You Can't Get There From Here

You Can't Get There From Here

Along with the bluer skies, the warmer temperatures and the balmier atmosphere of early summer in this part of Ohio, you also start seeing the advent of the heaviest portion of construction season. I know, I know, it shouldn't come as a shock. It happens every year. But it always does. As soon as the weather starts getting nice and you start traveling more on the streets and roads, the orange cones start going up and your moving from hither and yon starts becoming difficult. Sometimes damn near impossible. This year is no exception. In fact, it might even qualify as high water mark in the annals of construction season. It seems that almost everywhere you turn in my town or on nearby highways you run into blocked streets, stripped roads, construction folks with their stop/slow signs on poles and the beep-beep-beep of heavy equipment backing up. Along with slow traffic, missed appointments, dust, noise and barely-contained road rage.

Did we receive a large chunk of Obama's largess recently to finance all this construction? Or is this mostly a scheduling problem and would have occurred without any federal money?

My town looks to be trying to fix or replace almost all of its underground infrastructure at one time. Stripping street surfaces, replacing or repairing sewer mains, water mains and storm mains and “street-scaping” in some areas. In other areas, just digging holes in the road and doing “who knows what”. It also seems that a lot of this work is being done in and near our downtown. Since I only live a small number of blocks from the downtown area, it's affecting us.

A lot.

I walked downtown today to meet my wife for lunch at a local restaurant. I do this most Fridays. I walk from our home to the restaurant and she drives in from her workplace and meets me there. We ride home afterwards together. During my walk, at one of the street corners, I saw the familiar yellowish-orange of a backhoe busy at work. I walked up to the excavation and peered downward into the bowels of the pit. I didn't have a hard-hat on so I wasn't officially part of the fraternity who were working around the area, but they tolerated the occasional rubbernecker who was interested in where his tax dollars were being spent. I was accepted for the moment. As I looked down into the deep excavation I saw a man in a big, vertically oriented pipe doing some task. His hard hat bobbled as he worked. I thought back to what I had observed seven days earlier at the same spot. I had walked past this same hole at this same time last Friday and, for all that I could remember, it was the same guy in the hole doing the same thing. It probably wasn't. But it could have been. Was the construction of whatever underground system they were installing getting any closer to completion? Far be it from me to say. I would venture to guess, though, that it should have been.

And it probably was.

I nodded to the gentleman in the hole, acknowledging his efforts and conveying my studied appreciation of his work and his expertise in whatever the hell he was doing. Who knows? Maybe he might have thought I actually even knew what was going on.

I doubt that also. I didn't have a clue.

I finished my walk and met my wife in the restaurant. We chit-chatted about inconsequential things and we discussed how we were going to drive home from our lunch – what route we would be taking due to the construction. Please be aware that we only lived 4-5 blocks from the restaurant. In a northerly direction. Also be aware that when we left there we went east, south and quite a ways west before finally heading north. Then a bit more east, then north again to get home.

We almost couldn't get there from there!

I just love construction season.

Don't get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoy the aftermath of the roadwork. The smooth road surfaces, the more efficient water flow and sewer flow. I also like the fact that the heavy downpours from rainstorms don't pool up at intersections like they used to. But to achieve these ends...? You gotta put up with the construction. A LOT of construction.

I often joke about how long a freshly-paved city street will stay unmolested by a hungry backhoe in my fair city. I think the longest record that I can remember is about 2-3 weeks. A few years ago they completely stripped one of our main streets all the way down to dirt – no paving materials at all. They then replaced everything that existed under that street – all the services. They then repaved the street with multiple layers of pavement until it was a beautiful stretch of asphalt. Smooth. Firm. Complete. Absolutely better than brand new.

They were digging holes in it almost immediately.

Did they forget something? Did one of the new thingies underground break? Or was it just Murphy, in his infinite wisdom, throwing a monkey-wrench into the works?

Who knows?

I just know that beautiful stretch of Quimby Avenue had a patch on it almost immediately after it reopened subsequent to its construction. What a doggone pity.

I suppose I should be more content. To be thankful for the work that's being done that I'll benefit from. To be more content that the experts are handling the work and they'll be done, more or less, before the snow flies this fall.

Contentment.

Which reminds me...

We're going on vacation next month, the wife and I, and, along with some other things, we're going to be visiting an friend of mine from the old days. I haven't physically seen Al since the fall of 1969 when we were both stationed in the Panama Canal Zone as Air Force weathermen. I was 22 years old then, 170 pounds and pretty fit.

Fast-forward 40 years.

Now, in 2009, you'd like to make a bit of an impression on an old friend when you meet him for the first time in four decades A big impression. You'd like to roll up in a stretch limo, greet him wearing a thousand-dollar suit and bequeath to him a half-dozen of your best selling novels. Hand him a fistful of hundred-dollar Havana cigars, introduce him to your 25-year-old trophy wife and invite him on your private jet for a quick trip to Monaco for a weekend of champagne, gambling and debauchery.

There's only one thing about that scenario.

It. Ain't. Gonna. Happen.

What he is going to see is an 11-year-old Honda roll up in his driveway and an overweight, gray-haired, spectacled dude slide out with his wife of almost 38 years at his side. Shorts, tennis shoes, old golf shirt. And a goofy grin. No published novels. No thousand-dollar suit. No private jet. No cigars. No upcoming debauchery (dammit).

And that's OK.

I'm learning contentment, becoming a student of it. I'm learning to accept the life that I've lived and to see it as the marvelous gift that it is and was, instead of anything that it isn't and wasn't.

To let the not-so-good times go.

Have other people led better lives than I have? No. They've lived different lives, not necessarily better ones. Better is a word that denotes a comparison – better than what? Is a thousand-dollar suit better than my shorts and golf shirt? Is a stretch limo any better than my well-maintained old Honda? Is a smile from a 25-year-old trophy wife any better than a smile from my wife of beau-coup years? I'd say no. In fact, I'd say hell no!

I'm beginning to see what contentment might be all about. Beginning to get the drift of what a contented soul might feel like. Beginning to be comfortable, secure and content about what the past was, what the present is and what the future might be. Not just to rest on my laurels but to realize that what I've accomplished already is well and truly fine. And that what I have not accomplished is also fine. And to finally be content to continue to strive or not, to accept that striving is not a be-all and end-all in itself.

So I'll hoist a beer this weekend in honor of my old friend Al and in anticipation of our quickly approaching reunion. We're coming to see ya real soon, pal, with our lined faces, our crows-feet and our stories of lives well-lived.

Get a pad and pencil ready. There will be a test later!