Chef Marshall Welsh in Batesville, Miss. on Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (©Bruce Newman)

By Marshall Welsh
Columnist

While driving on a recent trip to Oxford I was funneled into a sleuth of road work sorcery. A labyrinth not yet seen in Batesville, and hopefully never to be copied here.

Years ago I was exposed to this traffic design in the posh confines of Sea Island Georgia where the wealthy needed a traffic device of European advent to distinguish themselves from the rest of us commoners. The Traffic Circle was adopted.

Now, my friends at Sunday school tell me this is an ingenious way to disperse traffic in a more orderly and safe manner. My limited experience has allowed me to determine that one with the proper practice and repetition driving through such a labyrinth could indeed
be a workable alternative to crashes at intersections. More on that to come.

However, too much of a good thing is a kind way of explaining the situation that exists on University Avenue. On one hand the circles are open for traffic while they still are in a state of incomplete construction. I might add that it looks like what Sherman would have done to Georgia had he been supplied with bulldozers and jackhammers by that Lincoln fellow.

Secondly, there are two of these built back-to-back. If the first one allows you to get through it, avoiding the crush in the space time continuum, then the second will surely prove to be the stuff of black holes like the Einstein- Rosen Bridge, connecting two separate universes.

For all I know, navigating this convoluted racetrack with yield signs could catapult me to a place where, like Spock and Captain Kirk, no man has gone before. That wouldn’t be so bad if it were to send me to Biloxi or Gulfport where I might enjoy a Seafood platter at
Whitecaps.

Perhaps I’m an old fuddy-duddy regarding progress in roadway construction. All I know is that when one was placed in the heart of Nicholl’s State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana, a local and lifelong resident who shall remain unnamed, was making his
occasional pass-through campus on his way to the new Rouse’s Market when Kaboom!

Folks were astonished!

Half thought they had witnessed a remake of the Dukes of Hazard as his car launched itself up and over the center of the traffic circle. I, along with others, thought a new Evil

Kinevil copycat was attempting a new Guinness Book Record for the longest Traffic Circle Jump.

If these things are not a challenge to you when driving in Oxford, Bless you and more power to you, but Dear Mr. Major and Aldermen, please, please, don’t bring them