Driving. Running on Empty.

Posted on by Live & Learn

photography,taxi,david Bradford,black and white,new york, new york city
I get a late jump. Need to drive to the City. I look down at my gas gauge. It’s bobbing on the wrong side of 1/4. Storm expected by mid-afternoon. I can’t be caught on freeway without petrol. I cuss. I should have filled up on the ride home last night. I clench my teeth: WHY do I repeat this scenario?  Again and again. I glance down at my watch, and hope for light traffic. I can’t be late. Not today. I pull into a Mobil Service Station.

A late edition Ford Explorer pulls up. Mid-30’s? Pharma Sales? Office Manager?  Her make-up, black dress and heels…all poorly camouflaging weariness.  Her shoulders are slumped.

Today’s Look: Fatigue. Single Mom? Poor night’s sleep? Did you need to drop Jimmy off at daycare?

$’s whirring on the pump meter. $4.47 a gallon. “Come and listen to a story ’bout a man named Jed. Poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed. Then one day he was shooting for some food, and up through the ground come a bubblin’ crude (Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea.)” I digress. $63.47 and still guzzling. Beast is insatiable.

She puts the pump back in the holster, gives the gas cap an extra twist and trudges back into her car, heels clopping on the asphalt.

You couldn’t have put more than $15 in the tank. Money tight? Stretched into big house, one size too large? 

Traffic is flowing. GPS flashing a clear runway to Triborough Bridge. Making good time.

You picked out the dress with your Mother. Your Father cried as he walked you down the aisle. Bridesmaids, flower girls, quaint church. Pachelbel’s Canon in D. A beautiful spring day in May. Church Bells singing. Hope springs eternal.

49 mph and I’m adjacent to East River. Ride is rough. Potholes. No. Craters – – teeth rattling. Traffic is thick but moving. Bees swarming around a hive. Cabs. Commuters. Crazies. All racing somewhere.

Life has moved to the ordinary. The routine. 9 to 5 for your first job. And then, your second job awaits you when you get home. Melancholy lingers. Can’t shake it off.  You’re thinking “is this all there is?”  “Is this what it will be?”

GPS signals two miles from Holland Tunnel. Children on a jungle gym in a playground. Determined runners getting in their morning workout. Bikers’ zig zagging through traffic. Shopkeepers hosing down sidewalks. A Man wearing a top hat and a tux is carrying a cane and is strutting down 14th street.  A Bus Driver is watching Dandy too – he turns and smiles at me, both thinking ‘only in NYC.’

You arrive at work. Your sanctuary. You grab a cup of coffee. You turn on your PC, slump in your chair and exhale. 

I enter into the Holland Tunnel. It is free of graffiti. Free of potholes. Free of garbage. And free of terrorists, with armed NYPD officers visible and guarding both ends.  A modern mausoleum.  I exit the tunnel into the light. I arrive 15 minutes early to greet my team.

Your boss offers you a cheery ‘Good Morning.’ You force out a smile. She offers to take you out to lunch to thank you for your ‘exceptional’ work on the project. Your heaviness lifts.  You get to back to work.

Image Credit: David Bradford @ Gadling.com

42 thoughts on “Driving. Running on Empty.”

  6. The blending of two stories with the author’s prerogative to go deep inside a possibility to help explain a collective reality. Beautifully executed – which is how I feel when I successfully drive through the Holland or across the GW Bridge 🙂

    1. 🙂 Thank you Mimi. For those that haven’t traversed the Holland Tunnel or GW, it’s the equivalent of zip lining or bungee jumping. Inhale, grab on and hope for the best.

  12. I’m of the belief that you missed your calling, pal. I think you have a career in the literary sphere. I’m envisioning your “second act.” All I ask for is a signed copy of a first edition… 🙂

      1. Awww Lori, thank you. I came across this quote this morning and immediately thought of you and the magic you work with words:

        “She was wedded to the sensuality of language, not the grammar that might kill or distill it. She loved words—she loved them the way she loved milk and fruit in the summer, dishes of blueberries with cream poured over them. Making devil’s food cake from a mix, or the sharp happy scent of fresh ground coffee. The pleasure of washing her hair with Halo shampoo, with its piney-clean winterberry heart. The soothing, synthetic scent of fresh magazines. Chunks of sunlight like fresh cold pieces of butter. Ginger ale was ‘tawny.’ A silky taupe sundress was ‘apple-scented.’ Her clean little bathroom smelled like warm skin, fluoride, and chromium. Her attachment to language was earthy, physical, and immediate. Pretty words you could eat.”

        – Elizabeth Winder, ”Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953”

  14. as we cross paths with others in this world, we only know what we think we see, rarely understanding all that is behind the person presented before us. we are so focused on our personal experience of the moment that we can barely even figure out who we really are. you have painted a beautiful picture of this.

    1. Thank you Beth. So true. Your thoughts remind me of the definition of Sonder:

      *SONDER:*

      *n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own�populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness�an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate **passageways to thousands of other lives that you�ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.*

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