Yesteryear’s Echoes: Trying to make ‘lemonade’ from the Highroad ‘prune’ – at what cost?

his column, from 2004, was published when the Highroad was authorized on a priority basis as an alleged emergency means to relieve traffic on Highway 76 and years before Highway 65 went from two lanes to four lanes between Branson and the Arkansas state line.

Seventh District Congressman Roy Blunt recently announced that $65 million in federal funds had been approved for 10 highway projects in southwest Missouri. In announcing his rationale for the funding, Blunt said, “These projects will create jobs and make improvements to some of the heaviest traveled roads in southwest Missouri. The aim is to make these thoroughfares safer and more efficient.”

One can therefore understand the Ole Seagull’s confusion as he reads that one of those projects, the only one directly affecting those who travel in the immediate Branson area, is a $6.8 million extension of the Ozark Mountain Highroad. As he read Blunt’s rationale, the Ole Seagull thought to himself, Blunt must be getting his information on the Highroad from the same source that furnished the information to President Bush about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But wait, that couldn’t be the case because Blunt goes on to say, “These projects were the consensus choices of elected and community leaders … for immediate upgrades.” It is beyond the comprehension of an Ole Seagull that, given the situation on Highway 65 between Branson and the Arkansas state line, any “community leader,” elected or otherwise, could even think about giving the Highroad priority over the “upgrading” of Highway 65.

Besides, what’s to make “safer and more efficient” on the Highroad? Are more people dying or involved in accidents on it than on Highway 65 between Branson and the Arkansas state line?

A school bus carrying your child or grandchild is traveling at 55 miles per hour. It is being passed by an 18-wheeler and a steady stream of oncoming traffic traveling in the opposite direction, both at 55 miles an hour. Which road would you rather have the bus traveling on: the Highroad, with its extra lane in each direction and a median strip separating the bus from oncoming traffic, or Highway 65 south of Branson, with nothing but a painted line and a few feet of “spitting space” separating the school bus from oncoming traffic? Which road needs to be made “safer?”

In terms of the “heaviest traveled roads in southwest Missouri,” the only person who is lonelier than someone traveling on the Highroad is the Maytag repairman. By what kind of warped logic does the Highroad qualify as one of the heaviest-traveled roads in southwest Missouri? What kind of creative imagination is necessary to even hint that an extension of the Highroad should take precedence over the upgrading of Highway 65 between Branson and the Arkansas state line?

How about the same logic that our “community leaders” use to fight gambling in Rockaway Beach on family value grounds, while doing nothing to stop the expansion of the serving of alcohol in Branson’s theatres and attractions? What about the creative imagination of “elected leaders” who call Branson Landing, with its current anchors and “pimple” fountain, a “world-class” attraction? [240227- Ok, so this was a tad strong. The fountain is more than a “pimple” fountain.]

Here’s the Ole Seagull’s favorite because, in his opinion, it illustrates the economic “false God” that a lot of this community’s leaders appear to pay homage to: “Do you really think that improving Highway 65 to the Arkansas line will bring more traffic to Branson?” In reply, an Ole Seagull would suggest, Who cares! Shouldn’t our priority be that whoever travels on Highway 65, tourists and local residents alike, travel on the safest road possible?

Instead, what appears to be happening is that some of Branson’s “elected and community leadership” is trying to make “lemonade” out of the “prune” called the “Ozark Mountain Highroad.” “But Seagull, you can’t get lemonade from a prune.” They know that, but at least it’s “their prune juice.”

“Is that where the rational and logic for the Highroad getting priority over the upgrading of Highway 65 comes from, drinking their prune juice?” Hum, don’t know for sure, but that could help explain the “stench” that an Ole Seagull, and others in our community, associate with the Highroad and its philosophy of economics before safety, for the benefit of the powerful and influential few, at the expense of the traveling public.