Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

Road Crew

I don't mean to insult anyone out there (Do you notice that when people preface a remark with this phrase, they really do mean to insult someone?), but the city workers in this town act like they are God's gift to the citizenry. They are out there working hard to seal the cracks in the road with some kind of tar. The tar mixture is heated up; and a guy wipes it into the cracks, making jiggly black lines all over the road.

This doesn't seem too difficult, but there's one guy with the tar wiper dipenser thingy, one guy showing him where to fill the cracks, like the guy with the dispenser thingy can't see, and one guy guarding some kind of multi-colored tank from which a hose emanates, which hose leads to the dispenser thingy. All three of them are wearing bright orange hunting vests.

Then there's a pick-up truck parked half on and half off the road with a yellow light strobe, strobe, strobing, in the front seat of which another guy is sitting, fiddling with something in his lap, cigarette dangling from his lips, bouncing up and down. A woman stands kind of in front and to the left of the strobe, strobe, strobing truck with a droopy orange flag in her left hand, a paper cup in her right hand, and tight jeans.

Just behind the truck with the yellow light and fully off the road is a big city truck, with a big yellow tank on the back. There is a woman standing at the rear holding onto the spigot that sticks out of the tank, apparently waiting to pour tar into the little multi-colored tank from which the hose emanates, leading to the dispenser thingy, or coffee. She is holding a paper cup in the other hand, also, and there are other paper cups sitting in a row on a ledge on the side of the tanker truck, leading me to believe she is pouring coffee. In the tanker truck, the guy sitting in the driver's seat is wearing a red construction helmet, meditating and doing deep breathing.

Now, I pull up to this scene and I want to turn right on the main road up ahead of where the strobing pick-up truck is parked and the woman is standing with the flag drooping down. I carefully pull around the pick-up and pull up to the line in the street where I'm supposed to stop, giving a wide berth to the guy with the tar dispenser thingy and the crack identifier guy. The light is red. The light turns green.

I know that when I turn right, the guy with the tar dispenser thingy is going to walk right in front of the white VW Beetle with a black "The Who" sticker on the rear bumper that I am driving. The woman in the black Range Rover waiting behind me blew her horn. She didn't toot-toot her horn, she laid on it. I looked to the crack identifier dude for guidance since the betty with the flag was oblivious to everything. The crack guy said something to the tar guy, who laughed. The crack guy signaled to me to turn, making that swing of the arm as if I was the bull and he was the matador. So, I pulled around the corner.

The fucker with the tar dispenser thingy pushes the dispenser thingy out ahead of him right into my path! I swerved to the left, just missing the dispenser thingy. I should have run it over, but then I would have gotten tar all over the white VW Beetle with the black "The Who" sticker on the back bumper.

I shudder at the thought of what would have happened to the operator ... oh, not of the tar dispenser ... of the Beetle.

Posted by Bill at September 16, 2004 11:53 PM