Well if the Lord that made the moon and stars Would have meant for me and you to have cars, He’d have seen that we was all born With a parking space
“Lord, Mr. Ford,” Jerry Reed, written by Dick Feller
Last week’s column celebrated the simple joy of driving around on a beautiful spring day listening to your favorite tunes. But this week, we flip the script and deal with the misery of traffic, especially the traffic on the bridge that takes you across Lake Oconee from Putnam into Greene County.
When I approached the traffic signal at Scott Road and Lake Oconee Parkway last Monday, I saw that traffic was backed up like someone with a low-fiber diet.
“Bloody hell!” I said. When I finally made it to the LON office, I Googled cities with the worst traffic jams and learned that residents of Jakarta endure 33,240 of them each year.
Bostonians waste 149 hours sitting in them every year, the most of any American city.
Atlanta ranks 10th with 82 hours lost.
I know something about Atlanta traffic.
As I pursued a nearly useless degree at Georgia State University, I owned a Triumph Spitfire with a radiator the size of a cereal box. Not surprisingly, it tended to overheat in traffic jams, as did its driver.
But you expect traffic in a crowded metro area home to six million lunatics all trying to get from one end of Peachtree Street to the other. You don’t expect that in Lake Country, home to about 60,000 people.
You’d think you were trying to get across the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey to Manhattan the way traffic has stacked up lately.
Maybe GDOT could build a new bridge with two decks and 14 lanes like the GW bridge when Highway 44 is widened. That would solve traffic problems for the next 100 years, but it would also involve a $50 toll to go across and a 5% BFB SPLOST to cover construction costs.
But traffic complaints aren’t exclusive to Lake Oconee.
I lived in Madison for 10 years, and people there complain about traffic all the time — especially truck traffic — and squawk vociferously about any development that threatens to bring more.
But they don’t have to contend with Lake Oconee.
If you’re cruising north on Hwy. 441 and you run into traffic on the south side of Madison, you can take a right on Foster Street, a left on Plum, another right on Washington, and emerge on the bypass in two minutes.
If you want to go from my home to Publix, you have to go across the confounded bridge.
THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS!!!!!!!
Since I have a job and had no choice, I once again drove to the traffic signal the following day, and traffic was once again a mess.
“Bloody hell!” I said. I wanted to blame someone. Perhaps Jasmine “Hot Wheels” Crockett. Perhaps Greene County Manager Byron Lombard.
Heads needed to roll, by golly.
By the time I made it to the office, I had an almost uncontrollable desire to vandalize a Tesla. And plenty were available on the road to Greensboro.
But I drank coffee, responded to emails, and eventually calmed down.
As I pulled up to more transportation constipation the following day, Simon and Garfunkel were singing “slow down, you move too fast. You’ve got to make the morning last,” on the radio.
At that point, I almost lost it.
“You two cretins had a subway in Queens,” I growled at the radio before switching it off. “All we have is an ugly bus that seats about 20 people.”
Get a hold of yourself, I thought. Control your emotions. Saying awful things about Art Garfunkel’s hair is not going to help.
Then it occurred to me that each of these columns starts out as a traffic jam of sorts, hundreds of words trying to make it to Page A4.
Capitalized words always want to be at the head of the line. Nouns tailgate adjectives; restless verbs look for a bit of action on the side; conjunctions try to be in the middle of everything; interjections full of rage scream at everyone; prepositions search for an object.
And I look at the word count at the bottom of this window and realize I need to wrap up this screed.
So, dear reader, you have arrived safely at the end of this newspaper column.
Good job.
Selah.