"Before the Roman came to Rye, or out to Severn strode..."

"...the rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road."

Thus spake Gilbert Keith Chesterton some 93 years ago, and he might as well have been writing here in Greenwich today. The heavy-drinking narrator of The Rolling English Road has nothing on the chaps who have been painting the dotted lines on the newly-paved Boston Post Road, a.k.a. US 1, a.k.a. Putnam Avenue, a.k.a the major highway from Maine to Florida (hi, Erica!). To drive along the Post Road in Greenwich today is to become seasick from all the side-to-side wavering you must engage in if you want to follow the lines as opposed to the direction of the road itself.

A month or two ago, Milbank Avenue had the same problem, such that people started writing letters to the editor about it. That caught the attention of Town Hall, which sent out a crew to try to rectify the havoc caused by the previous crew. Or perhaps it was the same crew, mostly sober this time (they got it about 90% right, but it still weaves a little here and there).

So now your scribe awaits a similar process to unfold with regard to the Post Road. Why, he wonders, do the highly paid "supervisors" who stand around watching the road crews do their thing not notice the shoddy work at the time? Or, perhaps, do they notice it and turn a blind eye because there will eventually be more work, and perhaps overtime, down the road (as it were)?

Ah, dear reader, your tax dollars at work. The country that sent men to the moon in 1969 can't even even paint a straight line in 2007. It does not seem to augur well for our national future; and as for the present, your scribe advises you simply to ignore the wavy lines, just as almost everyone in Town already ignores the speed limits and stop signs. Just point the nose of your Hummer or souped-up SUV in the direction you want to go, and put the pedal to the metal. Works every time.