It was clearly a very stupid mattress…. It was a large mattress, and probably one of quite high quality…. It did something that mattresses very rarely bother to do. Summoning every bit of its strength, it reared its oblong body, heaved it up into the air and held it quivering there for a few seconds…. The effort was too much, and it flodged back into its pool.

Douglas Adams,
Life, the Universe, and Everything

 
 
 

The funny thing is… I remember that a year ago last Friday I was driving along and planning a sardonically existential blog post about the hell that was the Road To Cummington on the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend. And then the incredible wonderfulness of my experience at MA S&W just knocked the whole thing out of my mind. I didn’t forget it, but it just seemed so piddling and irrelevant by comparison that I was happy to let it slide. You know?

And then this year, for at least a couple of hours before my little mattress dance, I was thinking about that drive and I was muttering to myself, “HA! You thought THAT was bad…!” and planning an escalated blog post.

And THEN the shit mattress hit the fan tires.

This time, though, I’m damn well going to squeeze out all the existential juice I can. In spite of, and secure in, the fact that the weekend was still amazingly wonderful - indeed, given that it’s Cummington I would expect no less.

Then I’ll be free to turn my attention to the festival itself. I’ve started looking over my pictures and many of them are, well, not exactly stellar. But fortunately I am not an island and I can gank the good stuff from my friends. Meanwhile, I can ride someone else’s coattails as usual and thus still point you to some actual weekend pictures: go see Dan’s report, and wish him and us a happy anniversary.

And speaking of anniversaries… there’s another anniversary that deserves mention and celebration here, one that falls somewhere in the middle of the whole NH-MA silly season: it was right after last year’s NHS&W that the blessed Tservitude of our blessed Tserf began. I really don’t have words for this, except to say that without that I honestly can’t imagine how I’d ever have kept functioning and Tsarina-fying with my head above water. And because I literally can’t imagine it, I really almost don’t even know how thankful I am, if you see what I mean. I was re-reading Douglas Adams the other night, and I was struck by his attempt to describe a world that had no sky. Yeah, kind of like that. Even he couldn’t quite picture or articulate it. I sure can’t.

But enough of all this touchy-feely sappy stuff, right? Time to plunge into the bowels of the New England highway… I was about to say “system.” Heh.

So a-a-a-a-a-a-nyway….

I got off to a late-ish start, and as I was driving westward on the Lawn Guyland leg of this trip, and experiencing survivor guilt because for once the barely-moving traffic was all headed the other way, I listened frequently to the local traffic reports - because I knew well, based both on a lifetime of experience and on the specific vicissitudes of last year’s trip, that I was headed for a perilous voyage no matter what I did, and that it behooved me to choose my route wisely and avoid the worst of an already bad business.

And what I heard in every report, literally every five minutes on average, was this:

The CONNECTICUT TURNPIKE is at a standstill and backed up for a kazillion miles because of an overturned tractor-trailer that is leaking battery acid all over creation.

So, thinks I, that isn’t going to help anything. So, thinks I, I sure as hell am not going anywhere near the putative so-called “Connecticut Turnpike.” Which in any case… I have never heard of.

Never.

Now, I am 51 years old, and I have lived near Connecticut, sometimes even in Connecticut, nearly all my life. I spent my earliest summers in a Connecticut farmhouse. I went to college in Connecticut. I went to boarding school just on the other side of Connecticut. TheBoy^TM currently owns a house in Connecticut. Some years ago I co-founded and co-ran a small ballet company based in Connecticut. I have been driving back, forth, up, down, through, around, and across the entire state of Connecticut for 35 years. I know the roads by their names and nicknames and numbers - the phrase “back of my hand” comes to mind - they are the map of my whole life, and I can tell you exactly where the Hutch (-inson River Parkway) turns into the Merritt, AKA CT Rte 15, and at what point the Merritt changes into the Wilbur Cross; I know the Mass Pike and the NY Thruway and where and how they are one and the same I-90; I understand all too well the workings and history of the Boston Post Road, AKA Route 1; and never never NEVER in my life, not once, have I heard mention or inkling of a “Connecticut Turnpike.”

Incidentally, in the wake of my adventures I took an informal poll, and it turns out I am not alone: nine out of ten New Englanders, some of them long-time Connecticut residents, were similarly innocent.

So anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the radio. Calmly spelling out one highway disaster after another on roads both named and numbered, and admonishing me to Beware the “Connecticut Turnpike” without EVER identifying it by number, as who should say, of course everyone knows what I’m talking about.

So I figure, I’m safe from that at any rate, since I never had the slightest intention of taking it.

This is what in the literary line we call foreshadowing. You know what’s coming, right? It could hardly be otherwise.

But I’m not going to spare you.

So, out of the three major candidates I choose my usual preferred route, the Hutch to the Merritt to the Wilbur Cross - Tinker to Evers to Chance.

And for a while there it’s just fine.

Then it gets slow. Then it gets slower. Then I remember that last year it was exactly the same, and that at that point I sucked it up and got on I-95. Now, I don’t LIKE I-95 - I can’t imagine that any sane person does - but last year it turned out to be the wise choice, and its nearest junction certainly has the proverbial Utility of Location at this moment, so… I go for it.

And for a while there it’s just fine.

Then it gets slow. Then it gets slower. Then it gets slower and slower still.

(Have I mentioned lately that my car is not air-conditioned? Have I mentioned that it was 85 degrees?)

Then the messages on the electronic highway signs start to take on an ominous and increasingly familiar theme, and at last I have to face the fact….

Yes - I am in fact ON the mythical high road of Brigadoon, which under its thin hateful veneer of I-95 is indeed none other than the nonexistent “Connecticut Turnpike” itself!!!!!

Rage. Fury. Many unprintable and unpronounceable fulminations.

You might have to be a resident of this area to understand the full implications of my next act of desperation. At the next exit I get off and take the old Boston Post Road, i.e. US Route 1.

Route 1 is so-called for very good reason - the Boston Post Road dates back in part to the 1670s, and in many places it doesn’t seem to have changed much since. For this whole stretch of coastal New England it parallels, or rather is paralleled by, I-95 (also NOT known as the imaginary “Connecticut Turnpike”), but where I-95 (aNkati”CT”) is a major highway, Route 1 is strictly local, strictly mom-and-pop, strictly stop-and-go, 100% small-town-midtown all the way. The more so here as it participates in Connecticut’s charming game of perpetually playing bait-and-switch with turn lanes.

Nevertheless, snail’s pace or not, at this point it proves BETTER - as anything would - than I-95 (aNkati”CT”). Besides, I only have to get as far as New Haven on it, which in a normal universe would not be very far. In a normal universe.

And really, it’s kind of OK, by comparison.

At least for a while. It isn’t GOOD, but at least it’s moving. Until it reaches the point where enough other people have had the same idea, and at that stage BOTH roads simply clamp shut. At this point, when I have spent the first FIVE hours of a FOUR-HOUR trip averaging 20 miles per hour, and the past half-hour fantasizing about getting all the way up into second gear, I form yet another desperate resolve. I inch up to the next possible junction and… I get back on I-95… SOUTHBOUND. I now spend the sixth hour of my four-hour trip averaging negative 70 MPH; I am making tracks, hell-for-leather, back the way I came, and damn it feels good.

Backtrack to where I can cut back over to the tried-and-true Merritt (AKA 15), and after a slight kerfuffle I get on it and head north again, grateful to be moving, albeit slowly.

It’s now 8:00 PM, and I’ve been on the road since 2:00. I stop and put in a call to Patrick, asking him to let Jennifer (whom I can’t reach because she’s still at the fairgrounds with no cell signal) know that at this rate, well, she probably shouldn’t wait up for me.

By the time Jen calls me back an hour later, we’re looking at a big improvement. I’ve broken through the Barricade of Slog at last and am doing 75 on I-91, the last major leg of the trip, making up for lost time in fine brisk style. We agree that I’ve got maybe an hour to go and that Jen may as well go ahead and order pizza. We hang up.

And not five minutes later… Wham-o.

After the incident a lot of people asked me “was it at that terrible curve?” and I had no idea what to say because I had no memory of any curve; all I knew was that this huge THING appeared suddenly, out of the darkness, out of nowhere, right in front of me in the middle lane, and that the inevitable impact felt like the Airborne Monster Cinderblock Of Doom. It wasn’t until much later that I looked at a map and reconstructed what they meant and what must have happened. THE Curve probably explains why and how a mattress ceased to be on the top of some schmuck’s vehicle and became a deadly engine of highway destruction - and also explains why and how it could have loomed up before me with no warning at all.

Having lost all sense of time and space while the thing was actually happening, I found it interesting to reconstruct some part of the location and trajectory, and to determine that it must have taken me approximately 1,000 feet to come to a juddering stop (it felt to me like whatever I had hit I had picked up and was dragging with me; not true, of course, but it was my best guess based on the sensation of rims clunking directly on pavement) - still in the middle lane - with my hazard lights flashing and the rest of me shaking all over.

The next person in line came to a stop directly behind me. The thing had taken out both of my RIGHT tires, and both of her LEFT ones. Next guy got it on the right - one tire. I’m not sure about #4, though I do know he too lost a tire but otherwise, like the rest of us, was miraculously unhurt.

Here, incidentally, is a full-on view of my poor little car as it appeared after being deposited in the lot of the mechanic who (first in a long line of uncertainties) might or might not be open - and indeed as it turned out was not open - over the holiday weekend.

You’ll note it’s listing strongly to starboard.

Here’s why:

When I could speak I called Jen back and told her to revise the time estimate upward….

The rest you pretty much know, I guess. We managed to limp to the shoulder. Called the cops. Arranged for all the towing and the waiting. Jen schlepped an hour each way to scoop me up along with all my gear, and we were safe in the motel by 1:00 AM - and I was actually glad to see a mattress.

And now for my award speech, because I would like to thank the heroes of this saga. For starters the people who technically were only doing their jobs but who did them with grace and kindness: three anonymous tow-truck operators and two ditto state troopers. Jennifer, who had already had the day from hell (and no help from me in setting up the booth) before coming far out of her way to rescue me. TheBoy^TM, who had to coordinate the logistics of the whole salvage and repairs operation from a distance, because I could neither call nor be called, neither send nor receive messages of any kind, during the day on Saturday and Sunday. And Dan, who cheerfully stuck around on Sunday to help us take down and pack up the booth (again! watch out, laddie, this is getting to be a habit), and then just as cheerfully loaded me and all my gear into his car and drove me all the way to West Springfield in the hope - but not actual certainty - that I’d be able to pick up the car and drive it cautiously home.

Which, very fortunately for me and not much less so for him, it turned out I could. And did.

And now I think I’ve got that out of my system at last and can turn to matters fibery with a clear and relatively undistracted mind. And I can’t say I’m sorry to learn that Mercury will be out of retrograde before my next trip.

I would just like to say this, though, to whoever has been going around tossing mattresses out on the high road to the detriment of innocent motorists:

Hard be your bed, now and forever.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 11:46 pm and is filed under Bloggerei. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.