On my drive home

It was hot and dry today. Traffic was slow. When it is hot and dry things seem to be in a sharper focus than is normal. Several things caught my attention.

There was a car parked along the side of the road. I start thinking about what the back-story might be concerning that car. Did it break down and the driver was getting a lift somewhere to get it towed? Was it parked there while the owner was taking a few moments to fish in the creek below? Did the driver just get fed up with sitting in traffic and the job that it made that daily commute necessary? Did he/she just pull over and abandon the car, then and there, to wander off into the underbrush in search of a new life? I sort of like the last one.

I was studying the “Do Not Enter” sign on the expressway ramp. On a red field, there is a large white rectangle between the words “Do Not” and the word “Enter”. It looks just like one of those fill-in-the-blank signs that you can buy for things like garage sales. I couldn’t come up with any clever word or word combination that seemed to fit neatly in the blank. The best I could do was “Do Not ‘even try to’ Enter”.

There was a big flashing orange construction sign. It alternated between saying “Slow Down Now” and “New Pattern Ahead”. Déjà vu. I had those same lines in a fortune cookie once.