I have lived in Belgrade since 1991. I have watched the hay fields turn into storage units and the gravel turn into asphalt, but the way we handle the intersection at Jackrabbit remains a mystery of the modern age.

Yesterday, I sat behind a silver SUV for six minutes while they attempted to execute a left-hand turn. They hesitated. They stopped. They pulled forward, thought better of it, and then stopped again. It is a simple piece of geometry, yet it has become a theater of the absurd.

If we simply installed a roundabout, the problem would vanish. A roundabout is not just pavement; it is a philosophy of flow. It asks the driver to yield, keep moving, and eventually go where they intended to go without needing a committee meeting in the middle of the road. Instead, we have traffic lights that seem timed by a person who has never actually driven a car in Montana.

People tell me that roundabouts are confusing. They say they don’t like the way they look or that they are a waste of space. But I would argue that sitting in a line of idling trucks for twenty minutes while the light stays red for no reason at all is a much larger waste of my remaining time on this earth.

We are a community that prides itself on self-reliance. We fix our own fences and we chop our own wood. Yet, when it comes to the simple act of navigating a four-way junction, we act as if we are waiting for a divine sign to press the gas pedal. A nice, paved, circular island would solve our frustration, keep the traffic moving, and remind us all that life works better when we just keep rotating.

Gerald Fencepost has lived in Belgrade since 1991 and has strong feelings about most intersections.