We noticed much more highway construction this year on our way home from Texas. Every state seemed to have many miles of highway improvements and many new overpasses being built.

We’ve always commented at the ongoing infrastructure projects in the USA.

Perhaps it’s because we have fewer paved highways in Canada, fewer big cities, and a smaller population base, but regardless of the cause(s), we just don’t see so many highway improvements going at one time across the entire country.

Once again, I thought of my Dad. When we took Mom and Dad on vacations to the USA, Dad always marvelled at these huge projects. Being involved with road building almost his entire working life, he was keenly interested in these projects. Dad was foreman for the Rural Municipality (similar to a US county) in our area for the last years of his career before retirement. On one trip, as we were driving through a massive construction project in Los Angeles, Dad said, “This project alone would blow up our RM budget for the next hundred years!”

To many people travelling the highways, I’m sure the construction delays are an irritant. To hubs, who made many miles on USA highways in 18-wheeler, it’s a welcome sight to see road improvements anywhere, to my Dad, it was something to be in awe of and to me, it’s always a fond memory of my Dad.

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.”

Alphonse Karr