Assigned to yet another project on the highway, PennDOT worker Doug Mitchell expressed his hope to move his family to a nicer part of Parkway West construction within the next couple years.
“It feels like yesterday that my daughter Melanie was swinging from the excavator out back,” said Mitchell, laying pylons for a fresh paving job his crew had completed just 18 months prior. “But in a couple years, she’ll be in high school, believe it or not, so I want to make sure we’re living in an area of perpetual Parkway West construction that has the kind of schools my children deserve.”
Despite a desire to move, Mitchell insisted that he will still cherish the memories he and his family have forged over the years.
“It’s hard to say goodbye to the brittle pavement that never seems to be fixed and gridlock traffic you call home,” he noted, as he waved to a driver who appeared to be yelling obscenities. “Whether it was watching my son playing street hockey between the Jersey barriers or soaking in the sweet perfume of car exhaust caused by several miles of unnecessary lane closures, I’ll definitely miss it when we go. But that’s just the hard reality of life as a PennDOT worker, I guess.”
Mitchell’s co-workers empathized with his aim to move elsewhere in the near future between shifts of staring at a huge hole they had dug into the highway for no apparent purpose.
“Doug started working with us on this part of the road in [20]02,” said co-worker Christina Santos. “I think it was easier for him to see himself staying here when he had his bachelor pad in the back of the big CAT dump truck. But with the wife and kids, he’s got to ask himself, when he’s working on this same road a decade from now, did he do everything he could for them?”
That said, Santos indicated she shared no such interest in leaving.
“As for me, I think I’ll be a lifer around these parts,” she said, looking fondly at the three separate accidents in sight that stalled traffic. “I was born in this part of construction, raised in this part of construction, and I’ll be damned if I don’t die in this part of construction, too.”
