Returning home this afternoon to Beaumont, Texas, from a couple of days camping in the Angelina National Forest made me realize I should have just stayed.
As my friend, who was camping with me, ran back to Nacogdoches for a few hours yesterday to run some errands, I was left practically alone inside the little campground where we landed known as Boykin Springs. The wind was blowing ever gently yesterday and if you haven’t ever listened to the sound of pine trees whistling in the breeze in the quiet of the woods, then you have really missed something grand. While I planned to camp out only two days, I began thinking seriously about spending another day camped out.
But no. I had to come back to Beaumont, the city which should have as its motto: “You can’t get to there from here.”
For whatever reasons the city government let the streets in all but its best neighborhoods deteriorate to a state of maddening neglect. Now all of a sudden, they want to fix everything all at once. I suppose it is so they can tear it down again and make most of downtown Beaumont a lake, which is what I gather our city moms and dads want to do.
On the way back to my living spaces from downtown here is the construction, repair or other public works work I encountered. Broadway by the post office, construction. Broadway at Martin Luther King, right lane blocked on MLK for the creeping constructionism that is Calder Avenue. I turned on North Street and then hooked a right on First Street. Several blocks up, I went to turn on Ashley, which would be the shortest path of least resistance but city trucks were picking up huge limbs that someone cut down. So I continued onto Evalon, crossed Seventh Street and proceeded to Tenth Street where I would finally turn onto Ashley Avenue.
But no. That’s not happening. This lady in a hard hat and fluorescent vest comes up and said I would have to wait quite a while to get on the street. Apparently, they had resurfaced the street and were waiting to roll it down with one of those big rolling pin machines.
You get the drift though. And there is not a sign one except a sign in the middle of the street saying to turn here to get to the Exxon station on Calder, the street on which the convenience store is located and now is completely shut down in front of the Exxon station due to what I like to call the “creeping constructionism of Calder Avenue.” They are tearing the street up from downtown all the way to I-10 N-S.
The City of Beaumont apparently thinks I, nor thousands of others, have anything better to do than guess which street is going to be open when (most often our guess is not good enough). The only silver lining is that the streets are being improved, but one has to wonder if those streets which were fixed will still be in good shape by the time they finish and subsequently turn downtown into a redneck version of Venice.
Next time I go camping and have an internal debate of whether to stay or go, I think I know how I shall choose.