Support for the Big Dig comes from Cure Alzheimer's Fund, which supports foundational scientific research

into the causes of Alzheimer's disease, because research is the only path to a cure.

Learn more at cure ALZ.org. There are many strange and bitter ironies in the story of the big dig, but here's what has to be my favorite.

It's the most expensive highway project ever built in America.

And yet, the architect, the man who started it all,

hated highways.

My grandmother lived near here on Lincoln Street, a man named Fred Salvucci.

And to engage in ethnic stereotypes, she was this Italian lady that grew terrific tomatoes and sold them to the Polish people next door as if only Italians know how to grow tomatoes, but she grew everything there.

Tomatoes, potatoes, basil, garlic.

It was an incredibly big garden.

And she lost all that.

Yeah, she lost all that. The Massachusetts turnpike stretches across the state like a life-giving artery

one hundred twenty three miles

back in the 1950s when Fred Salvucci was a teenager

the state of Massachusetts was on a highway building

spree, east to west, north the south, and all around the city of Boston.

The greatest of these new roads was the mass turnpike.

Six lane, three in each direction. A highway miracle knifing through the heart of New England.

The state celebrated the occasion with this nearly hour-long

documentary film, but for a young Salvucci it was not a time to celebrate because the

road came right through his neighborhood.

They took the southern half of Lincoln Street.

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