Mile Marker Valentino
Pacing the distance between here and there it soon becomes apparent that the portion of education devoted to measuring such things is wasted on writers. If the beginning is here and the ending is there, we spend our time in the middle, having left the one place in search of the other. The end being nigh might send ordinary people into a tizzy, but we’re not those people, we’re obligated to finish what we start or be forced to wonder if a novel falls in your underwear drawer will anyone ever read it?
In their day the Romans built four million miles of roads with stone markers at each milepost offering passing motorists and barbarian hordes the distance to Rome from wherever they happened to be. Most of the empire’s subjects were okay with this, although the Allemani, a tribe along the Rhine, often lifted the heavy stones out of the ground as a sport; Visigoths left graffiti on the markers. Traffic became a severe problem for Fred and Wilma on Sunday drives; without mile markers they had no idea how far it was to Rome. With ox carts piling up on the Via Appia, and no Imus in the Morning to lead the way, they had to await the arrival of legionary repair teams who would replace the markers along with the local form of government. Sometimes vandals would be caught, and their heads left on the stones as a cautionary tale. Today we have Triple A.
Here at Mile Marker Valentino we salute you. Grab the camera for a quick family portrait before piling the kids back into the cart; a big thanks to those Celt-Iberian warriors who took the photo. Dudes, they all turned out.
February 15th, 2006 at 2:46 am
Why’s everybody always picking on the Vandals? Yeah, okay, their name somehow became a byword for culture-smashing, but they weren’t really all that bad. It’s not like we can nail them for the Library at Alexandria, or anything. And the Romans did their own culture-smashing, and some salting of fields as well.
Without the Vandals, would we have ever had Martha and the Vandellas? (Actually, I don’t know, since I have no idea whatsoever where the term “Vandella” comes from. But it sounds like a feasible connection, and I figure that if no one can Google me otherwise without hitting the “NEXT” button, I’m probably safe in stating it as a fact.)