When the reverend Bill Breeden asked everyone gathered in the St. Thomas Aquinas School a couple blocks from the Governor's mansion in Indianapolis to form a circle, it took awhile. There was barely enough room in the elementary school cafeteria for them stand side-by-side around its perimeter. They had to squeeze.

The turnout for Saturday's Pre-Thanksgiving Pitch-In Lunch/I-69 rally had, as Breeden and the Hoosier Environmental Council's Andy Knott noted, exceeded all expectations. The group included Hoosiers from across generational, geographical, and political spectrums. COUNT US! had filled a chartered Rural Transit bus to carry Bloomington citizens to the event.

Opponents of the new-terrain I-69 assembled at the school, where they were entertained by Bill and Glenda Breeden, Mitch Rice, and various other minstrels and feasted on tables-full of home-cooked morsels, some of which had been grown on farmland that Gov. Frank O'Bannon is determined to pave under with his new-terrain I-69 highway.

When the sign-carrying group marched to the Governor's mansion on Meridian Street, accompanied by television crews from Indianapolis and Terre Haute, their column took up the better part of the entire two blocks. They presented the governor with samples of the new-terrain cuisine for his Thanksgiving table. He didn't accept them himself. One of his bodyguards stood in on his behalf.