From Sea to Shining Sea

The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. What an invention. What a system. What a beautiful thing.

Think about it. First of all, someone way back in the day started numbering roads. Well, that’s not a great system for naming roads. I’ve always been more of a word person than a number person….until I realized that EVEN numbered roads go EAST-WEST and ODD numbered roads go NORTH-SOUTH. Genius. I’ve lived practically my while life at the intersection of I-65 and I-10. Always two digit numbers. But the day I realized that I-465 was a three-digit number, and even more specifically, a three-digit number with an even first digit, because it went around Indianapolis, I saw the true beauty inherent in the system, and my love affair with the Interstate System began. Those glorious, reflective numbers on the stately green signs increase from west-to-east on the roads of odd-numbered persuasion, and the sister even-numbers increase from south-to-north, for the most part. The main interstates are all named as multiples of five. Such precision, such organization, such grace.

Millions of Americans zip to and fro from Sea to Shining Sea safely and efficiently (for the most part) without the use of traffic lights or intersections. But our interstates aren’t just for taking Grandma on vacation. In the event of a nuclear war….or hurricane, our national network of roads can be changed in a matter of minutes into dual arteries of evacuation.

My knees sometimes go weak when I think about the warm glow of interstate signage and markers. Think about it. Those adorable glowing white letters and symbols on the handsome green field glimmer in the darkness not of their own luminescence, but simply utilize and multiply the light of your own headlights and return it to you in the shape of “Pine Apple 1 Mile” or “I-65S to Huntsville Keep Right” or what could warm your heart more than that “Dauphin St. Exit 4” sign that has been the apple of your sore eyes for 880 miles?

Even the hairiest of interchanges, like the love-hate relationship I have with the I-24/I-65 interchange in Nashville, can’t help but bring a smile to my face when I consider the graceful curves converging and diverging under the watchful guidance from above of my dear friends MapQuest, GoogleMaps, AAA, and Rand McNally. The way the third, fourth, and even fifth lanes join the dancing, weaving, waltz as cars merge and glide across lanes, and then, as quickly and quietly as they came, those lanes pull off and go their own way, taking cars, and trucks with them on to the east or west or north or south.

Even the rest stops on our lowly non-toll-road I-65 bring a smile to my face, if only for the sense of familiarity every time I stop at one I’ve been to before, maybe with my family where my brother pushed the button for a Grapico and 12 came out, or maybe with the band in the middle of the night one time, or with Chris on the way back to school. Or the way the rest stop never fails to draw patrons from the same pool as the DMV, the Bebos Car Wash and the Wal-Mart on the Beltline. That and the lock on the bathroom stall that had been moved to the top of the door and had crooked black crayon letters and an arrow <-- LOCK. In case you didn’t know.

Some may think it strange that I have such a love for the interstates. But I say if an American Studies major doesn’t see the beauty in a road named after an amazing president that takes us all over the land of the free and the home of the brave, then she has missed something; and if a Theology major can drive all the way down I-65 and never see the beauty of God in the sun setting over the Mobile River Delta as she crosses the aptly-named Dolly Parton Bridge, or at the very least thank God she made the left hand exit in Nashville, then she has lost sight of something, too.

The Interstate. Drive it. Love it.

Edit: It occurs to me that I almost forgot to mention those reflective little bumps that serve as lane dividers. Who ever invented those deserves to be sittin' in a hot tub soakin' it up with his soul mate right now. They practically light up the entire road! Not to mention the guy who invented the reflective stickers for road pylons and guard rails. Where would America be without them? Dark, probably.