dark
Rain Thom),
"Sign-Talker," "Spectator Sport," "Follow the River," "Long Knife,"
"From Sea to Shining Sea," "Panther in the Sky," "The Children of the
First Man, " and "The Red Heart."
*********************************************
We must admit, we stole Thom's idea presented here and
used it at a 2004 Perry Township MpO meeting with Evansvilles former
INDOT commissioner J Brian Nicol. We added that we guested that the
Ohio River could be routed North of Evansville for less than the cost
of I-69, 3C too. We also published a version as sent to the Hoosier
Gazette and posted elsewhere on the COUNT US! joke page.
COUNT
US! PLAN--
RIVER DIVERSION $1.6 BILLION
