Look! I85,
GA 13, Monroe Drive …
Frogger, come to life.
From my office window, I look out over 3 parallel roadways.
At least as parallel as any three Atlanta roads can be.
Maybe, successive matching routes is a better term.
City street, Monroe Drive.
State Highway Georgia 13 or the Buford Highway, which later transforms in US23, which you drive all the way to Mackinaw City.
And the mighty I85 Interstate.
I watch the traffic, when it moves and I cannot help but see FROGGER going on out there.
Express Lane Entrance
Beware sidetracks! Hellbent get
Where they are going
I see the signs on my commute every morning and afternoon. ‘Express Lane Entrance’ and I am reminded of the Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis:
It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
Screwtape Letters XII
As I see other drivers speed around me, in and out of the express lane, regardless of the law, I also think about this short story:
The Wolf Who Went Places
A wealthy young wolf, who was oblivious of everything except himself, was tossed out of college for cutting classes and corners, and he decided to see if he could travel around the world in eighty minutes.
“That isn’t possible,” his grandmother told him, but he only grinned at her.
“The impossible is the most fun,” he said.
She went with him to the door of the old Wolf place. “If you go that fast, you won’t live to regret it,” she warned him, but he grinned again, showing a tongue as long as a necktie.
“That’s an old wolves’ tale,” he said, and went on his reckless way.
He bought a 1959 Blitzen Bearcat, a combination motorcar and airplane, with sky-rocket getaway, cyclone speedrive, cannonball takeoff, blindall headlights, magical retractable monowings, and lightning pushbutton transformationizer. “How fast can this crate go without burning up?” he asked the Blitzen Bearcat salesman.
“I don’t know,” the salesman said, “but I have a feeling you’ll find out.”
The wealthy young wolf smashed all the ground records and air records and a lot of other things in his trip around the world, which took him only 78.5 minutes from the time he knocked down the Washington Monument on his takeoff to the time he landed where it had stood. In the crowd that welcomed him home, consisting of about eleven creatures, for all the others were hiding under beds, there was a speed-crazy young wolfess, with built-in instantaneous pickup ability, and in no time at all the wolf and his new-found mate were setting new records for driving upside down, backward, blindfolded, handcuffed, and cockeyed, doubled and redoubled.
One day, they decided to see if they could turn in to Central Park from Fifth Avenue while traveling at a rate of 175 miles an hour, watching television, and holding hands. There was a tremendous shattering, crashing, splitting, roaring, blazing, cracking, and smashing, ending in a fiery display of wheels, stars, cornices, roofs, treetops, glass, steel, and people, and it seemed to those spectators who did not die of seizures as they watched that great red portals opened in the sky, swinging inward on mighty hinges, revealing an endless nowhere, and then closed behind the flying and flaming wolves with a clanking to end all clanking, as if those gates which we have been assured shall not prevail had, in fact, prevailed.
MORAL: Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hellbent get where they are going.
James Thurber
Further Fables for Our Time
Thurber, James Grover (1894-1961)
1956
Edition used as base for this ebook: London: Hamish Hamilton, 1956 [first U.K. edition]
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1055
The Screwtape Letters, by CS Lewis, was initially published, chapter/letter, by chapter, in The Guardian on May 2nd, 1941. Based on the public domain etext provided by Gutenberg Canada Ebooks. ( public domain under Canadian copyright law)
skillfully reckless
recklessly skillful, driving …
one handed, down low
Imagine if you will a thrill ride at Cedar Point or Six Flags.
On this ride, 100 people are sitting in a car with 25 rows of 4 seats with the latest in roller coaster padding and harnessing to hold the riders in place.
In front of each seat is a box with four large buttons. From left to right, the buttons are red, blue, green and yellow.
The ride starts and as the cars zip along they pass different colored lights.
As each rider passes the colored light, they must reach forward and press the matching colored button.
If any rider misses a light or presses the wrong button, the car jumps off the track and crashes and 10% to 25% of the riders are killed and the rest badly injured.
Would you get on this ride of your own free will and put you life in the hands of the other 99 people in your car?
The name of the ride is I85 and I get on twice a day.
signs on way to work ….
mine? “exit to Peachtree St”
yep, in Atlanta
When Scarlet lived with Aunt Pittypat, they lived on Peachtree Street.
The Peachtree name is common throughout the Atlanta area.
In fact, it is often said that half of the streets in Atlanta are named Peachtree, and the other half have five names to make up for it. This is not a joke, but true. You can been at an intersection and all four roads have different names
There are 71 streets in Atlanta with a variant of “Peachtree” in their name. Some of these include:
Peachtree Creek Road
Peachtree Lane
Peachtree Avenue
Peachtree Circle
Peachtree Drive
Peachtree Plaza
Peachtree Way
Peachtree Memorial Drive
New Peachtree Road
Peachtree Walk
Peachtree Park Drive
Peachtree Parkway
Peachtree Valley Road
Peachtree Battle Avenue (commemorating the Battle of Peachtree Creek)
Peachtree Dunwoody Road (running between Peachtree Street and Dunwoody, Georgia)
Old Peachtree Road (traces part of the route of the original Peachtree Trail for which the road is named)
Another odd little piece of trivia, Gone With the Wind was shot almost entirely on the same back lot where the Andy Griffith show was shot. The house next to Andy Taylor’s house is Aunt Pittypat’s. This house was also used for the exteriors of the famous ‘Haunted House’ (Barney Fife: With an axe. Gomer Pyle: An axe? Shazam… ). Not much of the exterior of the house actually appears in Gone With the Wind and I had to search to find a view.
This view, looking down the street as Rhett and Scarlet drive away with Melly in the wagon is looking down the same street that Atticus Finch walks down in To Kill a Mockingbird – His front porch is also Andy Taylor’s front porch … which kind of works, doesn’t it?
Finally, I work in downtown Atlanta. Actually, I work in Midtown it’s called. Between Downtown and Buckhead.
At work I listen to ClassicFM, an online radio station from London. Occassionaly they will play movie music and once when they played the TARA THEME from GWTW, I emailed them that due to the magic of the WWW, I was in an office, a mile from Margaret Mitchell’s apartment listening to the Gone With the Wind music from London and I got a response. Not sure if it was read on the radio.
red tail lights ahead …
watching, looking, mirror glance …
white headlights behind
Driving in the pre-dawn darkness …
Only the rush hour hell to face
Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
Contestants in a suicidal race
Synchronicity II, 1983, Sting
No Haiku For You 