There has been talk about building an interstate loop around Baton Rouge for a long time. How long? Well, to give you an idea, one of the corridors presently being considered roughly follows the same path previously mapped out for a loop hundreds of years ago by the Choctaw Indians, who, at the last minute, decided to build Indian mounds instead.

Not long ago, all this talk about the loop turned into concrete action, which means a feasibility study got underway. This was an encouraging sign, because whenever someone starts spending money on a feasibility study, you know that people are not just talking about something anymore – they are now seriously thinking about it.

A year later, the feasibility study was completed. Its conclusion: “If we can send men to the moon and return them safely to Earth, then an interstate loop around the city of Baton Rouge is feasible.”

This was a monumental step forward for the loop project, and we all deserve to give ourselves a pat on the back. But wait … You still have some questions about the loop?

1. •How much will the loop cost? An estimated $3.6 billion to $4.5 billion, so even if it triples in cost between now and the time it is completed, we can still keep it under a trillion dollars, which, in modern governmental budgetary terms, is a bargain. A loan from one wealthy Chinese entrepreneur will probably be sufficient to fund the project.
   

2. •When is the anticipated date of completion? Somewhere between the year 2016 and the year we are all flying around in spacemobiles like George Jetson.
   

3. •When will construction commence? Not so fast, urban sprawl breath! We still have to decide where we’re going to put the darn thing. And as we all know, everybody loves airports, prisons, Wal-Marts, and interstates, but nobody wants an airport, prison, Wal-Mart, or interstate in his own backyard. We know this by watching people at council meetings wailing that civilization, as we know it, will come to an end if a Super Wal-Mart is allowed near their home, and then watching those same people shopping in the Wal-Mart as soon as it opens, with several screaming toddlers in their shopping carts trying their best to crawl out.
   

Of course, some other cities have had the foresight to build their loops before the areas around the cores of the cities became densely populated. But in Louisiana, we don’t subscribe to the “build it and they will come” philosophy, but rather the “wait until they come and build it through their living room” philosophy.

The objective of the loop is to divert “thru-drivers,” who are just passing through Baton Rouge, away from the most congested parts of the city. Of course, you and I know that there are other, less costly ways to achieve that goal, such as placing confusing and misleading highway signs in Port Allen and Denham Springs with the intention of diverting those travelers who have no legitimate business in Baton Rouge in the first place to less congested areas, such as downtown Bunkie.

Regardless of where you stand on the loop issue, you have to commend the feasibility study committee for the progress they’ve made so far, not the least of which is in the field of grammar, by describing the loop on their website as an 80- to 90-mile-long “circumferential” roadway.

If you recall from tenth-grade English class, “circumferential” is the root adverbial conjunctive for the word circumferent, which is most often used in the legal field, as in: “He circumferented the judicial system by playing the race card,” or “The prosecution’s case was too weak to convict, having relied solely on circumferential evidence.”

I predict a long, hard road ahead for the loop. Emotions will run high and tempers will occasionally flare whenever the subject of the loop comes up.

Thank goodness for Woody Jenkins, former Congressional candidate and editor of the Central City News, who managed to defuse tensions by injecting a little humor into the debate when he accused the loop planners of trying to build “a Berlin Wall through Central” which would divide North and South Central “like East and West Berlin.” 1

Hahaha. Thanks, Woody. We appreciate your input. We promise to keep you “in the loop.”

Actually, there is no plot to build a Berlin Wall through Central, and the loop committee, in an attempt to alleviate Woody’s concerns, assured him that the labeling of that part of the loop as the “Divide and Conquer Memorial Highway” on a preliminary map was just an administrative oversight.

Which brings us to another, even more important issue: How did someone who doesn’t have a middle name like “Ed,” “Bob,” or “Ray” become the editor of the Central City News? What is Woody Jenkins’ middle name, anyway, and why doesn’t he use it?

You can help us give Woody a middle name by sending in your choice to the Give Woody a Central City Middle Name Contest, in care of the email address shown below. NO JOKE ENTRIES PLEASE, unless they’re at least as good as “Woodpecker” or “Nmi.”

As always, the winning entry will receive the next issue of Red Shtick Magazine absolutely free.

1 Woody also warns in his editorials that the loop will bring “illegal immigrants, crime and drugs” to Central.