2004 Soap Box Archives

Roadwork 07/19/04

When you travel as much as I do you’re bound to run into road building and repair crews, and that’s a good thing. Goodness knows that the highways of this nation need repair. Some of our interstates are a cross between a rock pile and a washboard.
Now I’m all for getting our roads in good shape but there’s just a few things about it that I just can’t understand.

For instance, why do they go in and tear up twenty miles of highway and make you drive in one lane for months and months? Why can’t they tear up a mile or two at the time, fix it and move on to the next mile or two, doing away with long waits and massive traffic jams?

And did you ever notice that there can be a minor fender bender on the interstate and traffic slows to a crawl while everybody goes by and rubbernecks the wreck and then it starts to flow again?

Another pet peeve of mine is someone who thinks they own the left hand lane no matter how slow they are going. They creep along with an ever-lengthening string of irate drivers in cars and 18-wheelers clogging up behind them and calling them names that wouldn’t do to repeat in Sunday school. You don’t want to expose a small child to the guttersnipe language coming over the CB radio at such a time.

And woe be unto you if nature should happen to call while you’re stuck behind twenty miles of immobile traffic.

The gas stops along the interstate are mostly state of the art now and you can drive up, insert your credit card, fill up your tank and keep right on rolling without ever even going inside.

Now that’s all well and good but I do wish they would standardize the process. One place you put the credit card in one way and the next you put it in another.

Now I know that sounds simple to all you shave tails and technology hip baby boomers, but to someone like me who was raised on washboards and rotary telephones, it isn’t.

I think that the industry needs a whole new flock of technical
writers who can simplify the process of doing things involving
the use of computers.

Turn off engine. OK.

Insert nozzle where? I know where I’d like to put it. Oh they mean in the gas tank. OK.

Select octane. How? Must be this big green button here. OK.

Extinguish all smoking material, no problem. I’m not smoking.

Insert credit card, OK, but nothing happens except that the machine makes a squeak and the little monitor tells me to insert the card again which I do but still nothing happens except the squeak and “insert card again” flashing on the monitor.

I’m just about ready to tear the pump off the accursed thing when I realize that there’s a little sign showing me that I’m putting the card in upside down. I mean a little sign. It should be a big sign since you obviously ain’t gonna get no gas until you get it in the right way.

You tear off the receipt and head back out on the road to face
the many challanges that await you.

Pray for our troops.

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

 

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