Interstate 164, we hardly knew ye.
The Indiana Department of Transportation reminded us of your impending death this week. Their road workers will give the eulogy: New Interstate 69 placards to replace all those big, green exit signs and all those little, blue mile-markers.
You opened on Aug. 2, 1990. Truckers were thrilled with the prospect of avoiding U.S. 41 through the middle of Evansville, with its perpetual string of stoplights.
Shift into gear, gas, brake. Shift into gear, gas, brake. Shift...
Instead, those truckers zipped along your 20 miles of fresh payment (retail price: just north of $200 million). An article on the Evansville Courier the following day noted how you were the talk of the local CB radio community.
(For the younger crowd: CB stands for citizens band radio. Think Twitter, but with your voice, a few different channels and an antenna. Ask your parents or grandparents about it.)
Alas, your birth was secondary news — on the day you finally opened, 22 long years after being designated as Interstate 164 — Saddam Hussein’s tanks rolled into Kuwait, bringing the spectre of war to most of the world.
Motorists enjoying the new “spur” around Evansville saw an immediate spike in prices at the gas pump. A gallon of 87-octane at the Shell station skyrocketed from 99 cents ... to $1.08.
Now here we are, not even 25 years later, and you’ve undergone the ultimate quarter-life crisis: An identity change. Every two-tenths of a mile, we’ll be reminded of who you are now. All 70 of those large interstate signs will bear your new name.
Weather permitting, INDOT says your overhaul will be finished by the end of the year. Your assimilation into the Interstate 69 — the 67 miles of it that are done, anyway — will be complete.
“After all of the signs and maps are changed, (I-164) will only live on in historical or outdated records,” said INDOT spokesman Will Wingfield.
There is some good news: INDOT says you’ll keep your designation as the Robert D. Orr Highway, an honor bestowed upon the man who grew up in Evansville and became Indiana’s 45th governor.
It’ll have to do.