Keeping up with a continuing federal investigation into Bridgeport corruption over the next few months may require use of a seatbelt.

There's more coming and it's going to go into Bridgeport City Hall.

In Bridgeport it's always been about the land, ever since the settlers coveted the view from Golden Hill and kicked the Paugussett tribe off.

Golden Hill is where Bridgeport City Hall sits today and, using Cross pens instead of blunderbusses, the greedy continue the time-honored tradition of hardball.

Of course land transactions, and winning approval for them, doesn't always involve hardball. Sometimes it just involves greasing the skids.

So ever since 1995, when the city's Planning and Zoning Commission inexplicably approved a Stop & Shop supermarket on the site of a former dairy farm in the North End of the city, the FBI has been looking at Bridgeport.

It is 11 years now and numerous people, including one former mayor, have gone to prison.

Never mind, though. There are always people ready to fill the void.

The FBI is still looking at the land and at people who are willing to offer — and accept — benefits in exchange for access. It has, I'm sure, been a long 16 months for Bridgeport Mayor John M. Fabrizi.

In February 2005, a task force of local, state and federal authorities arrested a slew of people in a drug distribution investigation.

Several names came up at the time — Democratic town committee member

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Shawn Fardy's among them — and Fabrizi had to know that his name was going to be bandied about, even if he's never so much as seen a line of cocaine.

Some of the guys arrested were living large — $200 bottles of Opus in the course of lunches at Testo's that ran into four figures, Cadillac Escalades, customized choppers and wads of cash.

So much cash and flash that even on the streets of Bridgeport some people were wondering why these guys were being so blatant.

And as happens with people who begin to think they're untouchable, the feds put the touch on them. Documents — including those that the U.S. attorney said became public by mistake — show that there are people who are rolling over on anyone they can name, including Fabrizi. It's going to get ugly. Fabrizi, in a sort of cryptic statement, owned up to indiscretions in his personal life and it's no secret in town that over the years he's been something of a bon vivant. When the feds are involved, as those who have been under their thumb can tell you, they can put a person on a very long trail of tears.

The feds certainly want to prosecute drug dealers, but their main goal in Bridgeport is rooting out corruption in City Hall. l

Finally, it is Father's Day and I am a fortunate father indeed.

Part of my reward was a week on the road with two of my daughters, Kate and Julia, driving from San Diego to Las Vegas to Denver to Madison to Chicago to Fairfield over 7 days and 3,067 miles.

We arrived home not only in one piece — well, three pieces, actually — but still talking to each other.

We saw a lot of country, took some pictures and wrote some reports. Those reports are on a blog — an Internet-age word for a web log.

I know that some readers of this space don't use a computer; I urge you to reconsider. It's easy. Ask a friend or son or daughter — or grandson or granddaughter — to get you on.

Or a friend at a senior center or a helpful librarian.

Then go to www.connpost.com, move down the page a little and you'll see a logo that says Road Trip. Click on that logo and read some of the details and look at the pictures.

I think you'll enjoy it.

In closing, from one of my favorite authors, Roddy Doyle, who in dedicating his book "The Commitments" to his parents, wrote, "Honour thy parents, Brothers and Sisters. They were hip to the groove, too, once, you know. Parents are soul."

Michael J. Daly is managing editor of the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 330-6394 or via e-mail at mdaly@ctpost.com.