Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Deathplace Memorials


While I understand the sentiment behind such things, I tend toward the notion that they do not belong on public highways because they are enough of a distraction to then CAUSE more accidents like the one that killed whoever is memorialized there.

And I've made my BFF Cindy swear to me, on everything that is holy, that if I die in a car wreck somewhere, she will make sure NO-ONE puts one of these cloying tributes anywhere in the vicinity.

But a lady in southern Oklahoma wants to make her little roadside distractions PERMANENT.
While Raines and others who've placed items in the right-of-way support the highway expansion, she just doesn't want anyone to forget the lives lost... "We have the things that mean a lot to our hearts and this is things like the cross behind me. My husband built that cross the day after the McDougall accident and he had no idea he would build so many."

Umm, Althea, honestly -- if we knew the person, we're not likely to FORGET them... the rest of us who DIDN'T know them just aren't interested. Cold, yes, but it's a fact. Write a book or make a memorial at their gravesite, but can we please not "honor" the very spot where someone breathed their last? It's grisly. I'm sure your husband's crosses were very nicely made. But they don't belong on the side of a major highway.

Just my opinion.

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