Highways

The Highway - busy enough but nowhere near as busy as it could be and often is.

Highways are those hideous open wounds; battered asphalt slashes across the face of the earth festering with a never ending noisy chaotic rush and clash of vehicles. Call it modern day jousting, if you will.

So who says good manners, chivalry and knighthood is dead?

I do!

Just go out and drive the highways if you dare.

Driving is nut-hood today. After all, who is that nut sitting behind the hood of that other guy's car? Then again, who is the nut occupying the driver's seat of your car?

Highways are an integral part of what we wish to delude ourselves into believing is a part of "civilization" however; highways have also become North America's longest wildlife cemeteries that dispense with the formalities of burials. 

Highways are not very civilized, are they?

Wildlife is not the only road-kill casualty.

Yes, I concede that highways are a necessity for getting us and other stuff from here to there, but how much of the getting from here to there is really a necessity?

So tell me, what is "there" that is not "here" to make it a necessity to go "there" in the first place?

I do not know and I do not need to know, and given a choice I would rather not go. If I must go, then I would rather take the train... but the train does not go "there" anymore.

Written in summer 1994

The Oddblock Station Agent