Oh, for the love of homonyms! When
I was most of the way home this evening (took over two and half hours this
time, folks, from corporate parking-deck to homestead), the roads-reporter on
the big regional radio station gave me the day's best giggle.
After a couple swift waves of brief but
heavy snow – nicely timed for the "rush" hour, too – had sped through
the area, coating roads and unprepared drivers' vehicles in an inch of yikes,
traffic could hardly be called a walk in the park. Indeed, I've walked more
quickly through many parks. The road crews were as surprised by this as
the rest of us, so sand- and chemical-spreading trucks were late to address and
redress the slush and ice and yuck. Having left work at about
five-thirty (PM), thrilled and relieved at finally wrapping up a long and demanding
work-project, by eight o'clock I was at last close enough to home that I
could just about count the clustered water-towers. And at last I could leave
second gear not to go yet again back into first, or to coast (or twiddle my
thumbs) in neutral, but airily enter third!
I'd left the molassic interstate some
miles earlier, and foolishly entered the sardine-can that was a parallel, rural
road. Up and down hills, curves left and right… but there wasn't the slightest
risk to any of us – at our speed, the greatest danger was that someone might
just bump into another car and knock off all the pretty snow. So at
this point our intrepid, studio-bound roads-reporter explained with some
frustration that the state had been having trouble "getting the salt trucks
mustered".
Kids, repeat that part in
quotes. And I could just picture a pair of big yellow dump trucks, amber
lights flashing, weaving down the road and spreading a thick layer of warm
mustard over the slushy surface. Hot dog!
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