Support for the Big Dig comes from the Cape Playhouse in Dennis Village, now playing Anastasia the musical.

Up next, the Broadway hit Come From Away. Tickets at capeplayhouse.com.

The idea for the Big Dig began with an unlikely friendship.

During the highway debates in the early 70s, Fred Savucci, one of the highway opponents, went to a ton of meetings.

And across the table at many of those meetings was a man named Bill Reynolds.

He was there to represent the road builders.

He's a likable guy, but obviously he wanted to build all the roads, and I wanted to build none of the roads.

So we would meet every Thursday and almost always in disagreement on the substance,

but you get to know each other, you get to be pretty friendly.

One day, Reynolds tells Savucci, you and I, we need to talk.

We ended up at Jacob Worth's, which was kind of a sawdust on the floor, old delicatessen.

He wanted to talk about a highway, of course, but not any of the roads you heard about in the last episode.

This was about a highway that had already been built, called the central artery.

And Reynolds said, you know, I've been trying to figure out why you guys don't like highways.

Because highways are beautiful things.

They've built America.

They've built the middle crass.

And I've come to the conclusion that the reason you don't like highways is because the elevated

central artery is such a big, ugly, dysfunctional thing. It's

like a giant neon sign flashing saying, highways are bad, highways are ugly, highways don't work.

The central artery was one of the first elevated highways built anywhere in the country,

well before the anti-highway movement had gathered any real

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