39. Highways and By-Ways in Jefferson County

Today is my Aunt Judy's birthday. She is 71 which is hard for me to believe. She is the widow of my late uncle, Donald D. Noble, a local character of note who passed away April 29, 2005 from cancer. Uncle Don was a writer, reporter, politician, civil rights proponent, and later in retirement, a caricaturist, an occupation he passed on to one his nephews on Aunt Judy's side, Denny Whalen. My nieces also seem to have some artistic talent, especially (so far) the oldest one, Lindsey, who has painted and drawn hundreds of pictures, some of which she has sold at the annual Saint James Art Fair held each October along Saint James Court (and other streets) in Old Louisville. Aunt Judy is herself retired from the State Fair Board a few years back, where among other things she trained folks, mostly retirees, who sit in those information booths at the State Fair and similar events held at the Kentucky Exposition Center. You may not have noticed, but last year, the name of our behemoth Fairgrounds at Phillips' Lane and Freedom Way, dropped the word "Fair" from its moniker. No more KFEC, now KEC. The move was said to update the image of the property, taking away the country fair connotation and using more urbane nomenclature to identify what every knows was and is and always will be the Fairgrounds.

Today also marks the day my mother has decided to be one of those retirees sitting in those little booths to direct people here and there, actually telling them "where to go," which my mother said she is qualified to do. Louisville is such a small town. My mother worked off and on for nearly forty years in the Highway Department Building which sits out on Phillips' Lane on the Fairgrounds property. She started and ended her career as a clerk-typist, working on rights-of-ways, utility leases, and property acquisitions, from a variety of work spaces within that building. It was there I learned to type as an elementary school student. I attended 3rd and 4th grade at the old Prestonia Elementary, which used to be located where the Aldi Food Market is now, on Preston Highway at Belmar Drive, a few blocks south of Phillips' Lane. Next door to the school was a Walgreens, a Winn-Dixie, and an Arlans department store, all collected together in the shopping center which now houses Value City.

Now and then when I would not be riding the bus home, at the conclusion of whatever activity had kept me late, usually drum practice or Spanish Club, I would walk across the back of the shopping center, along where the hill created by the raised I-65 fell along the left side, to the underpass along Phillips' Lane. At that time, there were houses along both sides of Phillips' Lane, all story and a half cape cods, a handful, maybe two, remain on the east side of I-65. Everything west of I-65 was (erroneously) declared "blighted" by the Airport back in the 1980s and torn down. An entire neighborhood along the south side of Phillip' Lane, with streets called Weyer, Nally, and Fontaine, among others, where the homes were of brick, disappeared. Nothing is there now except a drainage retention basin built and owned by MSD, which can only be viewed from one of the several ramps in the confetti-like confusion of the intersection of I-65, I-264, the Airport, the Fairgrounds, Preston Highway, and Crittenden Drive, all fused into one. Down Phillips' Lane I would go, eventually arriving at the Highway Department, there to sit and play on an unused typewriter, or review maps of planned streets and highways which fell within District Five's operation, all this ending at 4:30, when the State "let out." It was there I first learned about the Jefferson Freeway, the Daisy Lane-Thorn Hill connector, and the Seneca Parkway, with its Land Beautification Project alongside I-64 and Beargrass Creek, north of Grinstead Drive, a project undertaken by the foundation founded by former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson. Some notes on Mrs. Johnson: She turned 94 in December and has been afforded Secret Service protection longer than any other person living now or in the past. She is said to be totally blind and in failing health. Her last public appearance was four months ago today at the LBJ Library.

The Jefferson Freeway began with a one mile portion in 1962 connecting the then-western terminus of I-64 (coming from Frankfort; it had not been completed beyond the Versailles Road exit to the east) with US 60. A picture of the original intersection, as yet unchanged except for encroaching development, hangs in the stairwell of the Highway Department building on Phillips' Lane. Over the next twenty five years, parts were built here and there, with the final project, now called the Gene Snyder Freeway, being completed in 1987, connecting US 42 in the northeast with the Dixie Highway / Greenbelt Highway in the southwest, but failing to connect with I-265 in Indiana. Democrats liked to argue that Snyder shouldn't have his name on anything due to his LG&E property dealings in the 1960s. But the truth be told, it was because of the alignment of then-Congressman Snyder, a friend of the new Republican president Ronald Reagan, and the new bsuiness-oriented governor John Young Brown, Jr., and the governor's well-connected Transportation Secretary Frank Metts, that the project finally got off the paper plans and onto the ground itself and became a reality. I agree his name should not be on the Federal Court House downtown on Broadway; he is however, deserving of this highway having his name applied thereto. Otherwise, we'd still be waiting on it, like we are its completion across the Northup/Abramson/Hawpe unbuilt bridges into Indiana.

Below is an article in today's Courier talking about the unbuilt bridges I have mentioned several times herein. As you can see from the comments by State Representative Jim Wayne (D-35), we are still wating on the project's "initial financial plan." And Anne Northup told us they were already being built.



From the C-J:

After canceling a hearing on the $3.9 billion Ohio River bridges project planned for last week, the head of a state government transportation committee said yesterday that the panel will discuss the project "in the very near future."

But Rep. Don Pasley, D-Winchester, could not say when the House budget review subcommittee on transportation would take up the bridges plan.

Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville, called on transportation officials yesterday to produce an initial financial plan for the project, which last year's state budget required to be finished by the end of 2006.

The plan needs final approval from Indiana officials before it is complete, Highway Commissioner Marc Williams said.