Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace by Michael Perry & Audible Studios

Author:Michael Perry & Audible Studios [Perry, Michael & Studios, Audible]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B00930Q6C4
Publisher: Audible Studios
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I arrive at the highway department unannounced, and am perhaps beginning to emanate an aura of disturbing persistence, because prior to sitting with me in the meeting room, the commissioner summons his patrol supervisor to join the conversation. The supervisor’s name is Ron, and we shake hands across the table.

I begin with the standard recitation, reassuring the commissioner that I appreciate his position and intentions regarding the intersection. I still mean it, although I’m not sure he believes it, especially since he knows by now it is simply the preamble to a dissertation on all the reasons I think he did the wrong thing.

“That said, you know why I’m here,” I say, trusting he has heard my voice mails even though he never called back. “We didn’t even make it out of October before someone slid off the hill.”

“I did say we would revisit this in the spring,” says the commissioner.

“I’m not sure why we need to wait,” I reply. “I mean, October . . .”

The commissioner embarks on his standard recitation: The rationale for the redesign, the people speeding off the hill, safety as the prime objective. As he talks, he sketches the intersection on a pad of paper. “See, traffic coming from this way is no big deal, but from this direction . . . an older person would have to crank their head around, and they just physically can’t do that . . .”

“Here’s where I’m getting frustrated,” I say. “You keep telling me about these safety issues, but we’ve created a safety issue by not allowing people adequate speed to make the hill.”

There is a long pause. We all three stare at the commissioner’s doodle, as if it is some form of neutral ground.

“I don’t know how else to put it,” I say, after a while. “I’m not makin’ it up. This woman . . . third week in October, she’s comin’ off the hill backwards, and she’s a middle-aged teacher. She’s not hot-roddin’ . . . and she’s been drivin’ up that hill for ten years.” I grew up dropping my gerunds, and have noticed that I tend to drop them even more aggressively in uncomfortable situations like these, perhaps as a result of some unconscious effort to convey a certain blue-jeans simpatico.

Now Ron speaks. “Well, one concern, if the township even made it out there to plow . . . I mean, if there’s inches of slush and stuff on there, would going straight up help you to get up there with a car?”

My face remains relaxed, but I am clenching my figurative teeth, in part because we seem forever and ineluctably to veer back to the nonissue of plowing. There weren’t “inches” of slush when Jaci missed the hill, and the benefit of going “straight up” has been central to my thesis from the get-go. In fairness, Ron hasn’t heard my pitch before, so I review, and also reiterate that the trouble begins long before there is accumulation sufficient for plowing, and therefore sending the plows out early is irrelevant.

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