Considering the Fine Civility

My wife and younger one flew out today.  I’ll go later.  The ride down, in rush hour, only ninety minutes.  Wonderful.  Originally, we’d thought to leave the Hertz, there at the airport.  Properly, it ought to have been dropped off back at the place we rented it from.  We’d pay extra to leave it at Liberty airport, but my name wasn’t on the rental.  I called and asked the folks at the shop we’d rented it from and they confirmed, no, I couldn’t add my license by phone but if I was a Hertz Gold Card holder, it wouldn’t really matter.  That was good enough for me.  I hadn’t been looking forward to the clumsy, train to the subway to the bus station ride home.

We swung up to the United drop-off area, as far from the police as we could park and unpacked the car and made our goodbyes.  I sat down at the wheel and fiddled with Waze to get me back out of Newark and back on to the New York State Throughway north.  For the first time since we’d rented a few days back, I began to drive this minimalist Toyota.  I found a jazz station playing some aggressive Latin jam by Keith Jarret, from 1971, it later became known, and soon found myself returning home a very different way than Waze had navigated us down 

I took one exit and then another right turn expecting to get on to another highway but instead found myself on a suburban street with one after another traffic light.  Irvington New Jersey.  I looked it up later. At the time I had no idea where was heading.  I wrongly assumed this was a short detour, but Waze had me soak up a good few miles of Irvington New Jersey.  And without much difficulty and one can be sure that this is will only become worse for humanity, I was happy to surrender myself to the AI’s far greater level of traffic cognizance. 

Irvington is a bit run down.  This neighborhood isn’t one I’d willingly choose to live in.  It is presumably aspirational for some and a place to escape from for others and for plenty of people, just home.  At a stop light I snapped a few photos.  Clearly, I’m a local.  (It is the only way I can now determine the name of that town.) To my right in the adjoining lane, a car flashes its lights and then flashes them again.  Then, a woman hops out of her car and approaches the back of my car.  I suppose if I’d have been in Rio I might have been more careful, but instead I rolled down my window but before I could say anything, she has closed my trunk and was heading back to her car.

The light turned in the same instance and before I departed a waved and bowed and tried to convey sincere appreciation.  I couldn’t catch her eye again.  We each followed a different fork in the road and soon I was back on the highway.  Hopefully this had saved me some time.  I was uplifted, as I shifted lanes, considering the fine civility I’d encountered in Irvington.  

Monday, 8/12/19