Word: highway
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...Yorker, I am happily removed from the perils of highway driving. And from what I'm hearing about some of the latest developments in driving habits I am in no hurry to rejoin the motoring hoards: It seems that millions of people are traveling our roads clutching cell phones to their heads, babbling incessantly and earnestly while swerving in and out of oncoming traffic. This, I feel safe in saying, qualifies as a dangerous situation...
Interestingly, it appears to be the physical action of dialing and holding the phone that causes the most significant distraction; Marlboro officials are still allowing citizens to zip down the highway chatting into a microphone-and-earpiece contraption. I would think that carrying on any kind of totally internalized conversation that tend to block out sounds like sirens, horns and the desperate cries of soon-to-be roadkill might be dangerous, but that's just...
...Hotel California - Eagles 2. A Day in the Life - Beatles 3. Sultans of Swing - Dire Straits 4. Time - Pink Floyd 5. Message in a Bottle - The Police 6. The Boxer - Simon & Garfunkel 7. Highway Star - Deep Purple 8. Jealous Guy - John Lennon 9. The River - Bruce Springsteen 10. Nights in White Satin - Moody Blues...
...reminded of this as I drive past the predictable sprawl of franchise outlets and architectural felonies along Highway 61 in Southeastern Iowa. I'm a nostalgic coot who likes the history and surprise of old friends in a chance meeting outside a building older than their combined years. I like the rumor and sass of regulars at the corner luncheonette. I'm tooling north along the great muddy Mississippi in search of these very things, and I'm not the only one looking...
...even at that, nearly 30% of the storefronts are empty. A lot of people are willing to drive half an hour north to the mall and strip stores near Burlington, and a proposed highway bypass will route traffic around Fort Madison. So the true secret of the town's success, then, can be found every Thursday morning at the sinfully addictive Ivy Bake Shoppe, where Martha Wolf and Susan Welch Saunders' blackberry scones make the sorry impostors at a certain ubiquitous coffee-house chain taste like clay pigeons, and where a juiced-up group of local retailers and other...