Country Mouse in the Land of Concrete and Glass Mountains

Thelma and Louise and I spent yesterday afternoon in Providence, technically in a separate entity from Providence, at Providence Place. It wasn't exactly where I thought we would go in search of something I know one of us wanted to replace but I found myself in agreement as we left and headed North.

On its best day, for reasons that have a lot to do with me and nothing to do with it, Providence will never be on my list of favorite places. From the time I went to look at Brown when I was a senior at Carteret Academy for Boys (yes, I was, and am, one of those people), I've never warmed to the city. I always feel like I'm in Newark when I wanted New York. Poor Providence always feels like a consolation prize for Boston.

The Mall has precious little to do with the city, truth be told and has its own exit off of I-95. That we headed up there via 95 has a lot to do with genuine lack of enthusiasm by the time we got there as I suspect everyone on the East Coast from (possibly) Maryland to Maine decided to go there yesterday.

I have no idea what either Connecticut or Rhode Island did with the gasoline excise tax money supposedly dedicated to highway infrastructure, by the same token the Feds as well as I-95 in a Federal Road, but they must have spent it on candy as none of it went to repairs of the roadways. Check their teeth and call their dentists.

I need little provocation to became an idjit behind the wheel and by the time we arrived at Providence Place I was in full idjit mode. There are more stores than you can imagine and at least twice as many as you'd ever need in one lifetime all under one roof and we had, all three of us, a  very pleasant afternoon despite my white s=knuckles and gargoyle like grimace for sometime after we'd arrived.

Eventually the blood returned to my hands and my tensed facial features relaxed though I will concede we're talking relative degrees of  'ugly enough to make a train run on a dirt road' (courtesy of Dave "Lips" Malone). And we stopped for dinner on our way out and caught the dying rays of the setting sun as we headed home, fearing that by this time tonight we may be staring into the teeth of Winter Storm Titan (why not Terence, or Terry? Sounds friendly and folksy not fearsome). Talk about Bright Lights and Big City. We had ourselves a time and no redwoods were harmed in the making of our adventure.
-bill kenny