Brian DeNeal: IDOT relocation is a welcome change
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Melting into the dog days of summer it is a good idea to use a flashlight at night. The days are too hot for our timber rattlesnakes. They hole up during the day and go out after the mice at night. Those of us out in rattler country need to take a flashlight so we don't step on them.
This is a tip for any of our Springfield neighbors who may be relocating to Saline County if the Department of Transportation Division of Traffic Safety moves to Harrisburg, like our governor said it will.
The IDOT move and underage drinking party busts seem to monopolize conversations this week.
Springfielders should use flashlights at night and they should also wave at every vehicle they pass on farm-country back roads. It doesn't matter if we recognize the driver or not, we wave.
The country wave may serve a couple of purposes. In one sense, it is an open acknowledgment we are all in this together. I see you, you see me, may rain fall on your fields and the wind blow at your back.
In another sense it may be a case of "I see you, you see me, if anything comes up missing I'll remember your face and the color of your truck."
Surely that's too cynical. That's the heat talking. Sweat makes us talk like that.
This is the season to think and breathe before we speak, because, untethered, the tongue becomes a weapon.
This is the time of year to sign up for yoga or anger-management classes.
Springfield teenagers should know they can't go partying down here like they could up there. Our law enforcement won't tolerate it. I've been in Springfield many times, run amok in Springfield, partied with the most maniacal up there, the Outlaw Bikers, Elvis impersonators and - wildest of all - the firefighters, and there are still legends circulating among the Hilton staff about the pot-bellied pig and the panicked security officers.
Then, even out in the country, cops dispersed our late-night friends and shut down the music, but no one was ever arrested at any of our Springfield parties. Tersely-worded talking-tos were the only punishment any of us ever received.
In Springfield parties are big business.
In Saline County, parties are big pains that generate no money except in court costs.
But for the most part we are a friendly bunch down here. We love garden produce and love to talk about wildlife, real or imaginary. We also enjoy news of change.
We anxiously await the opening of the Sahara Woods Fish and Wildlife Area, the project promised by former Gov. George Ryan's administration and endorsed by our current governor. We can't wait until the Old Slave House in Equality is opened, another improvement promised by the state to our region.
Even the new Super Wal-Mart construction fascinates us. I join the lunch crowd at McDonalds to stare out at the construction equipment plunking away across the street.
We are also eager for the governor to make good on his promise we are getting a large state agency right here in our little town.
It's new. It's different. It's controversial. There might be a bunch of new people here in town and some of us might be lucky enough to land a nice job in a sparkling, newly renovated building.
They say it will pump $15 million into the local economy, but I don't know that those numbers mean all that much to most of us. Maybe that attitude is another symptom of the cynicism that takes over this time of year.
More important will be the bragging rights of the first person to come home and announce to the family having met one of those new Springfield people earlier that day.
No matter what the outcome of the big hearing today, whether it affects the IDOT move or not, I don't expect the move to have all that much bearing on my own life. I have enjoyed the buzz and have tried to keep up with coverage of the move.
I was more interested in the thick haze low to the ground at dusk on Tuesday. It was a fog that clung to the ground and turned my patch of land into a rain forest. The crickets and frogs that chimed in after sunset completed that illusion as I read my newspaper.
-- DeNeal is a staff writer for The Daily Register and The Daily Journal. He may be contacted at 253-7146 ext. 230 or by e-mail at bdeneal@yourclearwave.com.