Cubicle Crazies

It has been a long time since I really enjoyed driving. When I was younger, getting in a car and going somewhere–anywhere–was a way of relaxing. This was especially true when I owned a car that you could drive. I didn’t learn on a stick, but I got there a soon as I could. The best car I ever drove, just for sheer driving pleasure, was a German Ford –called a Fiesta. It was such a stripped down model that I had to buy a kit to put a glove box in. No air-conditioning or any of that stuff. Barely a radio and that was AM. But it got the job done. Once I learned how to double clutch and coast, I could coax fifty miles to the gallon out of the little devil. You serviced the car itself, and that included the usual oil changes, but even installing a new seat that I got from a junk yard. I drove it across country three times with nary a hiccup, including Philly to Chicago in a long day. Of course, I was 28 years old, which simplified matters. I once drove down from Princeton to Philly in an ice storm by sticking to the grass median on then I95. I wasn’t fearless or crazy, but I knew the car. It gave up the ghost at 130,000 miles or so. That was in California, and I often wondered if somewhere in the Southwest or Mexico, the little mother, suitably rehabbed, continued on. I wouldn’t be surprised.

Driving a VW Golf, by then in South Texas, I still liked driving, but Texas was different in 1990. Not just politically. Driving from San Antonio and back was actually fun because there was very little between the cities. Not an open sore of sprawl as it is now hosting some deportation-happy loon running a monster pickup at 90 miles per. That would be I35, the NAFTA Highway. The less said the better, because it is crazy dangerous, always torn up, and, yeah, full of feral Texans who think “defensive driving” means keeping a shotgun or a 9 mm at all times. The charm is long gone, along with the bluebonnets: I often avoided going up to the University of Texas, great library be damned, because it just wasn’t worth the aggravation or the risk. It was Trump Turnpike, literally. Seeing some obscure document, however important, just wasn’t worth it.

When I would come back to Philly for visits, I’d think how much more sedate roadways seemed. Talk about misleading first impressions.

Since coming back, I’ve have to reconcile myself to a memory map of Chester County that is hopelessly out of date. I mean, it used to be a straight shot from where I lived on the fringes of Devon (for two years or so) to what was then called the Gateway Shopping Center. That was one of those midrange spots where you could get a decent burger and pick up some Coltrane in a music store, you know, that sort of thing. And if you wanted more, it was easy to get to King of Prussia mall, old style. That had been a hangout since high school. It accommodated itself to changing income and taste as you got older. It was ok. Not high-end, but it served the purpose. The traffic was manageable, if not exactly light. Route 202 was the main artery. t just ran North and South, with very few twists and turns. Getting lost was impossible, even for me.

Now. Managgia. This is what we have now Yeah, I know AI can’t spell cartographic, but I’ll be damned if I could reconstruct this nightmare by hand. Driving it is bad enough. The first time I hit it, my reaction was “where the f**** am I? And WTF is this?” Once upon a time there was a GE Re-entry Division plant adjacent to the Turnpike that was a landmark of sorts. I always wondered what the Hell went on out there. In 1980, I found out, courtesy of Phil and Dan Berrigan, when they broke into the place and hammered on Mark 12A nuclear weapon nose cones and poured blood on documents, a favorite trick of the Bros Berrigan. Well, surprise, that ain’t there any longer–there’s some Netflix Experience thing instead (figures) and neither is the simple 202 to KOP.

The whole area has exploded with offices, apartments, condos, high density housing–my God, gone is the greenery of yore. The first time I hit this thing, I was not only lost, but in mortal danger, because the GPS thing saying one thing, the signs –ah, the mystifying road signs– something else incomprehensible, my spouse was telling me in was in the wrong lane, and I a posse of vicious BMW’s with the bright lights flashing obscenities in some code that I was not privy to was on my tail. And talk about aggressive driving. Hell, they made San Antonio look like Amish Country. I was, honest to God, really scared for the first time since I got lost on the freeways in LA and found out that the Johnny Carson routine about Matinee Lady and the Slauson cutoff was no joke.

Anyway, I was really freaked out. And having now done it a couple of times –more or less successfully, I appreciate something else added to the mix. They generally don’t drive the BMWs or Escalades, but there are a lot of low slung, manacing looking SUVs with names like Trapper or Hammer driven by youngish to middle age guys and gals who ALWAYS seem to have mayhem on their mind. I have labelled these people, unfairly to be sure, “Cubicle Crazies.”

I know. That’s not nice. Maybe it isn’t even true but with offices and companies and business “parks” in the area–a corporate Disneyland–I cannot believe there is no truth to what think.

You are cooped up all day with people you may or may not like. You are doing work you may or may not enjoy. And life goes on and is just out of reach. You may have an insufferable boss. Or some pretentious idiot. Or someone who has decided they do not like you, God knows why. But you soldier on because, as Kevin Spacey says in Margin Call, “I need the money.”

Anyway, you are taking care of business (or “the enterprise” in corpobabble). You went in fresh and came home dead tired. Life. Tough luck.

So I get that when it’s rush hour, and you get into heavy traffic, and some imbecile won’t budge an inch so you can get into an exit lane, you might get peeved. You may be hungry, pissed off, late to pick your kid up or missing the ball game. Or maybe you’re just sick of it all and you mistake your SUV for some kind of power trip–you know the kind, a KIA with loud pipes. You are giving your day job the finger. Good for you.

Problem is, I happen to be there too. And I may be retracing a map of 40 years ago that no longer exists. And you get impatient. And then I get pissed off with your climbing up my back and flashing your lights. While I would like to consider myself a model of composed decorum behind the wheel, I am a Philly kid. We are taught various colorful means of self-expression. In various tongues. And lately, my patience is not what it used to be. Grumpy old man. I don’t know. I don’t really care. It’s a stereotype and may well fir me. Would not be the first time. But I find the current generation of incompetent, distracted, irrational or otherwise aggressive drivers hard to take. I see you on the phone or even watching a movie (!) while you you take a vehicle that is otherwise a deadly weapon and use it casually to put my life (or others’) in danger? I don’t like it.

So, get off my lawn. And, while you’re at it, my highway too.