Now, right outside my view, the highway splits into a fork, the left side takes you into the south side of the city and on to shopping. The right side is a wonder of construction that I try not to think of when traveling over, for you are following a road built higher than the grain elevators, the Gold Medal mill, the tall trees, or the onetime ship's mast. This is the Skyway, which spews traffic out into the hinterlands of the beginning Alleganies, the south towns, the where-the-hell-am-I-nows. I have totaled a car on the Skyway during a blizzard by sliding sideways into a buckled semi. Mythology says a Yugo was blown over the side and into the river below; reality is that there have been many injuries.
Construction and sight lines were not made for faster cars or the hurry up life of today. Hills block vision into the dips and there is suddenly the back end of a Lincoln being driven by a grandmother on her way to Bible study (this is what caused the jack-knifed semi). The fork in the highway that I live by is a mess of poor planning, for this is where the accidents happen for the most part.
Cars merge at a point several hundred feet just before the lanes split, and it doesn't allow enough time for people to think of where they should be. People are going well over fifty mph, and are either leaving the lane to get to safety for lord know they don't want to end up traveling the length of the Skyway and end up past the old Bethlehem Steel plant, or they are trying to get into those two lanes because they live that way down the lake. It's a curve, one way or the other, and tricky.
Of the many car accidents I have overheard or been in, not one sounded as loud as those depicted in the movies. Few have involved a prolonged screeching of tires or horns blatting; for when it's happening, there really isn't time to sound the horn, both of your hands are wrangling the steering wheel in desperation of avoidance, if you are able to see it coming.
I wonder if this is why there hasn't been the tire screeching...because folks are trying to maneuver, or is it the ABS brakes?
Last week's accident was a loud crash of a smallish pickup truck into the left back corner of a supermarket semi. I can only guess they were trying to switch places without the other knowing, right past the fork where a quick merge is your only hope not to get squished into the guardrail. Not even a squeal of brakes, just a loud bang when the right front of the pickup crunched into the rear end of this double-truck rig. Hazmat had to come out for unknown reasons.
Today, it was the now familiar sound that I recognize as trouble in process. Boof. Boof skip boof skip boof with a noise of a large tin can tumbling. Maybe the boofs are the brakes, which is why the missed beat occurs between compressions. There was a black car flipped on its back in the middle lane just after the fork, and concerned people were spilling out of their own vehicles to assist. The car must have lost control a few feet before, for the rate of speed would have caused it to slide forward on its roof for several yards. Not a witness, I only heard that odd, dull resonance which now causes my heart to pause.
Within five minutes, an off-duty somebody had arrived, after ten, the fire trucks had managed to weave through the jammed lanes of rush-hour traffic. What always surprises me is how things slow down after the firemen clock in. No one runs frantically, at least in the accidents I've seen, but the emergency crews walk deliberately, almost as if they are dreaming. Everyone knows their place, the injured are taken care of, hands are on shoulders. Eyes are looking into each other, which is one of the most connective elements any living being can do.
The driver was taken by stretcher into an ambulance, and was then driven away without the alert of a siren. I watched as two men lassoed the car with the winch of a flatbed truck, and turned it so that it was almost facing the ramp leading to the bed. A few adjustments, and the winch was able to tilt the car up and then one of the crew simply bulled the car all the way over to the way a car usually sits. The fire crew had brooms out and swept up the debris and glass, dumping shards into the newly opened hole in the roof.
Poor little car, poor fellow trying to get somewhere. No one else was involved, so I wonder if it was a blown tire. Everything was finished in less than an hour, then the full rumble of traffic began again at about 6:20 p.m. I was making soup for supper, and had found that the planned broccoli had yellowed (toss), switched recipes, and found that I had no canned corn; scrounged again for vegetables to kidnap and it is delicious. Potatoes, onions, a few tomatoes, old frozen parsley, and a small bag of raw shrimp. Bacon bits. Go me.
I will see my son tomorrow, he's in town for a friend's graduation. Tomorrow will be an early rise, for obviously, grocery shopping is needed and I might go see if the sour cherries are in at the farmer's market. The plecostomus is enjoying the cantaloupe I skewered with a stainless steel spoon and plunged into his realm. He likes me. This is the sort of routine that gets tossed by circumstances when disruption hits. Appreciate it, recognize the comfort of it.
My head will be lucky enough to hit the pillow this night, so far. Cats are fed, soup is done, plants are watered. My little orange tree that has grown from an orange pip is a flourishing foot high. The plecostomus was measured today and is four inches longer than a year ago; he is now seventeen inches and if he gets any larger, I may put tires on him and drive around town.
Sleep with the hum of breath, the crinkle of sheets, the hush of a light blanket. I have companions who purr and exhale soft, wheezy sighs of slumbering delight, who come and go on silent feet throughout midnight hours. You will awake tomorrow to lovely things amid the mundane, but sleep now, sleep deeply, safely. Dreamville is waiting.
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