Donna Fielder

Blimey, mates, we’re becoming more bloody British all the time! Yeah, I know. My accent’s lousy. But I figure it will get better as we get more roundabouts in town.

But what the heck are we doing with roundabouts? I found two of them, both re­cent imports, near Teasley Lane — one in a new neigh­borhood, one on an established street that’s about as English as a slice of Texas cow. If you’re not familiar with the term roundabout, think traffic circle.

I prefer the term roundabout, as it brings back moments of sheer terror in the back seats of London taxicabs with my husband and Helen Houston, whirl­ing around at warp speed, the three of us white-lipped, gripping the back of the front seat and ducking every time another car came at us on the wrong side of the street.

I would look at Sam Houston, who should have been white-knuckling the steering wheel in the front seat but was instead braced for impact while the taxi driver nonchalantly steered from the wrong side of the cab.

“I’ll drive on the other side if you insist, Luv,” one cabbie told me. “But I don’t expect you’re going to like it.”

For quite a while they were playing with that funny street that is part Teasley Lane, part Shady Oaks Drive, and you couldn’t get past the cement trucks and the orange cones most days. Then one day the blokes in the dayglow vests disappeared, and the street wiggled invitingly open from Dallas Drive to Woodrow Lane.

It’s Teasley on the west side of Dallas and Teasley right after you cross, headed east. Then there’s a sign with a curvy arrow and a “Shady Oaks, right lane only” sign. And right there, looking like a brick and concrete doughnut, is the roundabout. If you want to continue to Woodrow you stay right. It looks like you’re staying on the same street, but it’s suddenly Shady Oaks. Teasley goes around the circle and heads north for another block before it abruptly disappears into a clump of woods on the backside of Peerless Manufacturing.

In that long block it passes an insurance office, a field of wildflowers, a tie-dyed mailbox, a long low building and dozens of vehicles that might run but probably don’t, and simply stops.

So you have a block-long, dead-end section of street tee-ing into a through street.

Somebody thought it needed a roundabout. Why?

I sat for a while the other day and watched people tackle the thing. There are “yield” signs waving red flags everywhere. Some people simply ignore them and bully through the circle. Some nervously wait. And wait. And traffic builds up behind them while they try to figure out what the heck to do. I got stuck trying to get around the circle with on­coming traffic blowing past the yield signs until one driver finally stopped and let me in.

I figured he either had been to Europe or had majored in traffic circles at the University of Screwy Intersections.

If you take Teasley west and then Wind River, you can drive behind the movie theater and onto Shoreline Drive. Clubhouse Drive tees into that except it isn’t a tee, pet, it’s a roundabout. There’s not much traffic out there yet but they’re building the Uni­corn Lake development as fast as they can. Maybe they’re expecting a British invasion of homeowners who will be perfectly comfortable whizzing around in circles. One if by land and two if by sea. ...

DONNA FIELDER can be reached at 940-566-6885. Her e-mail address is dfielder@dentonrc.com .