Copious Free Time

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In the 80s, Condominiums were the big thing. I called them "The Slums of Tomorrow." We seriously considered one for our 'starter home.'

Anyway, when I drive to work on either of my two most frequent routes nowadays (I-64 being impractical, due to prolonged construction: pour, rip up, repeat), I see a rectangular building roughly two stories tall. If I drive on 39th Street (which becomes Pembroke, where I work), I pass the building from the front. Looks like a business that wound up being used as a house. Back when I first noticed it, it had a porch or patio up on the top floor in back, visible from 664, running parallel and higher than 39th. Seemed seedy, but there was something appealing about the back of the top floor.

That's gone now. For the last year or two, whoever owns the place has embarked on a half-assedly ambitious plan to add a floor to the building, using cheap-looking plywood and I don't know what else. Maybe whoever was doing it ran out of money or something and had to stop progress. I see there's a broken window on the top floor front -- not a good sign. At any rate, it looks like a scary crappy wooden skyscraper out of one of my long-ago dreams. The terrace in back has been engulfed in the new top floor and pitched roof, sort of like the way the old building was incorporated into the new building that became the hotel we stayed at in Florence. You could see the roof embedded in a wall; not removed, just absorbed.

It's just weird and goofy. I show it to visitors from out of town sometimes. It's on the same stretch as the speedy mart with the sign showing a kid running, and the speed lines are in front of him. It's right on the way to my office anyway. I tell my visitors that until I saw this, I had thought slums occurred when buildings got old. I didn't know that people actually built new slums.
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Took today off work. I was driving down the interstate, at the prevailing speed (not the fastest or the slowest). I sped up a little, and at that moment, what should I see but a state trooper in the median. All the blood in my body went somewhere else (another dimension, perhaps; I didn't see it in the car), causing my foot to lift from the accelerator. 65 now. What was the limit again? Oh yeah, 55! I slowed down some more, reaching 60 from above, and saw the patrol car detach from its lurking spot and drift along behind me, at which point I was chanting obscenities fast enough that it sounded like Morse Code.

The car came alongside. Having no desire to prolong it any, I looked over to see what might be my fate. The officer gave me a little wave. He continued accelerating and went in front of me. Was this it? I kept watching him, and he went on over to the exit and departed the roadway, leaving me driving like a proverbial little old lady for the rest of the trip.

Perhaps that explains my subsequent need for Geritol?
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