A "Homerian" Odyssey-- To Murray State University!

I attended Murray State University, back in the day... and YES, that was 40 years ago.  So why would I expect anything to be the same as it was then?  Illogical, but I expected the roads to be the same, or at least similar...  NOT SO!

Our goal was The Curris Center built back in the early 80s, after I graduated, and serves as the "new", (to me), Student Union Building.  It is across the street from Blackburn Hall, the science building where I sweat blood memorizing hundreds of fossil names and when they lived, and just in front of Cutchins Stadium, and enclosed basketball stadium that is still in use.  Thank God something  from way back when is still in use...

We left Louisville at 1 pm to begin our odyssey down to the Jackson Purchase area, just as the heavens opened, pouring buckets of rain on the windshield.  Allow me to add, that I only have one eye that works, my left eye, and the windshield wipers of my son's car are difficult to navigate.  The is the first car I've driven that doesn't have a key, just a start button, so to begin with, I'm discombloberated.

The rain came down in spots.  One moment, the windshield looks like someone is pouring a bucket of water on it, with some drops hitting the car with a giant SPLAT, and the next moment, there is no rain at all.  If it's going to rain, my preference is that it keeps doing it in a steady way, rather than a giant gully washer, and then nothing.  EVERY time we hit a rough patch, the cars in line ahead of me, stomped on their brakes, which is NOT the thing to do.  Feel like you may be hydroplaning?  Coast until your speed is lower, don't come to a halt with an IRK- then you really WILL be hydroplaning.  This went on for the first hour of our trip-- constantly adjusting the windshield wipers, constantly trying to avoid running up on someone who decided to come to an unexpected dead halt.

Finally, we reached Elizabethtown, the rain stopped, revealing a gorgeous, if humid, day, and we managed to get off I65 onto the Western Kentucky Parkway, which has, in spots, been rechristened the Wendall H. Ford Expressway.  They lied.  It is NOT an expressway.  It is a nightmare.  That long first leg of the trip has exits every 20 miles or so, (boring), and while the traffic is sparse, the drivers are annoying.  Start/stop, weave in, weave out, barreling down the highway with a boat twitching like a long tail on the back, coal trucks grinding to a slow chug on the uphill and racing down the downhill, truck loads of cows and goats, etc.  I just try to keep out of the way.  Down by Morganfield, the road switches to I69.

Now, back when I was traveling for work, I69 was located in northeastern Indiana, so finding I69 in Kentucky is a shock.  Not only that, but where the road intersects with what used to be the Pennyrile Parkway-- at a nice, simple four leaf clover interchange-- one is suddenly in a maze of roads-- you have to turn right to go straight.  Who designed this mess?  It's called, Pick a Lane, any lane, and just hope you end up on the right one.  Not many signs, either.  I guess, the words "formerly the Western Kentucky Parkway/Wendall H. Ford Expressway" is just too much to fit on a sign the size of a No Parking sign.  So, which KY official came up with a sign that can't be read until you're on it?  Where are the large signs that allow one to plan ahead?

Eventually, near Kuttawa, (pronounced Cut-tah-wah), the road intersects with I24, which goes to Paducah or Nashville.  Which way?  One goes generally northwest, and one goes southeast...  Not at this spot.  No sign says, "To the Purchase Parkway", and certainly no sign reads "To Murray State University".  By this time, we had driven about 3 hours and were looking for THE ROAD that takes one to Murray.  No dice.

I chose to go toward Paducah, and got on I24 northwest.  This takes one across the Cumberland River and the Tennessee River that form Barkley Lake and Kentucky Lake, although you can't see either lake, (a disappointment), and you pass the giant rock quarry at Lake City on the north side, so that you can't see that, either.  Landmarks that are 1)familiar to me, and 2)beautiful.  So you miss all that, past exits with which I am also familiar, into a stretch of road construction-- (they've been building on this exit for 5 years or so), and suddenly in the middle of all the traffic barrels, on a giant hill, there is a tiny sign with an arrow:  Purchase Parkway.  Golly!  We almost missed it!

But finally, we made it to the Purchase Parkway, which will take one past Mayfield and Benton, down to Fulton, if you want to go to the far southwest corner of the state.  Well, I didn't want to go there, just because it is a 30 mile backtrack to Murray-- but we were on the constant road construction of the Purchase Parkway, and getting closer.  They started construction of the Purchase Parkway back in the 1960s, continuing through the 70s, 80s, 90s, oughts, and now in the two thousand teens, and it STILL isn't done.  Plus, they have added an exit to Benton, so there are now two exits to Benton-- one that is north of Benton, and one that is south of Benton.  Although not a large city at all, (population of 4, 531 souls), Benton is spread out, and somewhere in there is a Walmart.  Also, a bunch of my sorority sisters live there, but I can't remember their married names, so I couldn't find them, to ask directions, no matter what.

We drove through the town of Benton, and FINALLY reached the state highway 641 south, and meandered our way down to Murray!  There was the stadium, Hooray, and my old dorm, Hester Hall, but they have fixed it so that one cannot drive through campus, which really cramps my style...  We finally found the Curris Center, where the orientation took place, a building built on the old football field, and across from the old baseball field, which is now a geodesic dome building that is Science Building #2, and arrived 4.5 hours later.

My hands were like claws, even though my son drove us down the Western KY parkway part, and my nerves were shattered.  We had a hotel reservation, which was great, but the hotel had NO phone service, and the internet was very sporadic.  It was the old Holiday Inn, updated into the Magnolia Inn.  The hosts were very kind and polite, but Good Grief.  They advertise free local phone calls, but there is no phone in one's room, so you have to leave and go back into town to make a call.  

But, we made it.  It was no easier coming home, because the roads have all changed and one takes different paths at different places, losing sight of where one drove going down, and going around giant interchanges in different ways to get on the same road.  What ever happened to just going straight, instead of having to follow some interchange exit, to end up on a road that eventually goes straight?  I stayed lost on campus, because my old, familiar byways have all been blocked off, and one must approach the place one wants to go from the outside, not the inside.  I found the library.  Someone applaud that!  

Freshman orientation was great for him, and I think it helped him.  Parent's orientation was a DRAG.  Just give me handouts with the information you want to convey to me, I can read.  However, since it is a University, and they are used to communicating via lecture, we, the parents, were subjected to an 4 hour lecture and a 3 hour lecture.  For Pete's Sake-- enough of this!  Let me go shopping or something!!!  Let me drive around town and find Pagliai's restaurant, which is still there, Thank God, so he can go and get good Italian food.  

I can tell, already, that the University and I are going to run headlong into each other, on occasion, while he will adjust, I will have to, as well.  However, his geology professor wants to meet me, as a practicing geologist, and I may be down there speaking to the students about being a geologist, not an academic, and maybe my library will be able to be incorporated into their library, which will give me a place to deposit my 6 bookcases full of reference materials and reports that I've gathered for 40 years.  Let's hope.  

A trip full of hope!  

Thanks for coming by!