No ifs, ands or butts. Sign me up for an intersection
There’s a new law that directs the Florida Department of Transportation to create honorary designations on roadways, bridges and other transportation facilities around the state.
So far, the state is planning to spend $43,000 to install 37 designation markers to honor those who have already been selected. These people include boxer Muhammad Ali, who is getting a boulevard in Miami-Dade, and golfer Arnold Palmer, who is getting an expressway in Orange County.
Palm Beach County isn’t getting any of the markers. And at this point, we’re going to have to wait and see about nominating Tiger Woods, unless the state wants to designate a “sobriety-testing roadside shoulder” in Jupiter.
In the meantime, we should look for other candidates for transportation signage designation.
And while you’re thinking of suitable candidates, put me on the list.
I know. I know. It’s a bold move to nominate yourself for an honor. But I don’t ask for much.
And I don’t even want a whole road. I’m just asking for an intersection.
One particular intersection. I was inspired just this week by one of my readers, James Rovezzi, who began his correspondence with me this way: “You’ve been an ---hole for at least 27 years.”
That’s what we call “a good lead” in the journalism business. Naturally, I was hooked.
“Apparently, you can’t control yourself,” Rovezzi continued.
He went on to wonder whether I was bullied as a youth or had become addicted to Kool-Aid, which he misspelled (a common trait among this genre). Then he complained about a recent column I wrote.
“I stopped reading your column 26 years ago, but today I noticed and I realized it must be the koolaide addiction,” he wrote.
So let’s recap:
Year 1: Cerabino is an ---hole. Years 2-26: Scrupulously avoiding eye contact with Cerabino’s column.
Year 27: A “noticing” mishap occurs.
There Rovezzi was, just minding his own business reading the paper and the next thing you know, his eyes started careening uncontrollably on the page, ending up at
the bottom, in the ditch where my column resides.
And he fell in, unwittingly dragged through all 933 words of that column, which failed to mention what a terrific president Donald Trump is turning out to be.
Rovezzi is far from the first reader to explain his knowledge of my writing as a regrettable accident. Some of my best readers don’t read my column.
Are you paying attention, Florida Department of Transportation?
You’ve been naming streets and bridges and overpasses after people who’ve done laudable things. It’s time you consider making designations that would serve as cautionary public safety advisories.
I want the corner of Military Trail and Okeechobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach. You can call it “The Columnist Frank Cerabino Intersec-