This past weekend I went to run some errands and found that
our family minivan’s battery had died. Add it to the ‘last thing I needed’
list. We are lucky enough to be a
two car family, and while I thought we had jumper cables in our
other car, it turns out we did not. I was spared the opportunity to make myself
look extra useful or electrocute myself.
I had to wait until after our older children were in bed
before I could call AAA and have our car’s battery tended to. That took longer
than I thought, and I wound up paying cash for a new battery. We needed it and
I know my wife would not have time to go to a garage this week.
I set out on a drive to get cash from the ATM after using
all that I had on me to pay for the new car battery. Some of us have become so
accustomed to using credit cards or debit cards for just about any purchase
over $20, that our trips to our bank’s ATM are infrequent.
Sunday night after 10 p.m. is a quiet time in the Western
world. My part of Queens, New York, is a residential area where people are
enjoying their last hours of family and freedom before the grind of the
workweek picks up again.
Driving alone at night is one of life’s pleasures I used to
enjoy more frequently. I had a car in the latter part of high school and
through college, and taking long drives was a time I could enjoy solitude and productive
daydreaming (even at night) and listen to music. Long walks and runs fulfill
this need in city life, but the lure of the open
road can’t be duplicated on foot so easily.
It is interesting to see who else is also on the road, what
other strangers are enjoying the quiet time to be out and about
while most of the nearby world is cloistered in their homes for the night. Drivers
are not rushing to get everywhere as much and there’s a modicum of civility
that you don’t find during daylight hours.
Sunday nights in particular, are fun times to get out. You
can see this with drinking too. With Monday morning looming, not too many
people are at the bars, and Sunday night at the bar was a great guilty pleasure
during my drinking years.
Cruising down Willets Point Boulevard, few other drivers
were on the road. I had a few errands to run and made some lucky green lights,
with few others taking up lane space around me.
I got to my bank and went to use the ATM—the machine was
giving out only $1, $5, and $100 bills because our financial institutions are
losing their basic competencies. No mind, I set out again to drive to the next
closest branch, just a mile or so away. Francis Lewis Boulevard is in the
middle of repaving, and a big stretch of road has been milled down to a rough,
striated surface. It was rough driving where normally it would be smooth; each
manhole felt like driving over a pitcher’s mound.
I reached the next branch of the bank, only to find it was
no longer there. Banks are closing branches as more people do all their banking
online. I made an illegal U-turn and
headed back towards home, stopping at a gas station to feed quarters to an air
pump to refill two of our van’s tires. This gas station was a full service gas
station, and the attendant stood in his booth, waiting for someone who needed
gas. Good for them for being open late on a Sunday,
My business done, I returned home, listening to music and
enjoying the quiet streets of Queens before the deluge of the workweek arrived.
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