A Good One

Terre Haute

Three recent conversations, ended with the same farewell. The 92-year-old retired physician, the door to door meat salesman and an Amish youngster agreed separately that I should "Have a good one."

As if taking this ubiquitous well wishing literally, I went downtown to the Oktoberfest for lunch. The Oberlandler Club moved the event to a new location on Cherry Street opposite Hulman Center this year but the menu was unchanged. A heaping plate of hot kraut with German Potato Salad, Weiner Schnitzel and Rye bread and an apple strudel dessert sent me home to sit and ponder just what the doctor, the peddler and the farmer meant.

But before that, I noticed the new Multi-modal Transportation Facility rising, as pictured above, on the north side of Cherry Street between 7th and 8th. Even taking into account that the nature of parking garages is to have sloping floors and that there is a 6 foot drop between 7th and 8th streets at Cherry - the Multi-modal seems askew. I am glad to take this picture with my camera phone at a time during the construction before the darkened windows will hide the stairwells behind the arches. There's something eerily familiar about the new Multi-modal Transportation Facility. ... I wonder if the architect had M.C. Escher's Ascending/Descending Stairs in mind.

I vowed to take a sack of marbles into the new building when it is complete and to drop a few to see which ways they roll.