Sunday, April 06, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

ROAD WARRIOR: Las Vegas road woes prompt artful protests

Richard Rosentreter, an 82-year-old Pahrump resident, sketches cartoons to vent his frustrations about the traffic troubles he has encountered on frequent visits to Las Vegas for medical care at the veterans clinic.

Shakespeare longed for a muse of fire.

An orange cone or two will suffice for a few local would-be bards and artists who have drawn inspiration for poems and humorous drawings from the valley's endless construction zones.

Ruth Goyer will write a poem about most anything.

Her answering machine message is a rhyming couplet. And she has drafted ditties about video poker and the conflicting advice friends gave her during a recent illness (I have found when I am sick and waiting just to mend/ I'll be given some advice from every different friend).

So it's not surprising that after seeing a street near her home at Russell Road and Las Vegas Boulevard torn up and repaired three times over several months, Goyer put pen to paper.

She titled her work the "Construction Blues:"

It's pretty exasperating to us you know

To keep on finding a different way to go.

Just when you think that they're all through

They come right back and start anew.

Of course we want our streets to be nice

But do they have to keep doing it not once, but twice.

I love Vegas, I'm here to stay.

But I sure wish construction would go away.

So let's finish up the job

Let's get things done.

'Cause riding around the streets now is certainly no fun.

A similar problem on a different street moved northwest valley resident Vikki Riddle to write her "Ode to North Jones Boulevard."

In the mid-1980s Riddle and her husband, both longtime Las Vegans, relocated with their llamas to the then rural neighborhood near Jones and Ann Road. Ever since, it has been a struggle to hold onto their rural lifestyle and sanity as development has encroached, straining infrastructure past the breaking point.

Rather than rage, Riddle said her poetry has occupied her mind as she drives through the work zones surrounding her home.

"I thought about the poem as I was going to work and back," she said. "It gives me something to think about other than the traffic."

Her ode begins:

In 1986 we moved with our menagerie to our rural home retreat

Then North Jones Boulevard was basically a one lane street

When you met your neighbor head on, you had to be alert

And if he did not veer first, you swerved into the dirt.

Oh, North Jones has always been a step-child I forgot to mention

Half of it under the county and the other half under city jurisdiction

Whom do you call to complain?

Each will give the other the blame

Along came the '90s and the big development boom

We knew rural Jones Boulevard's real destiny loomed

First came the gas company digging a trench of many feet

The bright orange cones decorated the street

And the flag persons were on their beat

The poem goes on to lament construction traffic and the utility and flood control work that have seized the street over the years. It ends on this note:

I never thought a simple street could affect our lives so much

A rural lifestyle is forever changed and we get to pay plenty for it,

Thanks a bunch!

John Irsfeld, chairman of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' English Department, described Goyer's and Riddle's works as "occasional poems."

"In this case the occasion is the tearing up of our streets," he said. "They know that this is a minor irritation so they want to be kind of funny about it. But it's clear they're kind of ticked off."

Poetry isn't the only outlet for frustrated motorists.

Richard Rosentreter chooses to sketch cartoons. He uses them to suggest Las Vegas' official mineral be asphalt, its official animal the saw horse barrier and official joke be signs reading "Men Working."

The 82-year old Pahrump resident, whose observations are based on frequent visits to Las Vegas for medical care at the veterans clinic, used to be quite a cartoonist, his wife said. But his ability to draw has declined with age.

Fortunately for us time hasn't touched his sense of humor.

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