streets
April 18, 2003 09:40 AM

Tonight I went driving. You can drive for maybe half an hour and go from town to utter darkness to town again. I did.

I once knew only one street in town and how to get to it. It runs from downtown to worlds populated by cows and pickup trucks to Charlottesville and maybe beyond. It runs forever, like most of the roads in and out of this city. It's a city on a river of roads.

Beautiful. The road - the avenue - is a collection of landmarks and half-dead places. There I - and there we - and there.

It's part of my collection of streets, the street I live on.

Five, in and out of Williamsburg. Its surprises, not only history but a beach, with college kids playing guitars until late in the night. And it seems few knew of these surprises; the road always so empty, the shore deserted most nights. Populated by campers and tourists others.

That was a town(e) filled with streets you walked, surrounded by streets you drove at breakneck speed.

I knew a girl once who could drive from a certain theater to a certain coffeehouse in just slightly over an hour. An achievement of speed. She would change into and out of work clothes on the trip, alternating feet on the gas pedal. When work clothes were overalls, this might have satisfied some more prurient interests of certain truckers.

The streets that flow into and out of towns are fond memories. Go from suburb, to have no fear nor no one should woods to blinking lights and bumper boats to suburb again to nothing. To convenience stores and stand up arcade games.

There are never arcade games in convenience stores now. Why is that? A world where convenience now equates to nearly any automotive accessory or fluid one might need, equates to color your own black velvet painting sets with markers, the full deal. And no Street Fighter.

Just get back in the car and. Keep driving.