Here’s
my advice: don’t get a new car
by
Robert LaFrance
When the kids were growing up, we
were pretty much in the poorhouse, and drove vehicles that should never have
been allowed on any highway, anywhere.
However, there is an ‘upside’ to
driving ancient and decrepit vehicles: you never have to worry about scratches
on them. About three weeks ago we acquired a new vehicle and then I lay awake
nights worrying about someone brushing up against it or spitting on it. Three
evenings ago I visited Wal-Mart and it must have been their slow time of the
day, because there were only about one hundred vehicles in their parking lot.
There was one area of that parking
lot that was completely empty, so I parked right in the middle of it. “The car
will be safe there,” I said, but when I came out of the store twenty minutes
later there was a vehicle parked so close that I had to squeeze into my car. No
scratches on the car door, but a vertical line of dust where the passenger’s
side door of the 1989 Gremlin had hit it. There were 75 parking places, all
empty, nearby, but the driver seemed to be lonely or something.
“I had better quit fretting about
this or I’m going to have an attack of Sickle Cell Anemia,” I told myself that
evening as I sipped away at a lemonade while watching a show called ‘Canada’s
Worst Drivers’. After finishing my drink I went out to the shed, got a pole-ax
(so called because it was manufactured in Warsaw, Poland) and went out to my
new car. “Whack!” No more worries about scratches.
That story could have been true. It
was close. My friend Flug’s nephew Roger did that very thing one time in Ottawa
and for the same reason. Unfortunately though, he mistook some other guy’s car
for his own 2016 Jetta. It didn’t turn out well.
**********************
Last Tuesday I drove (in the new
car) to Moncton and back and after that experience I have a warning for the
reader. Like parking your new car somewhere on the ground, don’t do it!
Is there still a Guinness Book of
World Records? If so, and there’s a category for The Most Boring Stretch of
Highway in the History of the World as We Know It, New Brunswick would win it
hands down, as they say.
Driving a Gremlin across the Kalahri
Desert would be a titillating experience compared to going from Fredericton to
Moncton on the Trans Canada Highway. At least there would be changing sand
patterns instead of trees, trees, trees and the odd rock.
It really isn’t too bad until one
gets below Fredericton. Here and there, around Woodstock and other places,
there is a glimpse of the St. John River, and twice I could see actual water
and even a house. Quite a thrill. I am sure that whatever maverick engineer
left those views in the plans was sent to Siberia at best, forced to drive that
road every day at worst.
The original ad: “Engineers, please
reply to Box 13, the New Brunswick Gazette,
for a job engineering what we want to be a boring, boring, boring road.
All replies that include a mention of scenery will be trashed.”
I wouldn’t have thought it possible
that a province as beautiful as New Brunswick could be made to look so totally
boring and uninviting as along that particular stretch of highway. You top one
hill with hope in your heart that SOMETHING, ANYTHING will appear but you are
disappointed once again because in the foreseeable distance is nothing but
trees and more trees with a rocky outcropping down by Young’s Cove and an empty
beer can along the highway near the Sussex exit. Oh, the excitement!
The next time I drive along the
beautiful Tobique River or see a couple of deer standing along Highway 105 in
Tilley or see a pontoon boat on the St. John or Aroostook Rivers, I will sing
Hosanna in appreciation.
I called an engineer who had worked
on the 4-lane down below Lincoln. He had just finished a therapy session
(trying to forget he had worked on that road) but was willing to talk.
“Yes, Bob, I worked on it and I am
able to finally discuss it. Old Billy Harper and I were the chief engineers. As
soon as we finished the road and he drove on it once, he turned to me and said
‘What have we done?’. He immediately retired to his cabin in Wapske where he
designs craft items and ties flies.
“He says he has pretty much gotten
over the shame now, but he still wakes up screaming in the night. “The truth
is, Bob. The government wanted us to design a boring road so drivers wouldn’t
get distracted by interesting sights.”
“Well, you sure succeeded there,” I
said. “I didn’t get my eyes unglazed until I got back to my lemonade.”-end-
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