Traffic

It is the primary reason my husband, whose lived practically everywhere in his lifetime, begged his city-born-and-bred bride to move to the country last year. He HATES it. In fact, besides his propensity for watching Learning Channel documentaries for fun on Friday nights, it was the one of the earliest clues that I had married a man much like my own father, as the old cliche goes.

Every morning by 6 or 7 AM, my husband is trailing down the path toward work, a different construction site every day. All the while he's Christian cursing (you know, in his mind :0) ) every car that cuts him off. He is driving 38 feet of Super Duty truck and trailer, which decidedly won't stop on a dime. But little hot rods intent on dodging in and out of traffic are ignorant to this fact. And while my husband knows he would win in any collision, he doesn't really want the inadvertent bloody death of another human being on his conscience for the rest of eternity.

Yesterday, Greg's trek from one job to the next took him right through the heart of the downtown area just at the height of rush hour. At that point, he would rather have gone shopping for clothes at the mall for four hours with my daughter and her most talkative friends. Then treating them to tofu for lunch. And that's saying something.

He was sitting in the left southbound lane, waiting to turn eastbound with four lanes in all directions backed up as far as he could see. The northbound and southbound lanes have those annoying little "islands" dividing the directions for a full mile. The eastbound/westbound lanes are curvy and sport stoplights about every 50 feet, running the length of a large university. Fun, huh?

The corner is hard enough for him to make in his caravan of equipment without the five to six cars that run each red light, hoping to make some sort of progress on their 8-minute waits at the stop light. But he had finally hit the holy grail, perched in his number two spot behind a little old man who had pulled too far into the intersection during the last light. "That's a good thing," hubby reasoned. "He's out there so people will have to let him go." Ready, set, GREEN LIGHT...........

Funeral procession! Coming from the southbound lane going north, past my hubby on the other side of the islands. Car after car of mourners flanked by motorcycle police. He sat through two more lights. No sooner was the tail end officer making his way across the intersection than a siren could be heard in the distance.

Guess what building sits just adjacent to the university? A fire house. Yep. And guess where it was going? You got it. Northbound into the funeral procession. My husband's story had me riveted at this point. "How did they get through?"

Over the islands. It seems the daily commuters who had been northbound prior to the funeral procession had gotten over to the right to let them pass. And the procession filled up the entirety of the left northbound lane. Hubby just wanted to get home and eat a piece of meat. The fire truck was having to wind in and out of north and southbound lanes, over islands as the driver weaved side to side, filling in whatever small pockets of space the drivers, including funeral attendees, could concoct. Oh, and the fire he was going to......was in the general direction of the cemetery, whose main entrance is closed for major road repairs and requires a detour around a mile long block to access.

But that's not all. Oh, I thought so too. There can't be more, I thought. It sounds like a movie. "It looked like one," hubby deadpanned. The firetruck had rendered all lights red at the intersection via remote control in order to try to navigate his way up the road. Another 5 minutes passed before hubby once again got the green go-ahead - and the distant sound of yet another siren. Yes, folks, here came the ambulance, wailing through the evening wind. And going....you guessed it. Right past where hubby needed to turn. And I DO mean NEEDED to turn! He said by the next green light, he was practically pushing that little old man across the intersection from his high perch in his beast of a truck. After all, if his barely contained aggression were to cause this man some kind of fear or hurt, the man had every known type of emergency vehicle close at his disposal. Or my husband's tractor to scrape him off the roadway!