It’s been a quiet week here in Cheat Lake (Woebegone)…
It’s the very last part of finals week at WVU. Many of the students that have finished by Wednesday are already out of town. Those left just want to finish and do likewise. Now this is good for those of us who are permanent residents since we get to reclaim the town for the next three months. Traffic is just a bit more manageable. Shenanigans are back to tolerable rates. Even the air is cleaner. In fact, I’m told that chi production and flow is up by 45% so things are looking good!
I’ve always thought that the end of finals week would be the most raucous. You finish all of the hard work you’ve done from the year and once that last test is turned in; bam, go out, raise hell, party, pitch that wang dang doodle, strut your stuff, hoot and holler, have your very own personal Mardi Gras that would rival anything you’ve seen or read about in New Orleans! Well, that’s me. Most here are just happy to peter out, veggie and fade into New Jersey—never to be seen again. At least, until next August perhaps. So, it just gets quieter.
However with the departure of the students means the beginning of construction season. Anymore it seems like it is ALWAYS construction season around here. Roads will get ripped up, trees taken down, holes dug, holes filled in. There are trucks moving other trucks to places where those aforementioned activities have or need to occur.
The latest project here is the reconstruction of upper High Street. (LINK to picture ) to make it look “perty”. (I almost had another link here about Morgantown construction, but I discovered that it too is “under construction”.) Most folks already think it looks decent with the present gas lamps, hanging flower containers, and small trees. The big thing about the new stuff is that they’re going to get rid of the overhead power and utility lines. Plus they’re going to put in electric lamps that look like gas lamps, plant small tress and add flower containers. And yes, it will result in even less street parking than what we have now.
Actually, it’s not really that quiet out here. Sounds of chain saws, jack hammers, generators, grinders and backup beeping flood the valleys. Stuff is getting done. Activity. It makes me wish I was out there doing some of that. Sitting on your butt and looking into a computer monitor all day sometimes just doesn’t cut it. Yes, I do things in that box that is supposed to do other things so people at other desks can do things in their boxes. Folks out there are literally moving mountains, building buildings, constructing constructions. You know, doing “stuff”. They actually are breaking a sweat! People pay good money for the kind of exercise and aerobics that I see happening daily out there.
At the same time I wish they’d go away. Not that I don’t like them, per se, it’s just that we’re losing so much that made this area such a nice place to live. When I moved here in 98, we had a nice mixture of houses and development interspersed with clumps of trees or small farms.
I don’t know. I go from one who prefers being smack dab in the middle of a city where all of the action is to desiring to one who is secluded on 25 acres out in the middle of nowhere in Hooterville. I just don’t like it when either of them start to transform into the other.
Well that’s the news.
