At Home on the Interstate

For the weekend I decided to take a side trip to Savannah, a place I've never been. For me, it wasn't so much the destination as the journey - it would allow me to travel lengths of I-75 and I-16 that I have never been on before.

This little habit of mine traces from about age 8. I clearly remember trips to Kansas City to see Uncle Joe and Aunt Agnes, and Dad would take the '64 Pontiac Star Chief along the rapidly evolving I-70 route from western Kansas to KC.

As "navigator" and holder of the map, I was fascinated with the number of times we would drive on pristine four-lane concrete, then merge off to bump along "old" US 40, then re-enter another stretch of new Interstate.

Sometime in my teens, I took one of the collection of Rand McNally Road Atlases I had and began to highlight all of the Interstate routes I had traveled. Over the years I've gone back to this particular atlas and added all my trips - to New England to see Mark G; across the Appalachians into DC to see Mark C; all through Texas during my Santikos days; and throughout the West for lots of vacations based out of Denver.

There is something about the ribbon of four-lane that fascinates me. I was almost depressed when I-70 was finished in Kansas in 1970, and when the Interstate Highway System was finally "completed" in the 80s. My spirits lifted when new freeway projects were announced, including the proposed I-27 in Colorado and Texas; alas, most of them ended up being proposals only.

Given the current economic mess and the renewed talk of infrastructure projects, I wonder if the "I-66" project will be revived. This is the idea of a new Route 66 through the heartland, cutting across the East, into southern Missouri, Kansas and Colorado, then eventually through Las Vegas and California. It's been talked about for years, sometimes as an all-truck route, sometimes as a coast-to-coast SIX-lane Interstate with a speed limit of 100 or more.

Most likely I won't see this project built, but how wonderful it would be if it were. I could once again plan a trip involving miles of pristine concrete and asphalt, peppered with veeroffs to the "old" two-lane, with the giant earth movers building and leveling.

Maybe it's that building is a future-oriented activity, and that is how I am always thinking.