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Busy road to Muscoda
Random Thoughts, November 3
Random Thoughts by Wendell Smith

MUSCODA - When Vi and I look out our living room window the world, as it pertains to West Nebraska Avenue, Highway 133 and the railroad seem to be rolling by close.

At times the number of people and machines on the move can be rather amazing. Vi sometimes comments, “It’s too bad Jim Azim can’t be here to see this”!

She is remembering back to the time when the road was a Grant County trunk highway and there was an effort to have the route added to the state highway system.

Muscoda mayor Bun Schwingle and Cassville mayor Penny Eckstein plus Jim Azim, Muscoda native, attorney and member of the Wisconsin Assembly, spent many hours and attended many meetings promoting and working toward the goal of upgrading the road that crossed Grant County from the Wisconsin River to the Mississippi River. Their goal was eventually accomplished.

An interesting feature of “highway watching” is noting the number of pickup trucks using that road. We don’t have a count, but it sometimes it seems as though there are more pickups than cars. We also notice the frequency of big trucks – those hauling logs and milk, seem to be increasing.

When I was young, pickups were usually work vehicles for farmers and businesses. Now it is not unusual to see a woman with a pickup and the double cab models can also serve as a family vehicle. That leads me to a story that this newspaper carried many years ago.

It told about a gal who may have been wanting more shopping opportunities than were offered at small rural communities. So she drove further to a “big box” store to find what she needed.

But, at the end of the day she could not remember where she had parked her car. She searched through the huge parking lot, but to no avail. That was before cell phone days so she had to go inside the store and find a telephone booth to call home to explain the situation. She had looked and looked and could not find the car. What should she do?

There was a bit of a pause on the other end of the line, then “Dear, the car is sitting here in the driveway. You drove the pickup this morning.”

Some years ago, a family of our relatives left their ranch to go grocery shopping in North Platte, Nebraska. The kids wanted to eat and empty out at a McDonalds before they started the long three-hour journey home so they stopped and went in. The problem was, when they went to continue the trip, their groceries that remained in the truck box had disappeared.