They're putting a roundabout in on 64 and folks are treating it like the county decided to worship Saturn. Driving in circles, they say. We've been doing that our whole lives — now we just have a concrete island to prove it.

The opposition is fierce and theologically grounded. "The Lord made roads straight," Earl down at the feed store told me, with the kind of certainty usually reserved for matters of eternal salvation. I pointed out that the Lord also made rivers, which are nothing but roundabouts for water, and Earl told me I was being difficult.

The roundabout will be finished by September. Half the county will refuse to use it on principle. The other half will use it wrong. In five years, nobody will remember what the intersection looked like before, and Earl will claim he was in favor of it all along.