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I have been harping on this subject for so long it is hard to believe that someone in a position of authority hasn’t at least done something or told me to shut up and just live with it.
I am talking about the dismal condition of many of the rest stops on the Indiana Toll Road. This has gone on for years and was noticeable even before the state leased the highway to a private consortium. So for you Mitch Daniels fans, this is not about him.
Last Sunday I had to drive from O’Hare airport back to South Bend at a very late hour, and there was no choice but to stop at the first location, the one around the 22-mile marker. It was a filthy mess. The men’s room smelled like urine and my wife told me the women’s roDom was no better. Sorry to describe it this way but that is only way for you to get the picture. In addition we wanted to get something to eat and could find no one behind the counter and what food was visible looked like it had been there since dinner.
Also, the price of gasoline was thirty cents higher than what it was two days later at the station a few blocks from my house.
Can you imagine what it must be like for someone making a long distance trip and after coming through Ohio with its clean, well-lit and consumer-friendly rest stops, then having to make a stop in Indiana? They must think we are the biggest rubes in America.
I do not care who is running the Toll Road. This must change and someone, the state or the company holding the lease, needs to come down hard on the private contractors and clean up this mess or just take over the operations. Indiana deserves better.
So now let’s move on to just plain dumb. I read today on the WSBT website that a Mishawaka woman put her own life at risk and jumped into Lake Michigan to save a woman who had fallen in to the still icy water. According to the police the victim fell in because she was texting on her phone at the time. If this doesn’t take first prize in the local stupidity sweepstakes I don’t know what could. When I read the story to a friend today she said, “Thank God the women is still alive.” And I said, thank God she wasn’t driving and potentially could have killed others.
As a society we need to take control of this modern American (and I assume elsewhere) nightmare. Driving is a responsibility. And, apparently, so is just a spring walk on a lakeside pier.