Support for the Big Dig comes from MIT Federal Credit Union, helping members navigate their

earning options with high-yield savings accounts. Membership information at MITFCU.org, federally

insured by NCUA. 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 I had 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, beans, 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.

123 miles.

Back in the 1950s, when Fred Salvoci was a teenager,

the state of Massachusetts was on a highway building spree,

east to west, north to south,

and all around the city of Boston.

The greatest of these new roads was the mass turnpike.

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