Dear Intersection of Ben White and Interstate 35

No one paid you much mind. Sure, it was obvious that you were designed and plotted out by a four year-old with potentially severe down syndrome and a Lite Brite, but hey, who back then gave two shits? Why bother, right? You were WAY down south. Out there, away from where most people actually lived. Most of us were like, “Isn’t that in Buda? Let them fix it.”

But so much has changed since we first met. Austin molded all around you, in official form. And everyone in your immediate vicinity has made some real, honest efforts to change their ways. To get with the times. The Ben Whites on either side of you are starting to look better, and might even be completely navigable within the next year. I 35, rumbling above your broken-ass, is widening and cleaning up on both sides of you. In fact, everyone is going around you entirely, with Ben White and I35 going over AND under you, as well as interchanging between each other by avoiding touching you in any way. You’ve become the trailer home that just-won’t-fucking-leave. Long after the big development has come through. The shack amongst skyscrapers. The evidence that progress does indeed occur, but not everywhere. The lone holdout. The Appalachian foothill vote. That crazy backwoods coot who still thinks the south will rise again.

Yeah. That’s you. Not pretty, is it?

You know, we believe it a fair statement to say that ten years ago, getting through you was like passing an average, mature watermelon through an average, human colon. Today, it’s more like a potato through a bendy-straw. There has been improvement in aesthetics and potential through-put, but it’s been proportional to the incremental increase in traffic that isn’t bypassed or “wowed” by the appearance of watered and manicured grassy knolls behind the orange barrel parade you exist amongst.

No, we’re not letting your proponents convince us you’ve made any “real” improvements, because we aren’t stupid. We can read a clock. Twenty minutes in 1995 is still twenty minutes in 2005. And during rush hour, it still takes us twenty goddamn minutes to push that potato of traffic through your constipated, bendy-straw ass.

Ten years, millions of dollars, multiple construction contracts, and the threat of your flanks going all “Toll” on us, and here we sit: right where we started. You’re the longest running disappointment in our lives, besides our career path, to date. We just wanted you to know that.

So get your shit together kid.

But if, by chance, your flanks DO go “Toll” on us, then torch this letter so that our twice-daily, hour-total interactions aren’t so awkward. Yes, we’re fond of hedging. Sweet? Sweet.