On occasion I get it in my head that I’m going to drive through our charming, quaint, bucolic, New Englandy-like town.
These synaptic short circuits spark a Vesuvian eruption of refluxed acid and a satanic stabbing sensation in my eyeballs.
My ears bleed.
I’m afflicted in this way, of course, because of Ridgefield’s World Famous Gridlock (RWFG). Oh to be sure, it’s a quaint, verdant, high networth, Nat Geo-like gridlock, but all the same.
RWFG occurs because our town was laid out hundreds of years ago so as to expedite the weekly journey of a farmer named Thaddeus, who hitched his mare to the buckboard and clopped into town to buy some flour at the general store, then ambled over behind the hardware to meet up with Atticus, another farmer, for a snoot of corn likker.
One day, after a few hours, Thaddeus prophesied. “They will raise up a theater, then tear it down, then raise it up again!”
His eyes spinning, Atticus, too, saw the future. “Bark Park!” Both then succumbed to the vapors.
In their day there were 24 people in Greater Ridgefield.
Today there are 24,000 people, and every last one of them, even the children, owns two cars. The average price of these automobiles is $283,675, not including floor mats. They were purchased to drive to the carwash for detailing and back home. On Saturday morning everyone gets his car detailed.
My best time through town is 17 hours, 36 minutes. That’s without a bathroom break. I got it in my head one day that I would wave to pedestrians, yield to other drivers who needed to get somewhere faster than I do, which is every last one of them, and stop to offer encouragement and financial guidance to widows and orphans.
I stopped to assist a Boy Scout in getting an old lady across Main Street. It was hard, because she didn’t want to go. He had done most of the preparatory work, pinning her against a garbage container, so I just grabbed her under the shoulders, and the Boy Scout took her ankles, and we got her over there. That’s when she started flailing at me with her parasol.
I didn’t understand it, because there’s nothing at all wrong with that side of the street. There are many pleasant attractions. I’m going to approach the Town Fathers about positioning some Girl Scouts with cookies over there as incentive to citizens who don’t want to cross over.
One day I was hunting for a piece of pipe in my garage and discovered my jumper cables. I got it in my head that if I came upon someone with a dead battery, I would offer them a boost.
Then it occurred to me that every last one of the 48,000 cars in Ridgefield is on a three-year lease, and that automobile batteries last five years, and that, ergo, nobody in Ridgefield ever needs to jump a battery.
In fact, nobody in Ridgefield even knows a car has a battery. In fact, nobody in Ridgefield has ever even thought to look under the hood and, in fact, doesn’t know you can look under there.
If you should suddenly come into possession of the Hope Diamond and you need a place to hide it, stick it under the hood of any old $283,675 car parked on Main Street. Nobody will steal the car because all the $283,675 cars look like.
This is true for all cars except mine, which is a 10-year-old Subaru. If you want to hide the Hope Diamond under my hood, you’ll have to negotiate with the family of mice living under there. They are not gracious. Sometimes I hear a squeal, and the first thing in my head is “fan belt.” Then I remember the mice.
In college I had a white Chevrolet Biscayne of indeterminate age and origin. It had six cylinders, any five of which could be counted on at any given time. I was always grateful to them.
The Biscuit, as I called it, never would start. The clamps that connected wires to the battery were too loose. I’d have to get out and bang them with a wrench ’til I got a connection.
To this day I get antsy leaving home without the crescent.