I'm not saying it's a bad thing to plaster enough tar down on our roads to pass as the Swamp Monster on Scooby Doo and then cover up the sticky mess with so much rock that you want to look for Fred Flintstone. I'm just saying maybe it's being a little overdone.
Of course, this is not to say that Hillsboro isn't doing what it thinks is best for our choice routes of transportation. In fact, they've done some fantastic things. For example take a look at our downtown! (I will now take a couple seconds to let you run to your car, take a spin down the main drag, and come back to your paper.)
OK, back to the main topic.
Actually, I think this whole over-rocking business may be bad for the health of the United States, if all cities follow our example. In the near future, America will slowly begin to disappear under sheet after sheet of small, jagged pebbles.
After a few hundred years, some young, poor, just-out-of-digging-school archeologist will stumble across the remains of a city buried under layers and layers of what appears to be attempted-road-pavement.
After digging through more pebbles, then tar, then pebbles, then tar (etc.), he will find the ancient city of Detroit.
Suddenly, this kid, who merely had a knack for digging, will have struck it rich! Even after he dies, years of extensive research and digging will show that the legend of a once great civilization called the USA really did exist! Chicago, San Francisco, Kansas City and even the famous city of Washington, D.C.-remains of sleeping congressmen still intact!-will have been dug up.
Eventually, at the very end of Operation Dig, they will find the city that was buried deepest of all. No, not Hollywood-even though it is pretty low).
They'll find Hillsboro!
For years on end, they will try to learn as much as they can about this ancient civilization.
They will marvel at the simplicity of the eight-track tape.
They will gasp at how technologically behind a 1992 Chevy Lumina is.
They will shake their heads at how unadvanced our computers and program systems are.
They will literally laugh hysterically at Al Gore, who would actually WANT to claim to be the man behind the simple Cyberspace-a web of online, digital pages of information called the Internet.
They will try to decipher our written language, wondering how we could read anything with only 26 letters. (Hey! They might even be reading this column! In that case, hello great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren!)
But most of all, they will try to find out just how such an "ahead-of-its-time" culture could have disappeared so easily without us realizing what was going on!
It will be then that they connect our mysterious disappearance with the sea of rock and tar they had to fight through just to find us.
They will learn from our mistakes, and find alternative ways of paving roads. They may even invent flying cars.
After all, that's what studying history is all about, learning from the past's mistakes so we don't repeat them.
At least, that's what I was told at school. Now, if I could only ride my bike through the three inches of rock on the streets so I could get to it!
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UFO: There's a replica of Bedrock, the town where the Flintstones lived, in Vail, Ariz.
Don't ask why.
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